Keeping the band together

After two weeks' holidays, Mr6 and I are back at guitar lessons. We have scaled the lofty heights of Book 2 of our course, as far as 'I'm a Little Teapot' and 'Michael Finnigan' (begin again). We are also working on the theme from Inspector Gadget (you're welcome for the ear worm).

Despite my best efforts, Mr6 would not practise over the holidays. He noodled about with a few chords, making up a song or two, but he would not play notes, and definitely not in any recognisable order. I, on the other hand, put in two or three good sessions with Michael, The Teapot and the good Inspector.

I discussed tactics with my Mum. I remember being a kid and being, um, encouraged to practise the piano or organ or recorder or whatever the instrument du jour was. It didn't work. But setting an example wasn't working either. She pointed out that he's only six and it's more important that he be introduced to the instrument than that he be committed to it. Dating rather than marriage, so to speak. So I didn't nag. Besides, on other occasions when he's refused to practise, he's rolled up to our lesson and, in the face of my dire predictions, pulled out a reasonably good effort.

Not this time. For starters, he insisted on wearing full piratical garb and attempted to play in his eye patch. That lasted all of three minutes. He couldn't remember what the notes were, let alone where they were. (Being unable to see them with one eye, didn't help.) I didn't say anything. Just played through my pieces and then sat there quietly while he struggled through his. The Inspector Gadget theme, in particular, seemed to take days.

When he'd finally played the last note, our teacher, the lovely B, laughed at him (as only a gorgeous 17 year old could get away with) and said, "See what happens when you don't practice? It's just hard work."

After we'd zipped our guitars back into their cases (we're very rock star) and were walking back to the car, he turned to me. "I think we'd better schedule in some practice this week," he said.

I was relieved. It could have gone the other way, with a refusal to ever return. I'm not ready to go solo just yet.

Do your kids play instruments? How do you deal with the practice problem?


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Practice makes... well, more practice really

It's never a good day when you come face-to-face with your limitations. I've had several such days of late. Moments when my dreams and expectations don't quite match my realities. I had another one today.

Picture, if you will, me sitting on a train, face pressed against the window, white iPod headphone cord snaking down into my handbag. I'm singing along (inside my head only, because I know there's nothing worse than sitting next to someone who's actually singing along to an iPod - hello tuneless, uncool person) to Kate Miller-Heidke's 'The Last Day on Earth', the swelling, soaring, aching longing of which perfectly suits the dramatic coastline out my window. Suddenly, into my head pops a vision of me sitting, not on the train, but on a chair at home, guitar in hand, playing said song and singing for real. This beautiful moment lasts all of five seconds - until the sum total of my guitar playing skills comes flooding in to knock it sidewards. Five notes and seven chords do not an epic pop song make.

The reality that every beginner musician faces is that what they want to play and what they can actually play are two completely different things. I can play 'For He's A Jolly Good Fellow'. I cannot play the Crowded House songbook (Neil, Neil, why did you have to make them so hard?) I can fudge my way through 'Me and Bobby McGee' and even 'Can't Find a Better Man', but not really. I'm better at 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'.

The Lovely B, my guitar teacher, is teaching Mr6 and I to understand tabulation as well as chords. She wants to teach us how to play the theme from Inspector Gadget. To do so, she is preparing us with the basics - we are learning the opening riff of Nirvana's 'Come As You Are'. This is fun for me. Mr6 not so much. He needed a full explanation of who Nirvana was, and why you'd want to play their songs. Much the same when we learned 'Smoke On The Water' - trying to explain to a six-year-old why they might want to play a 40-year-old song in a guitar shop in an ironic fashion is not easy.

All I can do is persist. If I give up now, I'll be in exactly the same boat in 40 years as I'm in now. I'll be wishing I'd stuck with it when I was young. So I'll take those limitations, raise you another couple of terms of lessons and, hopefully, start working on 'Roll Out The Barrel' to play in the old folks home when I get there.

What did you talk about this week?

It’s that time of the week when I share some of the wide variety of topics of conversation that came up through work or play in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Life, death, The Rolling Stones, how a song can conjure up a memory in an instant, car insurance, Camry drivers vs the rest of the world, Kerry O'Brien, why driving a Ministerial Car can be a trap for young players, The Lovely Bones, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, O magazine, guitar practice, physiotherapy, pocket money, party plan, Intimo, Robin Hood, Bear Grylls, acupuncture, waiting, push-ups (how to do them), community grants, playgrounds, an extra day at preschool, waiting, Irish stew, Lego missions, feistiness, Me & Bobby McGee, regrets, birthday presents, DVDs, firemen, policemen, paramedics... and how lovely it is when the leaves on the trees move in the wind (thank you Mr3).

What came up at your place this week?

{image: In The Mix}