A Little Community Guitar History

In the early 90’s I began teaching guitar professionally through two fine acoustic music stores in the Baltimore area: Baltimore Bluegrass, Inc. (now defunct) and Appalachian Bluegrass Shoppe (still going strong, seen to the right). What I learned through teaching one student after another in half-hour slots for several hours a day was this:

Most of my students had no place beyond their living room walls for making music.
If they did have the rare opportunity to jam with others they were often unprepared to do so emotionally, technically or in terms of the repertoire they knew.

This, in my view, went a long way toward explaining why most people stagnated or dropped the instrument entirely for long periods. It may be satisfying to get "better" at something for a little while, but if you only share what you are learning with your spouse and your goldfish, well, who cares? Your spouse can only listen so much and most goldfish just aren't that discerning.

Much to my chagrin, I had to admit that not only was I doing very little to help people out of this rut, I was actually digging them in deeper by teaching material that was appropriate for their isolated circumstance: solo fingerstyle pieces, popular singer-songwriter material, etc. Great stuff for performing or playing alone, but not the kind of material that lends itself particularly well to playing with others at a jam.

The more I thought about it, the more barriers I saw standing between your average adult guitarist and his or her desire for satisfying musical connections with others. Some of these are cultural barriers that affect everyone while others are more specifically related to guitar. To name a few:

We're busy. Really busy.
We're increasingly connected through various media, but increasingly disconnected in the flesh. "Bowling alone", anyone?
Once upon a time, every community had its local music that constituted a cultural commons shared by all. For most of us, though, this is ancient history. We now all have easy access to an incredible diversity of music. Wonderful as this may be, it makes it increasingly unlikely that two musicians - especially guitarists - who happen to share the same turf are also going to share musical tastes, experiences and skills.
The vast majority of the music we are exposed to is intended primarily for performance, not for community music making. The styles of music that do lend themselves really well to informal jamming exist on the margins of the music industry and most folks never really get turned on to them.
Unlike, say, your average saxophone player, most guitarists pick up the instrument very casually, often without the benefit of instruction. But being casual learners does not prepare us for casual jamming. Quite the contrary. If you've been "doing your own thing" for years there's a pretty good chance that's all you can do and lord help you if a new situation - like a jam - requires that you stray from your routine.
There are more guitartists than players of any other instrument, so at jams of all sorts we often run into the "too many guitarists" phenomenon.

So at some point the question naturally arose, what would my teaching practice look like if I were to orient it toward helping people play together rather than alone? In other words, how could I - or any teacher - knock down a few of these barriers? Since that time, I have been experimenting with answers to that question by offering group instruction in a variety of different formats and institutional settings. Here's a rough timeline:

1995 - 1999 The Appalachian Institute | Appalachian Bluegrass Shoppe | Baltimore
2000 - 2005 The Pioneer Valley Acoustic Guitar Network | Self-Produced | MA
2003 - 2006 Group instruction for non-music majors | Western New England College
2005 - 2006 The Community Guitar Program | Northampton Community Music Center
2006 - present The Community Guitar Program | Self-Produced

Photo: Richard Manuel

Each of these different models and settings has provided me the opportunity to experiment and learn. I promised this would be a short history, so I won't bore you with the details of my variations on the theme here. (I'll be happy to, though, if you are a prospective Community Guitar teacher brimming with suggestions!) Suffice it to say that I have retained what has worked and jettisoned one brilliant idea after another that, in practice, hasn't. I'm so grateful to the students who have signed on over the years and stuck with me as I've figured this out.

The greatest challenge has been the time and expense of creating the program from scratch. On any number of occasions I have tried to use materials that are currently on the market for use with my study groups and in every instance I have found them wanting, not because they were done poorly, but simply because (1) they were not produced with group instruction in mind and (2) together, they did not amount to a coherent program.

Hence the decision (back in 2005) to make the upfront investment in really designing the program and the materials exactly as I would want them to be so I could then make them available to other teachers and music institutions. This will be the next chapter of not only my history, but of those teachers and students who, in the years to come, will help build upon the work I have begun. I look forward to sharing the journey, and a lot of good music.