So here we are at the top of the success pyramid.
We finally reached the guitar.
Some of you may be wondering why is the guitar at the top of the pyramid.
I like to say that motivation is always the hardest nut to crack.
Why do we do what we do?
As for me and guitar, there’s a pretty simple answer.
And it all originates in the first class, the first time I meet the kids.
In other posts, I reference the idea of “The Golden Hour”, the importance of that first class of the year.
What I neglected to mention is that there is a “Platinum Hour”. That’s the first class when I meet a new student.
Every student was once a new student.
Every first class of the year is a Golden Hour for some kids and a Platinum Hour for others.
While my first order of business is to establish order in our classroom, the second is to “make the sale” between the young student and music.
Not between the class and music but each individual student.
It’s not about me.
It’s about music.
I can choose any instrument to play that first class.
I always pick the guitar – because I know it will “close the sale”.
The first fifteen minutes of that golden or platinum class are pretty dry.
I never smile or frown during those first fifteen minutes.
Wearing a three-piece black suit and using a mic to make my points, I lay out the rules and teach them what Stop/Go time means.
Along the way, I give them a few breaks or Go times.
But then it's time for the initial shared musical moment, the first song, “The Hello Song”.
From that point on, it's a whole different room.
Within ten minutes I will have taken my dreadnaught guitar out of its case, thrown it in the air and caught it over my head to looks of bewilderment, tuned the six strings without use of a guitar tuner, and start teaching them “The Hello Song”.
As I start to play, it's basically 80BPM but gradually speeds up.
There are a lot of scripted jokes and visual sight gags thrown in that easily make them laugh.
They start to realize that I’ve started smiling and having fun.
By the end of that song, the pedal’s to the metal and the smiles are ear-to-ear. We are cruising at 138BPM.
They're singing along with me as full-throated as they've ever sung before in school.
By the last note of the first time I do that “Hello Song”, I'm usually standing on top of a table, feet wide apart, strumming for all I'm worth, and singing directly to them, making eye contact with each kid, urging them to keep dancing and singing with me, smiling, throwing out guitar picks, not looking at my fingers, pulling the kids into the moment.
After the experience of that song, nothing is the same with music for those new kids as it was when they walked in.
I remember once hearing a fifth grader whisper to a friend after that first song, “This never gets old!”
After that song, nine out of every ten kids wants to play guitar.
I mean they REALLY want to play guitar.
That tenth kid, that's the kid who doesn’t just see themselves as playing guitar. They see themselves as me playing guitar.
From that day on, kids know that they are going to learn the guitar and play just like me.
I tell them I'm not lying, that I'm not making this up, that if they really want to be as good as me or even better, they're on the road to being that musician, that singer, that guitar player.
However, there are a few steps we have to take along the way, there are a few things we have to learn and master in music.
Down the road, no matter how hard some activities are in music class, I can always point to that guitar and ask “is the juice worth the squeeze? If you want to play that guitar someday, you're going to do the work THIS day.”
And it never failed.
I performed that “Hello Song” for the “first time” hundreds of times.
In total, I performed it over 25,000 times in my teaching career.
I threw my guitar in the air and caught it just as many times.
My goal was to always make every performance of “The Hello Song” as electric as the first time the kids heard it.
That song would always serve as our connective tissue.
Just as Jerry Seinfeld recounts how he rehearsed and edited the same seven minutes of comedy material three times a night, seven days a week, for months before he allowed himself to perform those same seven minutes on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, that was the way I looked at that “Hello Song”.
Every time I performed it, I was continually evaluating, modifying, taking data, and editing.
Clinically tightening things up, to accentuate the funny moments, to cut the moments that didn’t work, identify the moments where I glance to my side, where I raise my eyebrows, where I lay a big joke on them and they all start to laugh.
I perfected just the right moment when I needed to jump on the table.
By the way, the jumping on the table routine was started decades ago when I was in our wedding band “Lassman & Holmes”.
At some point during the wedding reception when everyone was on the dance floor, I would jump off the stage and cruise through the crowded dance floor as I played and sang.
My bass and vocal mic were wireless. Eventually, I would end up on the other side of the ballroom by the head table.
The guests, bridesmaids, ushers, groom, and bride were all on the dance floor so the table was empty which allowed a three-piece tuxedoed me to hop up on the table, do a bit of “Kevin Bacon/Footloose”, spread my feet, and do the rock and roll thing.
It worked in the classroom just as it did in the reception: sure, it was more “Robert Preston/Music Man” than “Kevin Bacon/Footloose” but the effect was the same: all eyes were on me for a few seconds and the sale was in process.
What the kids realized when they did that first song with me was that music brings us to life, music makes us smile, music makes us want to get up and move around, and music makes us want to make music.
After that opening song, we would quickly switch into “go time”, which was a break.
The breathless kids would be laughing and talking with each other about what just happened.
I'd stroll around and ask “Hey, do you like this guitar? Want to try it on?”
As a crowd developed, I would slip the strap of my guitar over a kid's shoulder, and say “If I didn't know this guitar was made for me, I'd say it sure looks like it was made for you! But see those boxes? Those are the guitars you’re going to play – they’re right up there waiting for you!”
And I would point to my non-descript stockpile of sixteen boxed guitars high on top of a bookcase.
Once the kids looked at my guitar up close and saw those boxes, they knew the day was coming where they would be playing guitar, too.
That's a kind of motivation and excitement that is beyond my pay grade.
It was the guitar.
As I would occasionally say to the kids in a mock self-deprecating basso profondo voice, “Behold the power and majesty of the guitar!” as I held it by the headstock like Thor’s hammer over my head.
And behold it they did.
I didn’t just “close the sale” of music.
It was “signed, sealed, and delivered”.
All because of the guitar.
More in “Stacking Skills for Success”: the Guitar - Part Two”.
RSS Feed