Lasting banjo friendships

The best thing about teaching music is that you get to spend time with really neat people. Some come and go; others stay friends.

I just visited a friend who was my banjo student about 30 years ago. Banjo couldn't wedge itself into his daily routine of work and raising a couple of kids. He's singing karaoke now, in tune and in time, so I told him I thought we need to give banjo another go, and he's agreed.

We're both older, we hope we're wiser, and we're certainly more patient. In our lessons decades ago, it was somehow important to play rolls and licks and beginning bluegrass tunes. It was what he wanted to play; it was what I was used to teaching. In retrospect, those finger patterns were too complex. We were both in a hurry to get a tuneful product from my teaching and his practicing.

This time we'll start with only G, C and D7 chords (and you banjo pickers know that G is a freebie open-string chord!) and stay with simple downward strums until the natural metronome of his arm's weight makes keeping time on an instrument automatic. We'll do it on songs he already likes to sing. And since we live in different states and visit only infrequently, we'll move ahead with new banjo tasks at a comfortable pace. He can dredge up a bluegrass roll from the memories of his youth, and maybe learn a new chord every few months when a song requires it.

The best part of our banjo lessons will continue to be the visiting itself.

What good do I do, what good do I get?

Every Wednesday I spend an hour in the nearby hospice care home. I sit near the nursing station or by a patient's doorway and play comfort through the air with the strings of my Irish harp.

I've just filled out my annual volunteer competency test for the hospice organization. There were questions about oxygen use (it's not OK for people to smoke while using oxygen) and hand washing (do it often and thoroughly).

They also want to know what I feel was my most valuable experience as a volunteer. I answered that it was the happy feeling I get as I pack up my harp and stow it in the hall closet there. At the very least, I leave knowing I've provided a pleasant distraction for the staff, patients and families.

Some days I know I have lifted spirits and souls. I leave with a spring in my step. I'm not the sick one. I am reminded how good life is.

What I didn't write on my mail-in test, because it's a little selfish-sounding, is that I'm getting a most valuable kind of practice in the hospice halls. Since I'm not at home I can't just quit when I hit a bump in a tune. I have no excuse to stop playing -- no laundry to finish or dishes to do -- so I keep moving my fingers until my brain catches up, and I keep stirring my brain until my fingers catch on.

I need to keep playing because I have an audience, although no one is listening too closely. Compared to the hard work of dying, the specifics of my music are utterly unimportant there. I am free to feel the music my heart and harp want to play, and to let go of the concept of making mistakes.

Playing in the halls of hospice teaches me more about playing the harp than all my music lessons and classes and books. Or perhaps it's more correct to say that it teaches me further.

Each lesson I learn informs each lesson I teach. I must remember, while I'm helping students juggle guitar chords or pick a banjo, to also give them a peek into that other world of music I get to visit on Wednesdays. A world of music that is, sadly, not a part of how we usually learn music in our culture.

How did music get from there and then -- when a person would imitate a singing bird or the rhythm of dancing feet -- to here and now -- where we decipher the dots on a page and worry about playing correctly?

A picky detail

Chapter one is way too hard in most music books! And sometimes for the smallest reasons.

Tomorrow my challenge will be creating a pre-chapter-one lesson for a new mandolin student. She's a total newbie, and she's excited to play some little Italian songs. Chapter one in the mandolin world always leans heavily on how to hold a pick: how to go down up down up with the pick; choose a thin one or a thick; hold it loose, hold it tight, stand up, sit down, fight fight . . .

And I don't want to fight the mandolin. I want to have fun, and so does my student. So I'm going to borrow a page from the uke world and start with just plain finger or thumb. And when her arm will strum down and up, we'll grab a pick and see if we can hold on. And when she goes home to practice, she'll have the option of playing barefoot or of climbing into her high-heel shoes.

Your brain seen as a guitar-shaped jigsaw puzzle. The bones in your hand that unfold as an umbrella unfolds, but more wonderfully. Music books which fantastically scan your brain and then teach you only music that's easy and fun for you to learn. All these odd ideas and more I have shared with you on this blog.

Now I'm doing a big edit, so it's looking a little blank.

I'm still teaching, still turning my thinking upside down, still writing. And I'm playing more music with band-mates and extra-bandicular music friends than I have in many years. I'll bang down some more ideas which I hope might help you on your learning journey, then tart them up and publish them here again soon. Do check back, y'all.