Getting Started

Just starting to get the first seeds of an idea for my high school guitar class this upcoming year. I'm inspired by the kinds of teaching going on in England through "Musical Futures".

I especially like the real-world paradigm of having students think about how some of their favorite musicians learn music. (It certainly isn't from sightreading standard notation... or even any notation at all). In fact... this is a reminder to myself to get the ebook copy of the book "How Popular Musicians Learn" by Lucy Green (foreword by Robert Fripp.... who I was also thinking of borrowing ideas from with the idea of a 'guitar orchestra' and the style in which he composes and creates music).

Creating friendship groups in the classroom is another idea I am attracted to from "Musical Futures", as this comes closest to how people in the real world teach and create songs on guitar and other popular instruments... by sitting around with groups of friends and working it out together, all the while demonstrating dispositions of learning:

1. Persistence
2. Listening to Others with Understanding and Empathy
3. Striving for Accuracy and Precision
4. Creating, Imagining, and Innovating
5. Thinking Interdependently
6. Learning Continuously

It is my hope that by starting with a project like this, where students discover how to learn/create songs on guitar in their groups, that it will spark new ideas and lead to future projects based on their natural inquiries and curiosity based on this initial experience.