By MIKE CAGGESO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Friday, November 12, 2004
At bottom: · Class syllabus
On paper, teaching people to be themselves can come across
as oxymoronic. That's why Rod Goelz takes an alternate route when drilling the
essentials into his students' brains.
"For me, education is about exploring all
possibilities, not the boxed-in rules many higher institutions endorse,"
Goelz said. "When getting an education equates to nothing more than your
ability to do only what you're told, then the education is failing."
If there is a doctorate degree for guitar playing,
he'd be Dr. Rock. Last June, Goelz performed triple bypass surgery on how to
teach guitar to first-time players. In late September, he sutured his work and
the final product is "Quickstart Guitar," a six-week guitar course
Goelz teaches at Badog Music in Shrewsbury.
The course introduces all of the basics of Guitar
101, leaving the door open for a graduating student to retain and pursue
whatever style of guitar playing catches their fancy in the class' six-week
span. Also, unlike a regular one-on-one guitar class, Quickstart Guitar is
taught in a group setting so students learn the unwritten basics of
improvisation.
"Depending on how you want to play music,
these are the skills you'll always apply," he said.
After six weeks, students aren't supposed to be
experts, but Goelz said the groundwork is laid so a student's personal guitar
style can be developed. Or more tangibly, it's like high school students taking
a variety of classes before they decide what career to pursue before going to
college.
Goelz said the goal isn't to walk students to or
through the door, but rather show them several ways to get there on their own.
By the end of the class, coincidentally or not, they will know how to play Bob
Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."
Old school meets new school
Goelz thinks of each person's style as a recipe.
Most people have the same ingredients — influences, past musical experiences,
strengths and weaknesses — but a musical style is the result of how they are
mixed.
Like many musicians his age, Goelz's parents had
more of an appreciation for pre-Beatles pop music, which was big band and jazz.
Goelz unwrapped a guitar-shaped Christmas present in 1978. The rock bands he
liked at the time — Aerosmith, KISS, Boston and Led Zeppelin — became the bands
he tried to play along with.
Throughout his teenage years, he wrote songs and
experimented with different styles of music from rhythm and blues and jazz
derived from Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell and Cornell Dupree to name a few.
Just recently, Goelz began playing the mandolin
and attending bluegrass jam sessions in the area.
"If you are more exposed to different ideas
and you apply these different influences, you'll develop a sound that's unique
to you, but much more dimensional," he said.
His hybrid method of guitar playing served him
well when he enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston. He said the school
is rooted in jazz tradition but emphasizes modern theory and small ensemble
ability.
"At Berklee, you learn the inner workings of
music, practice a ridiculous amount, play with other world-class musicians,
then apply what you learned in your own way in your senior recital," he
said. "No two students come out sounding the same."
Similarly, Goelz fuses two different learning
methods often disputed over by music and instrument teachers: learning music by
ear and learning to read music. When scripting the class book, Goelz avoided
diagramming certain notes and chords in his lessons because he wants his
students to remember what they sound like.
"If you're a musician, you learn by listening
and playing along," he said. "With that said, that's not the only
thing this class is going to give you. You have to grow with it."
Goelz also modernizes Quickstart by incorporating
his laptop into his lessons. After double-clicking a preset beat from his
computer audio file, Goelz begins a strumming rhythm train around the room with
his guitar. When he finishes a measure, a student joins in. After another
measure, another student steps into the music.
"You can't learn rhythm if it's just a
one-on-one lesson," he said. "Students respond better in
groups."
The class has sparked more student interest, and
Goelz and Badog owner Jeff Kuhn are discussing ways of expanding the class.
"We see it developing into other things,
possibly other instruments, and opening it up to more advanced players and
other genres of music, maybe jazz and reggae," Kuhn said.
Oh, brother
Tony Revels, 14, had been learning from another
guitar teacher for about six months before enrolling in Quickstart. Tony sits
closest to Goelz, asks the most questions and plays with a natural timing. He
can run his fingers around the fretboard with an unusual dexterity, but when it
comes to playing chords, he has to concentrate especially hard.
"Tony's got a lot of it together, but he
doesn't know the language," Goelz said.
Tony's brother Austin, 13, had just picked up his
guitar one week before the class started. Three weeks into the class, his
fingers stumbled along the fretboard like a wobbling gymnast's first walk
across a balance beam. From his perspective though, every day marks new
progress.
Having an older sibling in the class has its ups
and downs, Austin said. When the two do their homework for the class, Tony is
quick to show Austin some pointers. But that isn't always a good thing.
"Just sometimes, it's annoying when he says
I'm not doing something right," Austin said.
Neither are absolutely certain of what further
guitar style they want to pursue when Quickstart concludes. But both said they
are sure that if they weren't learning how to play in a group, they would have
a more difficult time reading the music inside them and others.
And that's exactly what Goelz is hoping for.
Reach Mike Caggeso at 771-2051 or mcaggeso@ydr.com.
· Week 1: Intro to the guitar, place in pop
music, how to read tablature/chord diagrams and intro to rhythm
· Week 2: Open string chords, examining
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door," practice tips, move exercises and intro
to power chords
· Week 3: Intro to open power chords, intro
to 12-bar blues progression, intro to applied music theory
· Week 4: Intro to moveable power chording,
major scale (key of G) and application of major scale within basic chord format
· Week 5: Eighth-note strumming, broken
chording and single-note line playing
· Week 6: Dominant seventh-chord forms,
blues and song form