Having the workshop on Saturday was quite enlightening as someone who never was comfortable playing “popular” music. Having never played guitar before, I went into the activity with trepidation as I did not know what to expect, nor how to even play the instrument in front of me. However, after the brief lesson and simply showing where to put our fingers, I found I could play with relative ease. Being a violin player, I was able to use the skills of knowing how to apply the notes and where to put them to the guitar, and I was happily playing within a matter of minutes. Under most circumstances, I never thought I would be able to play the guitar: it seemed so foreign and new to me that I did not even think to link it back to how I was able to play the violin. The way that the class learned to play the guitar was also quite interesting: where most teachers would likely have begun by teaching the class the different parts of the guitar and the names of the strings, we just learned about which strings did what relative to our surroundings, like calling it “The strings closest to our toes” rather than explicitly telling us the name of the string. Despite the fact that most music teachers would have thought that showing the names of all the strings, as well as the different components of the instrument would be necessary for teaching students, the whole class managed to adapt and play well without the need of such techniques. This topic was discussed during class as well, with most remarking that the “traditional” way of teaching did not serve to grab the learner’s attention. We also explored how different skill levels of musicianship in regards to the guitar can all work together without having to alienate others due to skill. In a video shown during the class, we saw that all the different skill levels of playing were able to cooperate together and create a melody by simply layering over different parts at varying skill levels. During the composition activity, after using the methods we learned during class, we were able to create a simple song just using instruments found around the room. Despite the fact that not many in the room knew to play the guitar before the class, several among them used it during our performance and played it well, showing how we were able to take the chords we learned during class and apply them during our composition.
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