As the title suggests really. This was someone who's playing I'd become aware of and had really been getting into, and then saw via their social media that they'd opened up some lesson slots. So I jumped at the chance. I had some questions about how they do what they do, and also just wanted to see what they had to say about their approach and what they felt it was important to think about.
Fuck me it was one of the longest hours of my life (in fact I made my excuses at around the 50 minute mark because I was exhausted from carrying the conversation...) The only comparison I can draw is that it was like one of those interviews with an actor at the end of a long promotional tour, who really doesn't want to be there but has to. The lesson started with him Skyping me, and when the Skype window opened....he just didn't say anything. Just looked into his webcam with a kind of wearily expectant look on his face. Didn't actually ask me what I was interested in covering, or what my playing background was....no attempt to break the ice and start thing rolling.
We eventually did start getting into some content and to his credit, any questions I had he answered and I totally get that there's always an element of "an audience with" about lessons of this type with someone who is an artist rather than a dedicated educator so I'm not really criticising him for it. There's no automatic correlation between a player's musical brilliance and their ability to share what's behind it, and its for the student to think about what they want to get out of things and take the initiative in asking questions, but what it really brought home to me how amazing those people who are artists and still manage to be truly enthusiastic and skilled teachers are. People like Bryan Sutton, Martin Simpson and Martin Taylor spring to mind...no surprise that they've all got a couple of decades experience over and above this chap I guess, but truly to be treasured!
Comments
...but who was it?
Just DM me his name
My father did teacher training for a living. Can't say I thought much about it then ( he was semi retired when I was sixteen) but what makes a good teacher is something I've thought about from time to time and something I wished I'd discussed more with him.
In practice there may not be a single right set of teaching skills, we learn in different ways so may need people who teach in different ways. A really, really good teacher could adapt his/ her style but unless someone has been trained to do that they probably have a limited range of styles. Possibly for the OP it's simply a clash of styles, it might be that this person works well for other people ( probably not but it's a possible explanation).
Often bugs me when I go on training through work that people seem to equate good training with entertainment value. There is a chap who the council uses a lot who is quite a raconteur but the content of his training is so unstructured it makes my head hurt. I'm quite chaotic in a lot of my life but on training events I can hear my father in my head asking about the lesson plan...
fuck right off....
...but who was it?
It could just be down to having that barrier.
Also consider that you have a 'relationship' with this musician's output but not with the musician himself, whilst he doesn't know you at all either.
I can easily see how something like this can happen without anyone necessarily being at fault.
Or maybe he's a dick.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
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If anything, I think it’s down to how good he is meaning that he just doesn’t think about things that way an “intermediate” player like me does - example: I looks for shapes and patterns to work with. He left that behind so long ago, he just thinks about notes now and so in his mind, the answer to a lot of questions is “well just think of the note you want to play and play it”. He’d probably be ace for a beginner because I’m sure he’d teach fundamentals very well, and for a properly schooled advanced player too because then you could interact at that level. Not so much for the inbetweeners.
Been uploading old tracks I recorded ages ago and hopefully some new noodles here.