Mouthing the Words

Pre guitar camp we hike

Pals at the camp help us from being in the lost and found

For the last seven years each summer two of my sisters, Sally and Trisha, and I go to a guitar camp to be together and to, hopefully, increase our skills on the guitar. Some years it is a laugh fest and almost a contest in seeing how little sleep I can get and still minimally function. Other years it is an endurance contest for the poor unfortunate teachers who have me in their class. I do learn new tricks but at glacial speed.

One of the collective memories from many of our pasts is being in a classroom or in a choir and the conductor or teacher would single out some person who was singing off key. Instead of giving them special care and instruction after the class they instead publicly humiliated that person right then and there to "please just mouth the words!' I realize this happened mostly to boys whose voice was changing register but a few girls were thrown under the bus also. This had life long repercussions and so many of these, now adults, claim they can't sing, can't hold a tune in a bucket. My nearest and dearest was among those singled out, it is a sad business. Of course he can sing and adds natural harmony to our rendition of happy birthday to the grands.

I'd like to add my vote to sometime employing this, "please just mouth the words", as a similar tactic to guitar playing that can be beneficial to those around me in a class. Example follows.

This year, because I loved the teacher and I was curious, I attended the class for slide guitar knowing next to nothing except I always loved the sound of a slide guitar.

Kristina demonstrating

My sister Trisha's  partner, Pete, was also game and we eagerly went to the first session. Both of us were impressed and fascinated by Kristina's teaching method. What so appealed to all of us musicians was Kristina had us learn to sing/imitate the sounds on the slide guitar tunes prior to playing the music on the guitar: "Walking Blues", Robert Johnson  and "Sleep Walk" by the Ventures.  I use the term 'music' with the greatest of generosity for myself because what I was producing was anything but musical. Screechy, atonal and purely awful.  I decided, then and there, rather than torture my fellow musicians that I would mostly "mouth the words"/ fake playing the guitar. I employed 'air guitar' with the eventual hope I could actually, eventually, produce the correct sounds. To my concern and surprise Kristina suggested we do a 'flash mob' through the dining hall at lunch on the last day of camp. 'Oh, no! would I be busted?'

It is a fact well documented that learning something difficult, challenging and new helps the brain from losing those precious cells and can increase the brain health therein. I'm all in for brain health so  onward I pressed.  To challenge myself further I, and sisters Sally and Trisha, also attended a song writing class with no particular expectation of actually having a finished product to perform. Our affable teacher Joe was a charming man and the consummate performer. He encouraged us first by getting to know us and then to have us tackle two writing assignments. This, I know seems rather ordinary but then what happened and came out of it was rather extraordinary. Joe wrote and sang the stanza of a farewell song and suggested the class write and come up with our own stanzas. Writing furiously, we set about to do our best shot at a melodious, rhyming stanza based on his melody and meter. Joe then had us break into pods of 3 to 4 people and turned us lose for a bit more than 15 minutes to work out only one stanza from the best of our individual work. "Hummmm' I thought as I left the room with two other women, 'how is that even possible to collaborate on a stanza with two other women?' Well I was dead wrong about that, the women I worked with Sally R. and Blair had lovely words, inspirational words and we collaborated with ease. "Pick your favorite words or lines' Sally [from Seattle] suggested and off we flew.  The next day all of the pods in our writing class gathered and talked about what we wanted for our stanza. Again, what was so impressive is how Joe gently guided us to use the best and leave the rest. This was an engaging and marvelous collaboration. What we ended up with was a charming, soulful ballad, almost a lullaby, that we performed at the student concert as a group.

I'm sure you're anxious to know how I did at the flash mob, playing [and sometimes faking] the slide guitar while walking. Great! Mainly because there were over 20 of us and the music [noise] was deafening. The crowd roared their delight and surprise. Later I approached Kristina and told her how much fun the class and our mob was but added, "unfortunately, now people will assume I'm a badass" she said, "too late they already knew that". Did I mention I love her?

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