Well, it's a slow day at the skunk works, so why not?

As I mentioned about 700 posts up-thread, my first guitar instruction came from my then girl friend who was teaching herself how to play the fine old 1898 George Washburn "Ladies Model" parlor guitar she had inherited from her grandmother. Claire could read vocal music fairly well and was learning songs from a 25¢ paperback book (A Treasury of Folk Songs compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb that she bought off a local drugstore paperback rack) and a copy of John and Alan Lomax's Best Loved American Folksongs (aka Folksong U. S. A.), and teaching herself guitar chords from a copy of Guckert's Chords for Guitar Without Notes or Teacher that she had picked up somewhere.

Claire taught me G, C, and D7, which was about as far as she had got at that point.

I already sang some, so I decided it might be kind of fun to learn a bit of guitar and sing a few folk songs myself (I had heard Burl Ives on the radio, the Weavers on juke boxes, and I'd seen Susan Reed in a movie about a young mountain girl singing folk songs in a New York night club). So I went down to Myer's Music on Seattle's First Avenue near the waterfront where all the pawn shops are. The fellow there sold me a little Regal plywood guitar for $9.95, a fiberboard case for $5.00, threw in a free pick, and sold me a copy of Nick Manaloff's Spanish Guitar Method, which included the "Special Handy-Dandy Nick Manoloff Chord Wheel." This latter was my introduction to music theory. A sort of circular slide-rule with which you could dial a key and it would show you the guitar chord diagrams for the three primary chords of that key, plus the secondary chords (double-dominants, etc., enabling modulation to other keys), and the relative minor chords. Very handy gadget!

Clueless as I was, I was lucky with that little guitar. The neck was true, the action was good, and the intonation was on, a real crap-shoot with a guitar in that price range. It had a tone more like an apple crate than a guitar, but at least it could be tuned accurately and it was playable.

Walt Roberson (see "Tales of Walt Robertson" thread) was a young local folk singer who had recently won a Talent U. S. A. contest, had just come out with a Folkways Record, and had a weekly television program. After Claire and I heard him sing live, I was so enthralled with the songs he sang and the way he sang them that I went bananas! I decided that I wanted to sing for people the way he did!

I kept running into Walt at The Chalet, a local University District restaurant, so I hit him up for guitar lessons. He told me he wasn't a teacher, but he'd show me what he could. I took some six months' lessons from Walt, who didn't show me anything about notes at all. He demonstrated and I tried to copy what he did. I kept picking songs off Richard Dyer-Bennet records to learn and trying to figure out what Dyer-Bennet was doing on the guitar, and eventually Walt recommended that I go to a local classical guitar teacher we had both heard of (with the oddly rural-sounding name of Joe Farmer).

Joe sold me a Martin 00-28-G classic, then set about tidying up my hand positions a bit and started me working on scales, exercises, and simple classic guitar pieces from written music. Tarrèga's Lagrima and Adelita, a little Chopin Waltz that he had transcribed for the guitar, other pieces. And he came up with some ideas for song accompaniments also. He was familiar with Richard Dyer-Bennet ("As a classic guitarist, he's no Segovia, but he's pretty good.") and he knew Ed McCurdy personally, before McCurdy started becoming well known around.

All of this was in the early 1950s. While in Denver in late 1955, I first sang for a formal audience. I had expected a couple of dozen people. I was used to singing at parties and informal song fests by then, but I walked in and found an audience of about 250. I damned near shat! But I got through it, the audience wanted encores, I felt like smiling a lot, and the following day, I decided "I'm gonna DO it!" and made plans to change my major to Music with a minor in English Literature when I returned to the University of Washington.

Y'know what? Claire never mentioned the matter. Walt never mentioned the matter. Joe never mentioned the matter. Nor did Mrs. Bianchi, the voice teacher I started taking lessons from when I was in my late teens ever mentioned the matter. It wasn't until I was studying Music Theory at the University of Washington that the matter was mentioned that on very rare and specific occasions, a C should be written as a B#. And for the same reason, an F should be written as E#. And a B should be written as a Cb and an E should be written as an Fb.

This, by the way, came up as a verbal footnote in a music calligraphy class, where we were sitting there with our blank manuscript paper, our bottles of India ink, and our quivers of calligraphy pens.

It was not until Josepp brought the matter up as a Federal case and a hanging offense did the matter intrude on my consciousness after what amounts to a pretty comprehensive musical education and a 55+ career in music as both a performer and teacher.

How are you going to adequately police the music teaching profession the way Josepp seems to want it policed when "teaching" consists of such things as a young woman teaching herself out of a chord book and her boyfriend asks, "Show me how you do that?" Or a performing musician is approached by a fan who says (again), "Show me how you do that?" Or by someone who has been a professional musician and teacher for years and hasn't yet had a reasonable occasion to teach music theory beyond the necessary basics without running the danger of bewildering the student?

Or for the same reason, a teacher who, in order to avoid confusing a student says, essentially, "Don't worry about that, it's nothing you need to concern yourself with right now."

Which, I believe, is more than likely what the teacher that Josepp is complaining about so bitterly was really saying to his student.

And what about all those hard-and-fast rules of music theory, anyway? In my first quarter of first year music theory, Professor John Verrall was laying out the rules of "voice leading" for the beginning four-part harmony exercises he wanted us to write out, one of the students began bridling at these rules and asked, "Why do we have to learn all these rules, anyway!?" Professor Verrall, in his characteristic mild-mannered way (reminded one a bit of Mr. Rogers, actually) responded, "So that when we break the rules of correct harmony, we will know why we are doing it."

Thus endeth the second sermon for this week. And it isn't even Sunday yet! Don't you feel blessed?

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, Josepp, although I'm convinced that this whole thread began as a troll on your part (say something totally over the top, then sit back and bask in the glow of the donnybrook you've precipitated by tossing that turd into the punchbowl), nonetheless, I believe that this thread has inadvertently proven quite valuable and has provoked some worthwhile discussion.

But judging from some of the others you've launched, were I you, I would check with my therapist before continuing in this vein, least you fall into the error of actually starting to believe some of the nincompoopish things you tend to assert.