My 13YO niece messaged me on Facebook. “I want guitar lessons for Christmas.”
She means (in context) that she wants me to teach her to play guitar. Not pay for professional lessons.
The problem is … I abandoned the guitar 20+ years ago, to devote myself to the bass guitar. Sure, I can still play guitar, but I’ve never considered myself to be more than “adequate” as a player (despite playing for, what, 34 years now?). I’m no lead player; when I was still playing guitar, I considered myself to be a rhythm guitarist, and that kind of led to my becoming a bass player.
My niece is also coming at the guitar from a completely different place, compared to how I got to the guitar, and then bass. I started out with piano lessons when I was a child, then took up the clarinet in the 5th grade (say, age 10 or so). Clarinet led to the saxophone, saxophone led to the bassoon (I dabbled in flute, but never got to spend time with an oboe). I spent my junior high school years learning to play every musical instrument I could get my hands on. I was focused on woodwinds, but learned how to play the trumpet. Needless to say, I already knew how to read music. I found the guitar completely by accident: I was digging in a bedroom closet at my paternal grandparent’s house, and found my aunt’s old guitar from the 1960s (this was in 1980). It was a cheap, piece-of-shit, Japanese-made guitar (from when “Made in Japan” still meant “Piece of shit”). But I was still in “learn everything” mode, so I tried to teach myself to play guitar on that POS. Shortly thereafter, I was playing that POS guitar in front of my other grandfather, who happened to be an alcoholic, who had just fallen off the wagon and was drunk as shit. He watched me playing that POS and said, “You can’t learn to play on that POS! Here, you can have my guitar!” At which point he handed me his 1968 Gibson acoustic. And I took it (hey, I was 14 at the time) and I still have that guitar. Holy shit, my guitar playing took off once I had that Gibson.
My point is that, my guitar-playing, and my subsequent bass-playing is all rooted in my entire musical experience. Before I ever picked up a guitar, I had already learned to read music, and I had played a wide variety of different musical styles, and all of that experience went into how I approached the guitar and bass.
My niece, OTOH, has only the guitar. My mom, her grandmother, has tried to teach her some piano and music-reading, but mom/grandma travels around the country and isn’t here in the same town like I am. My niece looks at me like I’m a guitar genius.
So I’ve promised my niece that I’ll teach her, to the best of my ability.
But, I spent some time with her this week, and she played her “original song” for me (she’s already had some guitar lessons from school, and knows a few chords). Yes, it was what you might expect from a 13-year-old. But it was an instrumental piece, that she played with her fingers (not a pick), and it was a one-note-at-a-time riff that was actually pretty cool.
And that made me tell her, “You might want to be a bass player.” (And honestly, she has the demeanor of a bass player) And I explained to her how there are 200 guitarists for every bass player, and if she played the bass she could be almost assured of a job in a band …
But then, as a bass player myself, I understand that there are times when you want to break out the guitar. So I want to teach her the guitar first, while encouraging any bass-playing tendencies that might be there. Because I believe that being a competent bassist requires an understanding of chords and how they work. So I want to teach her chords, and how to groove, and then maybe give her a bass.
No real question here, just inviting comments.
Paging WordMan!
