Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Guitar Lessons

So I started taking guitar lessons.  I'm excited to finally learn how to play well enough to actually play a song that people will recognize!

But my guitar lessons are only about 14% about learning how to play the guitar.
I'd say it's somewhere around 48% about learning how to be humble, 23% about not always being right, and 15% about rewriting the past.

I hate to not know what's going on.  I hate when I don't know more than someone else about a subject.  It is so humbling for me to try something and possibly fail, right in front of someone else.  It's really a stretch for me sit with Jordan and try something and have him say, "No, not quite. More like this."  He is very kind and a great teacher, it's just that I'm not used to being the student.  I may have control issues...

It's difficult for me to not be right.  It's really hard for me to practice something for a week and then find out I'm not doing it right.  I know it's no big deal.  It really isn't.  I told my students all the time to just keep trying, and I really didn't judge them at all for not getting something the first or second time.  But when it's my turn, man it's hard to keep plugging away at it and not give up.

I've had my guitar since I was 16.  Ben took me to Elderly Music in Lansing and helped me pick it out.  We worked on a few things together and he taught me most of the basic chords, but then he moved.  My dad and step-mom got me guitar lessons for my 17th birthday, but when I went to the first lesson, I found out that they hadn't actually paid for them, and I was stuck with the bill.  I worked on teaching myself some stuff when I lived at my mom's, but my mom and sister always made fun of me, said I could never be a music person, and that it was stupid of me to try.  I really haven't messed with my guitar in probably 13 years.  I never got rid of it because it was something that I really wanted to learn to do....I just never had the guts to be humble enough to not be right, and to be a good student.

I might sound pretty bad right now, but it's not really about that.  I'm learning a lot that has nothing to do with music.

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