sORRY ABOUT ALL THE YPTOS.

sorry all caps! I need a nap!

Anyway, when I say it's on them to say what they want to work on, I mean it's on them to say what they hope to accomplish in the session-- it's on me to figure out what we could do together that would get them there. (There's an old saying that in making love, it's up to the woman to decide when, and it's up to the man to decide how.) For instance my lap dulcimer friend asked me one jam night, if I was playing a straight rhythm to the time signature or was I holding strums to make up the same length of time as the sung note. Gosh, I thought, I'm just PLAYING. The answer took me through an interesting week of hearing myself play and figuring out where the style had come from, and it turned out that when it's just me and too few other instruments to fill in the texture of an oldtime stringband, I'm playing all the rhythm parts, the bass part, and some other parts too, all at once, as well as the time value of the melody. (This is what can happen when your first instruments are voice and washboard but your earliest music ed has been music appreciation-- intense listening to classical composers in orchestral styles! So the answer to the question was, YES. HOW had that come to be? I had to list the styles I'd been influenced by, because on an autoharp strum I was doing something vaguely Delta and vaguely Doc Watson in flavor and timing.

Well, so when he arrived for our first "visit" we talked about that and played around with it, and I made him a list of good things to go listen to, to pick out all the parts.... from Baroque choral music with all its dotted-32nd-note runs, to MJH. Go figure.

Having a really interested "student" makes for an interesting look at my own playing, that's for sure.

Maybe I am not a mentor but to borrow from the athletic model, more of a coach and trainer. My job is to suck all the music out of them that's already in there. I KNOW it's in there. If you can breathe and speak any language, you got rhythm, and if you tap your toes when you listen, you have an instrument out there somewhere waiting for you to pick it up.

Must have coffee with you next time I am in your area-- Chicago, right? July.

~S~