Back in the 1960s (or was that the 1860s?) a fifteen-year-old girl came to me for guitar lessons. She already had a nice guitar, the less expensive Martin classic. She wanted to accompany folk songs, but she also wanted to play a bit of classical guitar. I asked her the usual run of questions that I ask beginning students. Could she read music? Yes. But I guess I forgot to ask her "what instrument?" So many have had some piano lessons that I just sort of assumed…. Anyway, I started her on Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. I, by Aaron Shearer. I hardly had to tell her anything about hand positions. As soon as she put them on her guitar, they were right on. For the first lesson I gave her the usual stuff to work on,

When she came for her lesson the following week, she said, "I went ahead a few pages in the manual. I hope that's okay."

Indeed it was! She had nailed about four lessons worth of material—and had it down solid. In fact, she went through the manual in a quarter of the time most pupils did. Okay, I thought, what next?

I showed her some fingerboard "calisthenics," and as I was showing them to her, she said, "You mean like this?" And her left-hand fingers flickered up and down and back and forth over the length and breadth of the fingerboard, practically making the strings smoke!

I thought, "Is this kid sandbagging me?"

I asked her, "What instrument did you say you played?"

"I've played the cello in the Seattle Youth Symphony for about seven years."

The Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra was a very professional sounding orchestra that gave frequent concerts, conducted by University of Washington Music professor Vilem Sokol—comprised entirely of teen-agers and precocious pre-teens.

The position of the right hand holding a cello bow was very close to the way it should hover over the strings of a guitar, and the left hand, with the thumb behind the neck and the fingers lined up, free to move, is essentially the same for both instruments. And if she had played with the SOYO for seven years, that meant she was no slouch on the cello!

Mystery solved!

Don Firth