Guitar 101—The Master Class

In my ongoing effort to assimilate to my new lifestyle, I have signed up for a Guitar 101 class in our new hometown. Figure maybe I’ll learn how to strum, play barre chords or maybe even meet a new Friend Of Walter. Plus since I took a 101 class a couple years ago, I’ll have a bit of a leg up on my fellow adult-school students.

Last night was my first class, after another typically grueling Wednesday with my nose to the grindstone for 12 hours. I was wiped, but the school, like everything else in this town, was only five to seven minutes away.

So I dusted off my guitar as best I could, packed it up and headed off to class at about the same time I’m usually eyeing the clock, thinking about putting Daddy down for a nap. I wrote down the directions to the school, even the address, but failed to note the room number. Much hilarity ensued. Eventually, I led a few other confused duffers down the halls of the local Junior High till we found a room populated by apprehensive-looking codgers awkwardly cradling friends’ guitars.

The instructor looked like he’d fallen off the back bike of a Hell’s Angels reunion ride. Just a few minutes before. Grizzled grey facial hair, black bandana tied over the top of his head ala Little Steven, black t-shirt… all he needed was a can of beer in one hand and a woozy trollop flashing her sagging breasts on the other arm to complete the picture.

He told us, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna teach you how to read music—you don’t need it!” The class of creaky newbies, as one, breathed a sigh of relief. Then he proceeded to spend the next two hours talking to us about music theory, his band and his head injury, and playing sizzling blues riffs on the electric guitar he’d brought to class.

My fellow neophytes and I stole glances at each other to the effect of, “Hey, wasn’t this supposed to be a beginner’s course?”

Here’s how green we are: One guy brought his brother’s 12-string guitar that only had five strings on it. Good thing no one but the instructor played guitar all night.

Bear in mind, we only have five two-hour sessions with the guy, and he’s promising us we’re going to be playing 12-bar pentatonic blues shuffles by next class, despite the fact that no one but him picked up their guitar all night.



He said he’s done a lot of training, but it’s all been one-on-one.

 He also detailed his dislike of acoustic guitars, which all his students had shown up with, and told us that, contrary to popular wisdom, we wouldn’t have to worry about using our pinky fingers to make chords. I wanted to ask him, “Well then, how do you propose we play a B7?” But that would have revealed my non-total-beginner status.

The book he assigned us specifically states, in the foreword, that it is a book for guitar players with some experience. The course description, however, is pure 101.



Plus, he kept talking about mastering rock and blues, when all I really want to play is old-timey folk and country, even if it’s distorted or sped up or what-have-you. Just three chords and the truth, baby. I am not interested in producing shred-a-riffic guitar pyrotechnics and it didn’t seem anybody else in class, besides the teacher, was either.



On the other hand, I dragged a couple of answers out of him to questions that other guitar players have tried to explain to me and I have failed to understand. I can’t say exactly what yet... Well, one thing I finally “got” last night was how tabs are read. I raised my hand and asked him to explain it. So he drew a diagram of a guitar neck on the white board and indicated where each finger went. I said, “No, that’s not what I mean. What about those things with six horizontal rules and the lines of vertical numbers stacked up over each other, usually four rows to a measure? I see ‘em all over the internet but can’t make heads nor tails of them.” Then he explained it. The little number on the line indicates the fret, and the line it’s on indicates what string. Ah hah! It’ll be like cracking a brand new code each time for a while at first, but now that I get the concept, I’m golden.

So I feel like it was time well spent, although not as good a match as the instructor from my previous Guitar 101 experience back on Christmas Island. A lot of my fellow classmates looked bewildered and expressed everything from gnawing doubts to open regret at having taken the class with this instructor (during the break, when he went to pee). I figure by the time I come back in two weeks (I’ll have to miss next week when we all become blues masters for a swellegant university affair with The Missus), the class will be down to a more manageable number of gluttons for punishment like me.



But the thing is, I hate the blues. He’s going, “Once you have this 12-bar progression mastered, you can play any blues song with any blues band in the world!” Like it’s a good thing. And I’m thinking, “He may be right, but that’s what I hate about the blues.” He might as well be telling me he’s about to impart the secrets of mastering the jazz kazoo.

Still, he was undeniably great at a form of music I just happen to be bored to death with: White Boy Bar Blues. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a million such similar outfits; five or six downscale-looking white dudes riffing endlessly on 12-bar blues progressions between set breaks. He kept dropping the name of his current band and my brain kept slipping it right out the back door. But there was no doubt he knew his guitar-playing backwards and forwards.



His mistake, teaching-wise, was in not making it any fun. My last Guitar 101 instructor, Nokes Kelley, had it right. He taught us a couple chords and a simple song—the execrable “Achey-Breakey Heart”—that first class, and we all had fun and came back for the Theory the week after.

I reckon by the time I mosey on back to class in a couple weeks, if my read on my fellow class members last night was anywhere near the mark, it should be pretty much a private lesson by then. Then we’ll talk some barre chords, in between demonstrations of dazzling arpeggio runs that would make Yngwie Malmsteen weep.