Posted by finelinebob on August 26, 2006, at 23:25:38
So here it was. 1:55pm Saturday (today) and time for me to walk over to my guitar teacher's apartment.
And I haven't picked up my guitar in two weeks. Last week I called at 1:59 and made some excuse and didn't show because I was having some wicked 9/11-approaching-too-fast anxiety/agoraphobia. Been Babbling instead of practicing ... naughty me ;^). But I'm just sick, thinking he's gonna say, "So, how are those chord progressions coming along?"
But we sit down and instead of him asking me to go over the chord progressions I asked him for during lesson two, he drops some sheet music with pictures of a disembodied left hand on a guitar fingerboard showing where the notes on the paper matched up with the strings and frets.
He's a really REALLY cool teacher. Classically trained, a couple of years older than me (so we have the same taste for rock & folk guitarists), naturally gifted as a teacher.
But he knows I can read sheet music because I played an instrument from 5th grade (viola, then French horn in 7th) through high school. So he has faith that I'll keep up with the chords on my own, or isn't that concerned because he knows we'll be coming back to them soon. So he shows me a new exercise for developing strength and agility and independence from conscious thought for my left hand then we dig into the sheet music.
It's all just three note etudes (which is kinda of funny, because my guitar is a LaPatrie Etude). We start on the high E string, move down to the B string, then on to some that combine both strings. Then the G string (no snickers out there, this is music).
And the next thing, wouldn't you know it, I'm playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is just a combination of the etudes on these three strings that I'd just been doing (tho I heard a little bit of the intro to Roundabout in those etudes, too).
But then I remembered how STUPID this all seemed back when I was in fifth grade, then I had to repeat it all in 7th grade when I switched to the horn. Now here I am, 30-some years later, and this is all just too cool!
But if I can hear Steve Howe in Twinkle Twinkle, maybe there's some hope for me yet. My teacher sure seems to think so.
poster:finelinebob
thread:680419
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/esteem/20060725/msgs/680419.html