Music isn't the sound that music makes
When I was first learning guitar, I went through a series of teachers. The first, a young man named Chris, he was in his 20s and wildly unprepared for the degree of weird I was going to bring. I was raised Evangelical1 So my musical horizons were limited to ‘approved’ music: hymns, classical music, and ‘CCM’2. CCM, if you are unfamiliar, is the sort of sacchyrine, flavorless drivel that takes a bad love song and replaces the object of affection with Jesus. There are certainly some tunes that rise above the tepid dreck, but only few, and never by much.
Chris liked to play Rock and Roll, Chris liked the Blues. Chris was confused when I asked him to teach me an Amy Grant tune. Eventually Chris gave up. Though he did introduce me to Delta Blues, so six-of-one.
After a brief interregnum, I ended up with my second teacher. Shirley was a very nice lady from Church, she played piano and guitar, and thought that meant she could teach it. This is not an uncommon mistake people make, teaching is a different problem than simple knowing. Shirley failed like all the others, I only had lessons with her for a few months. Chris outlasted her.
Another few months, another teacher from Church, she taught piano to my sister. She lasted two lessons and told me that it was impossible to play the guitar without a pick. She wasn’t a very good player, either, having only picked up the instrument a few months prior. Come to think of it I might’ve actually been playing longer than she had when she tried to teach me.
There was a long gap after that. I first got the guitar around 8 or 9, cheap Samick that probably cost 80$ at the time. The action was too high, and the intonation was trash. I broke a string, but no one ever explained that that was normal and you could just change them, so I played with no high E for a year or so. Finally I started taking lessons with Ron from a music store one town over when I was about thirteen or so.
Ron was, and remains, probably the best teacher I’ve had in any subject in my life. I had great teachers in college, but Ron was the first teacher to take an honest interest in what I wanted out of guitar.
Our first lesson was pretty funny. I kept my guitar in the cardboard box it came in. No gig bag, certainly no hardcase. I dragged it up the stairs to the small practice room and pulled it out, ancient strings, one missing.
“Okay, ooh, nice guitar, looks like you broke a string though.”
“Yah, few months ago.”
“You didn’t replace it?”
“You can replace them?”
For the next year or so, Ron taught me how to learn guitar. He didn’t merely teach me how to play, but how to think about playing. I think of this now whenever I think about teaching anything, the hard part of teaching is not the content of the subject, but the narrative of the subject. He introduced this concept early with one of my favorite music exercises.
“Play it wrong.”
“What? What do you mean play it wrong?”
“Take what you’re doing, the notes you’re playing, and screw up. I want you to play it off by fret or three.”
“But it’ll sound terrible.”
“Not in your head, that’s where I want it, don’t worry about the sound you’re making, listen to the music and just do whatever feels natural. Be okay with it sounding wrong, that’s going to happen a lot.”
“But it sounds bad when I do that.”
“Play it anyway, even if it sounds bad, Music isn’t the sound that music makes, Music is in your mind, you have to listen for it, chase it, sit in it, let it soak into your brain. Don’t try to force it, just let it move your hands, let it move you, worry about the mechanics later.”
Ringing in my mind, ever since, has been those words, “Music isn’t the sound that music makes.”
I didn’t understand that lesson till many years later. After a few years of therapy for (what I assumed was) unrelated Anxiety, I began to notice something happening to my guitar playing.
I sounded good, like really good. I was enjoying what I played more, I was listening to what I played more. I didn’t feel the same need to control it anymore, to make it perfect, I could just play. As I sat in front of my daughter, I remember hearing myself play her tune3, and in my mind like a siren, “Music isn’t the sound that music makes.”
I’ve been afraid for a majority of my adult life that if anyone ever heard me play, that the facade would break, and I would be revealed an imposter. I’ve worried that they would tell me I was awful, and this thing which I love so much would be ruined by their judgement. I still worry about that, but I’m working on it.