Student X Update

As of last week, I had no intentions of ever mentioning him again. I would hate for word to get back to his parents and for them to be offended, but some things I’ve just got to share.

My favorite 7-year-old walked in today with the same guitar as last week, the one he traded for a baseball card. I made a reference to the guitar and he abruptly cut me off to tell me that he calls it his “baseball guitar.”

His technique for cutting people off is impeccable. At the instant he feels the urges to speak, he loudly and frantically interjects the first word and stutters with it until any competing speaker is silenced.

I was about to ask him how his guitar practice had gone the previous week, but he continued about the guitar, “I-I-I-It’s like a [Lincoln] Navigator…it’s like trading a Pinto for a Navigator.” It was enough to make me chuckle, but was only a warm-up for what came out of his mouth 10 minutes later.

I can’t recall how he got on the topic. Maybe it began when I gave into his request for me to sing “Three Blind Mice” if he would just play it right. After my Pianissimo rendition of the song and a brief conversation about why the three blind mice in his music book were wearing sunglasses, he started talking about country singers. I spoke up to direct his attention back to our lesson, but he cut me off again.

“H-H-H-Hey, you know what?” he said with certainty that what he was about to say in fact needed to be said.
“What?” I responded reluctantly.
“Kenny Chesney has a lot of body parts in his name.”

I was confused to say the least, and I braced myself for the explanation that I knew was on it’s way whether I liked it or not. He looked at me as if he were about to impart truly useful information and then pointed to the corresponding body parts as he continued:

“Yeah…Ken-Knee Ches(t)-knee.”

…I swear I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Live Album Update

Okay. So it is midnight and I am so tired of mixing my live album tracks that I could…(loose my train of thought mid-sentence)…

Well anyway, I think what I was going to say is that this live album has been way more of a project than I anticipated. There’s always something else to be improved…be it the artwork, the mixes, or anything else. It’s like there’s no end. I’ve been working on it for a month and I’ve got an easy 100 hours invested in it already.

I’m still tweaking the mixes and as of last night we have cut “Rainy Nights” from the track list. I still have mixed feelings about that, but the general consensus from our focus group is that it is a weak point in the album. (I’ll finish mixing it anyway and throw it up on my website for people to download.)

Last Sunday we took a spontaneous right turn as far as the artwork goes. Dave (my roommate) was looking over proofs for the CD booklet, was very frank that he didn’t like what he saw, and offered to borrow a friend’s camera and help me take new shots later that evening. It was a long night and I HATE photo shoots, but I love what we got that evening. Dave is officially being credited in the album as the “project prolongator” (ok, it was funny at 12:00 Sunday night).

It stinks to get something that works, only to realize that you can do better, because whatever “better” may be, it always means more work. I’m grateful for constructive criticism though, and even more grateful for Dave’s help. (By the way Dave, if you are reading this, that’s the last nice comment you’ll get from me unless you quit sneaking upstairs and stealing my toilet paper…don’t think I haven’t noticed.)

X-treme Babysitting

Okay. So I’ve been teaching guitar lessons for a while now. It is good money and it keeps me doing music so I count myself blessed. I have multiple students that are a joy to teach and I look forward to teaching them every week.

One girl is 9 and ½ (not just 9…as she is quick to let you know). She’s like a 30 year old in a tiny body. She comes in with her Baby Taylor (a miniature guitar) and sits down each week as if she just came in from a long day at work. Her feet barely reach the floor. When I ask how she is doing, she expresses that she is tired, I say “I know what you mean” and we proceed with lessons. She is always eloquently dressed and has superlative manners. She is bright, pays attention, practices, and honestly makes me somewhat comfortable with the notion that I might one day have a child like this.

I am also teaching a pair of brothers. They haven’t been playing long, but are making great progress. They immediately jumped into a couple of AC/DC tunes (Highway to Hell and Hell’s Bell’s), and I must say that I’m proud to have them as my students. They differ in age by about three years, the oldest being 14. They might be the next Malcolm and Angus Young.
Now, it would be so nice if all of my students were like this…but that would be too easy. For at least 30 minutes each week I find myself not teaching, but instead being immersed in the white-knuckle world of extreme babysitting. Here’s how it went today:

At a time that I will not disclose to protect the more or less innocent (not to mention myself), Student X entered my studio at the music school where I teach. I knew he was approaching because I could hear his voice echoing down the hall as he addressed every person he came within visual contact of. I shuddered.
Seconds later the cutest 7 year old you have ever seen enters my room. He has sandy blond hair, light freckles, a fair complexion, and an innocent smile full of teeth that he will grow into in about 20 years. His cheeks are full and round and rest atop a big grin at least 70 percent of the time. Today he is wearing a long sleeve orange and blue-stripped shirt along with freshly grass-stained jeans. He could be a model for Gap Kids. If I had a dollar for every time an old lady pinched those dimpled cheeks then I’d be rich…and wouldn’t have to deal with what happened in the next 30 minutes.

For the record, it’s hard to keep a straight face with a 7-year-old that has just body-slammed his guitar and asked me if I have a gun. “Why a gun?” I asked. His reply included a lengthy plot for how I was to kill him and tell his dad that he had fainted so that I could secretly bury him three days later (I’m not making this up...although I will confess that his plan was tempting). You see the problem with student X is not that I’m not entertained, or that I don’t like being around him. If we were playing in the schoolyard, life would be grand. The problem is that he makes it nearly impossible for me to do my job, that is, to teach.

For instance, today we began work on the “C chord.” He has seen this chord in a previous lesson and so he played it with ease. He then proceeded to passionately kiss his guitar. (He looks like a little Matt Damon…and he’ll be a great actor one day because nowhere is there a more over-dramatic 7 year-old). After pulling him away from his guitar we began work on a strumming pattern in 4. When I told him to count as he played, he immediately leapt into lengthy discussion about how high he can count. Five minutes later he is beating and yelling at his guitar for not playing correctly, certain that it is the guitar’s fault that he overlooked the half rest in measure two. He exclaims, “Oh my god!” and then promptly apologizes for swearing, just in case I didn’t notice that he had just done something he wasn’t supposed to do. Upon getting no response from me he continues with a triple “oh my god.”

One would expect to be angry with any kid at this point. However, due to the fact that not once has Kid X really been angry and never has a smile left his face, all spectators are held at bay just this side of the line between frustration and anger. By the time the lesson is over we have made musical noise for a total of maybe 4 minutes. The rest of the noise has been from a drama that may soon be a part of the X-games (look for X-treme Babysitting in 2006).

As I help him pack up his guitar, he explains to me that it used to be his brother’s guitar, but he traded it for a baseball card. Student X then compares himself to Jacob who “traded lentils for all of his dad’s stuff…a little for a lot.” As he marched off I smiled, partly because our lesson was over, but mostly from the thought of hearing the word “lentils” come out of that 7 year-old mouth, that mouth full of teeth that he’ll grow into…in about 20 years…