I have a student who...

90 guitar lessons later.

In the 28 years that I have been a guitar instructor, I can probably count on one hand the amount of students who actually kept with their lessons, practiced every day, worked hard at accomplishing their goals and continued lessons for more than one or two years. Let me tell you about the latest version of this phenomenon.

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I won't use his real name because he is a minor. We'll just call him Paul.

Paul was around 14 years old when he began his one hour guitar lesson with me. He had a background in music in orchestral strings at his school. However, he had grown bored with playing that genre of music and wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Being as young as he was, he reminded me of myself at his age. He didn't have any preconceived notions about what he would, could, wouldn't or couldn't play or practice on the guitar. This is a rare quality in most of my beginner students. Most kids these days have no idea what music is truly all about. All they know is what they hear on streaming apps or watch on social media. 

Paul already had some ideas about what he wanted to do. As a young teenager, his knowledge of rock, blues, jazz and pop guitar music was relatively limited to a handful of metal and punk artists he could actually name. He really didn't know anything about the history of the guitar or much about the legends who have played the guitar. I didn't want to immediately start cramming the cookie-cutter random guitar gawd songs down his throat. Within a few weeks of lessons, I could tell that he was much more interested in being challenged with more difficult stuff.

We took a deep dive into basic music theory, which seemed to come to him quite easily. We built up his chord vocabulary, and worked on scales and improvisation. Then one day, he told me that he was going to try out for the school jazz band. Having been a past member of my high school jazz band, I thought that this would be a great opportunity for him to truly be tested on his knowledge and play ability. His mother got the "Real" jazz books for us to study and a list of songs from the band director that would probably be considered in the band.

Most of 2023 was spent working on several jazz standards. We worked on understanding jazz chord structures and the theory that was used to create them, and we expanded on improvisation. The entire goal of last summer was to prepare him for auditioning for the jazz band. I knew that he would most likely be accepted - and of course, he was. The first few weeks, everything was going well in the jazz band. Unfortunately, before the end of the year, band rehearsals had fallen off as a priority and everything came to a grinding halt.

I could tell that Paul and his mother were both quite disappointed in the outcome. We had put in all of that work and effort to prepare him to become an integral part of the jazz band. Was it all for nothing? No. In my eyes, it was a learning experience for him. The jazz band situation faltered, but that didn't mean all of the hard work was for nothing. This is what happens when the opportunity to work in a music project doesn't always turn out the way we hope or expect it to. By the Holidays, his mother was concerned that Paul simply wasn't practicing enough to justify continuing with his lessons. I wasn’t about to give up. Since Paul still had a handful of lessons credited, we decided to go a completely different direction.

The hardest part about being a young kid that plays the guitar  - is not having anyone else to play along with you . Times have changed dramatically since I was a kid. One of my best friends and I both started taking guitar lessons at the same time in 1976. I was 13 and he was 11. We always had each other to jam our music. If he learned a song, he would show me how to play it. If I learned something, I would show him. It was a healthy competition for both of us. He and I put together several bands with other kids around the neighborhood. By the time we were both in high school, we were already meeting other kids and playing with them. The music store was three blocks from our house. Finding other people to play with was almost effortless. We had to pound the pavement and go on a few auditions to find the right people, but it could be done. Those opportunities are nearly impossible to find these days. Paul has only had one or two opportunities to play with other people outside of school. Little if anything has transpired from any of them. I tried to hook him up with one of my other students, but ultimately, that fell through as well.

Paul has never shown me any direct signs of wanting to give up playing the guitar. I know that he needs to find other kids his age so he can be challenged on another level. Maybe he needs to learn how to play some classic rock songs to prepare him for a totally different genre of music. So, a few weeks ago, we changed directions. I asked him if he wanted to learn "Stairway to Heaven". He told me that he knew some of it. So, we loosely went over many of the parts of the famous song. The following week, we worked on each part of the song in more detail. The week after that, we had about 50% of the song down. I sent the sheet music to him and he studied it. Yesterday we had most of the song completely done except for the odd time signature break in the middle of the song. Now, he's at about 90% complete. We also worked briefly on "Dream on" and "More than a feeling". It was abundantly clear to me that Paul had reached the point where learning how to play songs quickly and almost completely by memory, had finally been achieved.

Stairway to heaven is arguably the number one right of passage song for every guitar player to learn. It is sort of a graduation to the next level. I remember learning Stairway when I was around 15 years old. It took me nearly two years to learn. Paul has learned most of it in only a few weeks. All of the lessons he has taken are starting to finally pay off - big! I think that his focus has changed on the direction he would truly like to go with his guitar. If it's classic rock, jazz or blues, he can now pick and choose the types of music that will fit his abilities.

Paul is living proof that if you commit to something, it can and will be achieved. It probably helps that he also possesses the gift of music. Gift or not, he still has a lot of work in front of him. The next few years will show whether or not music is a path he could take.