How Guitar Lessons Made Me a Better Coach

On Nov 14, 2019 I sat down to my very first lesson with my guitar teacher Brandon. Since then, playing guitar has become a hobby, yes—but also a vital self-care practice. Over the last year, I’ve learned things from Brandon that transcend the workarounds when you can’t play barre chords quite yet. Without intending to, he’s taught me how to be a better coach. 

Here’s what I’ve learned (or re-learned) from a year of guitar lessons with Brandon: 

After two decades of teaching beginners how to play guitar, I’m sure Brandon has heard it all: the off-key twangs; the strings you’re not supposed to be strumming; or his own internal sigh when a student makes the same mistake for the 67th time. But no matter what I’m struggling with on any given week, Brandon is relentlessly positive: “That’s great.” "I’m seeing progress!” “This is so much better than a month ago.” “Sounds good!” 

He’s not cheerleading or blowing smoke—he’s bringing his perspective from the myriad other students who have struggled in front of him before. He’s positive in a way that cuts through my reflexive dismissal--the defensive part of my brain that would much rather focus on the negative. But I believe him. And I’ve seen how believing him makes a difference in my skills. I’m more motivated to keep practicing—and then sure enough, even if it takes longer than I’d like, I get better. Positive perspective works. 

Brandon has this epic song + chord chart library he’s built over the years. (He used to lug it around in this file box full of photocopies of different songs until he finally digitized and upgraded to an iPad.) But perhaps more important than the library content itself, he’s also honed a sense for when to introduce different songs to students based on what they want to learn (more finger-picking or more strumming?), and what will be a motivating stretch but not a demoralizing challenge. I suspect most guitar teachers don’t have their own collection of chord charts they created themselves. This makes Brandon even more unique and effective as a teacher. 

Brandon’s beginner library is full of Americana, folk and rock, Bob Dylan, Beatles—all  music I enjoy, but decidedly not the Taylor Swift or Sara Bareilles that tends to dominate my Spotify account. Earlier this year, Brandon asked me if there was a song I’d been wanting to learn, and I worked up the nerve to mention Rainbow Connection ---you know that Kermit the Frog playing-banjo-in-the-bog song from The Muppet Movie? I steeled myself for a blank look or mocking laughter, but instead he said, "oh you mean that amazing Muppet song that Willie Nelson and that country singer covered at the CMAs?” He sent me the video, and then to add to my surprise, he made his own chart for the song and gave it to me at our next lesson. I learned Rainbow Connection and about a month later I surprise-played it for my older sister from six-feet away in the backyard (This was COVID Spring 2020 in California after all). She cried. We used to sing that song together as kids. The pandemic was going crazy, but we could still get together and sing about hope. 

When I first started, I took a few private lessons with Brandon before jumping into his weekly group beginner class. Group lessons are great because it’s just plain fun to jam with a crew, and you can sorta hide all your newbie mistakes in the group. When the pandemic shut down our group lessons, Brandon offered to go back to private lessons (via Zoom), and I remember feeling incredibly nervous to play for just Brandon again. 

Now, I’ve facilitated hundreds of hours of T-groups so you’d think I’d be a grand master at “dealing with the discomfort of vulnerability.” And yet I often feel heart-racingly vulnerable demo-ing the songs I am working on. I make mistakes on songs I could play perfectly the day before. And every time, Brandon is understanding ("Yeah, I get it — people get nervous all the time") but he doesn’t offer me an alternative. He still says “Ok why don’t you play X for me now and let me hear and see how it’s going.” No wiggling out. I just have to play. And it makes me better. 

On the surface, Brandon teaches me what to do—the ways to play specific songs or what to do when faced with a tricky chord progression or techniques for how to stabilize your hand when finger-picking. But when I think about the things he’s taught me that have even higher leverage — it’s when he teaches me how to learn or practice on my own. He has said things like: “Most people play a whole song through and think that’s sufficient for practice. It’s far better to find the part of the song that trips you up and then practice that portion over and over and over again. Like massaging out a kink in a muscle.” Or he’ll encourage me to play along to recordings of songs (as if I could really be the guitarist while Stevie Nicks sings Dreams) because it improves musicality. I don’t always understand why the things he says will work—but I’ve learned to do them because he’s usually right. The knowledge is both empowering and scales more broadly to any time I want to learn any song. 

I first tried learning how to play guitar back in the Fall of 2014. I tried two different teachers and picked the one who was a bit more formal in approach. I had wanted to learn acoustic guitar, but I was a bit naive and so when the teacher explained he would teach me classical guitar I just decided to go for it. It was a reputable local music school and all signs pointed to it being a great place to learn. I purchased a book and an inexpensive classical guitar. I made it through four lessons and then made up some “I got busy with work” excuse and quit. 

I’m embarrassed about that decision to this day — not that I quit that teacher, but that I decided to give up on guitar altogether. I concluded based on one not-so-great experience that I couldn’t do this and must not really want to. My desire went dormant for five years. 

Sometimes I imagine how my guitar-playing life would have been different if I had met Brandon back then; how much further along I would be; how many hours of fun playing and boring-but-entirely-necessary practice I could have logged over those years. I feel a bit wistful, but mostly accepting. And I feel fortunate that I found Brandon when I did—because even if I did lose those five years, I still have decades ahead of me. That classical guitar teacher was legit and I would never assert he wasn’t a “good teacher”— he just wasn’t the best teacher for me. In contrast, when I met Brandon, within just one lesson, I knew it was going to be so much different than my previous experience. And within a few lessons, I knew he was my teacher, and that he was going to help me learn to play guitar. And that belief, that sense of “fit", made all the difference. 

About a month before I first met Brandon, I was going through a particularly hard time in a relationship that was deeply important to me. And that pain was radiating outwards in ways that were starting to affect my overall mood state and motivation in troubling ways.

I’m a very emotionally intense person. And while that personality trait makes me a more attuned and empathetic coach, it also requires outlets to release stress. At a time when I was struggling to not fall into a depression, it was time to take some action: I decided to try learning how to play guitar again. That weekend, I marched into my local music shop Clock Tower Music and asked them for referrals to guitar teachers. They sent me to Brandon’s website. And a week later, a year ago today, I crammed into the tiny practice space in the back of the music shop and started to learn how to play a basic E minor chord. 

Guitar isn’t therapy — though I’m sure many singers and songwriters might say otherwise — but music is clearly an outlet for expression and one of the most healthy and most human ways to process all the columns on the feelings chart. It would be an oversimplification to say that learning guitar single-handedly helped me through that hard period. But I do think it helped me heal some things at the time. And even though I am in a much better state now, I now regularly rely on guitar as a form of self-care, an intentional way of taking care of my brain and my heart. 

Brandon does not know this backstory. He knows me as the woman who has a bad habit of strumming strings too forcefully, and playfully teases him about how his library needs more songs for higher vocal ranges. But, especially in a year like this one, we all need to do a better job of telling people what they mean to us and expressing gratitude for the positive impact they’ve had on our lives. 

Brandon - Thank you for a meaningful first year of lessons! I look forward to year two...