"Six-String Belief"

The school's found someone to help me teach the music class on Thursday afternoons. I'm supposed to call the guy this afternoon before I leave work and arrange to have him come by tomorrow and join us.

Part of me will be glad of the help. I mean, I know how to play the guitar fairly well, but my technical mastery of the instrument is far from perfect. My vocabulary for describing what to do is not totally adequate. So having an extra person who probably has a different understanding of how the guitar works is good.

Really, when you get right down to it, my understanding of the guitar is much like my understanding of the English language and grammar and my understanding of art and drawing. I do these things intuitively, as a result of repetition and an instinctive understanding that I need to draw this line to achieve the desired effect, or use that phrase to express what I'm looking for, or put the words in this order for them to make sense. I understand how things ought to be, ought to look, or ought to sound, but I'll be damned if I can explain the why of it.

Which is rather ironic, when I think about it, because I've always thought the most important question to ask about anything was "why." I always want to know why. It's the reason I've never understood math: they could tell me that using this formula or equation would give me the right answer, but they could never tell me why that worked.

Anyway, the whole point is that maybe this guy will approach the guitar in a very different manner, perhaps one which is more methodical and less...well, loose, I guess. And extra help can't hurt, really. There are four or five kids in there already, and it's tough for me to address each one individually, especially since a couple of them are going to be playing different instruments (drums, keyboards, etc.). Guess we'll see how it goes after tomorrow.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Placebo, "Pure Morning"