Sharps and Flats

My first guitar was a plastic thing I got for Christmas when I was really young. I was joyful even though I had no idea of what I was doing with the thing. A couple of years later, Steve, a neighbor who was my older sister's age, offered to sell me his white electric guitar for $100, but for some reason I chickened out. I regret not buying that guitar, and thought it's a different story, there are things I regret about Steve, too.

I don't have good fingers or hands for a guitar: too fat and uncoordinated, and somewhat hindered now by arm surgery I had about 10 years ago. I had good fingers for the coronet when I played in the school band a long time ago, but I had to use only fingers. That made things easier, though I never could get my lips to hit that high C with any consistency. I probably should have gone with the tuba.

One morning I got out of bed and put my foot right through that plastic guitar, and that was the end of things until I bought a classical guitar in Pensacola, Florida. I had to walk from the navy base to the music store, then had to dash back to my room when the rain started, carrying that new guitar the entire way. I still have this guitar though I don't play it because a few years ago I ponied up some cash and got a regular acoustic guitar, a Seagull, which sounds really nice when other people play it. Last year I got an electric guitar, a nice Fender Stratocaster, something that my fingers don't work well on but that does make a lot of nice noise.

Recently, in an attempt to re-make certain parts of me, I signed up for a beginning guitar class through the local school district's adult education program. Though I spend time with the Seagull and the Stratocaster each day, I thought I might as well learn a little--maybe even learn an entire song. We met for the first time last Saturday, and when I walked into the room, most of the students were already there, guitars out and gabbing with the instructor. I sat in one of the few available chairs, next to a woman who seemed even less comfortable than I was. "Can you play?" she asked me, and I assured her that I could not.

Some of the students had nice guitars (the woman across from me had a Taylor, which I coveted for 2 full hours), while others had guitars that weren't so nice. Not long after the starting time, I started wondering just what we were in for. The teacher never introduced himself, never asked people their names or what guitar experience they had, and didn't seem organized at all. (Yes, I know--I need to leave my teacher side at home.) He showed his own guitar skills a few times, and at one point the woman next to me whispered, "Oh, look at me!" Ha ha ha.

After a few exercises, the teacher went through the strings, and I was happy when nobody laughed when he said "put your finger on the G-string." Because, well, there was so much temptation for us to laugh at what the perpetual adolescents among us were thinking. He quickly began showing us basic chords (G, C, D). "Make sure you don't put your fingers right on the frets," he said once, which was lost on the woman beside me because nobody had told her what a fret is. Later, the teacher assured us that we were "an advanced class" because we'd learned to play 3 chords in just 2 hours, which is pretty much a bunch of hooey. He'd walk around the room and listen to us, but he wouldn't spend any time with the people who were struggling with theory and/or mechanics. So, while he walked and talked, I concentrated on helping the woman next to me, showing her where to put her fingers, how to bend her wrist, and how to strum the chords. She was frustrated. I was frustrated. At one point the teacher stopped in front of her to see how she was doing, and I told him that she was still trying to figure out the fingering and the frets. He then just moved on (without checking on me), which didn't make the woman too happy. "Oh, just walk away," she muttered.

I wanted to tell the guy: "How can you teach a class if you don't know anything about the students? How can you tell us a note is sharp or flat if we don't know what those terms mean? How can you tell us how to use the guitar if we don't even know all of the guitar's parts?"

Whew. That was fun.

In the end, the woman was vocally thankful that I'd spent some time with her, but I wasn't necessarily happy that I'd helped her, which sounds terrible. Actually, I wasn't happy with the instructor, who before we left admonished us to tune our guitars before our next meeting, to do our homework exercises, and to come to class prepared. This week I'll have to make a decision: do I sit beside the same woman so I can help her, or do I sit somewhere else and concentrate on the lesson itself so I can learn something more than I already know?

I had plans on taking an advanced class, but, apparently, I won't have to.