So I’ve just restrung HY’s guitar.
The pristine white bass strings and the crystal clear treble strings beckon to be played, to channel a love song, or a Bach piece, or a bluesy chord progression. And I’m very inclined to oblige.
There’s just one problem: It’s a left-handed guitar, and I’m not sinister (in the original sense of the word).
But then again, how hard can it be? The strings are nylon ones, not steel, so they’re much easier to press. The chord fingerings and notes are just a mirror image of the fingerings I’m familiar with. All I have to do is apply my own tips that I give to my guitar “students”, and I’ll be playing to the likes of Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix in no time!
So I fit the guitar snugly over my right thigh, grasp the neck with my right hand, and hazard out a C-chord. So far so good. The fingering feels awkward, but otherwise OK. Now to see if it sounds right. I eagerly position my left hand over the sound hole, take a deep breath, and give it one good strum, and…
NO SOUND!
Or rather, not the full-bodied waveforms I’d expected. Just the barely audible splatter of muted nylon!
This can’t be happening!
A quick glance verifies that the fingers on the fretboard are really mine, and that they weren’t swapped for some noob’s digits when I wasn’t looking.
But there’s no point wondering about what happened. Time to troubleshoot. As I always tell my students: If your chord sounds muffled, play the strings one at a time to find out which ones you’re pressing wrongly.
So my left index finger gets into position, ready to pluck the strings one at a time. I pluck the first string. It’s fine; not so muted. I proceed to pluck the second string, and… WHERE HAS MY INDEX FINGER GONE TO???
It’s not where it should be! It’s in some random position floating above the other strings, still recovering from the previous stroke that can’t even be called a pluck. I try to direct it back to the second string, but the whole process is so clumsy that it looks like I’m playing “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” with my finger and the string.
By this time, the fingers of my right hand are starting to ache from holding the C-unchord for so long, my right thumb and right elbow have subconsciously drifted to some awkward skewed position, and my uncalloused fingertips are turning red from pressing the strings. I haven’t even pressed hard enough to make a single clean note!
So this is what it feels like to learn the guitar for the first time… I picked up the guitar so long ago (6~7 years?) that I can’t even remember how hard it must’ve been to play my very first chord.
And all this while I’ve been telling people to “just press harder” or “make sure it feels natural” or “don’t let your fingers get slanted”, when the hardest I can press isn’t hard enough, the whole process feels totally convoluted, contorted and unnatural, and my fingers are like rebellious schoolboys refusing to cooperate and stay still.
In fact, I can’t even imagine why anyone would want to pick up such a torturous instrument!
Ah, the irony.
It’s time to start repaying my empathy debt…
perhaps that part of the left brain has not been used before.
perhaps the guitar’s popularity masks its difficulty index.
perhaps the most demanding requirement of a teacher is empathy.
perhaps the critical part of empathy is remembering the pain.
perhaps a teacher determines to remember early struggles, and in a way to re-live the pain.
perhaps love is the best motivation for teaching.
perhaps teaching is a good way to grow in love.
so is the banjo…not ‘again’ perhaps, as it was the first time I tried playing it after Seth got it from the music store in Owatonna from his savings… Yes, I had forgotten how hard it was when I first tried to learn the guitar- the strings were steel…
and perhaps that’s why I’m still teaching…and learning