ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

As you know I bought a guitar, a Yamaha LL6 acoustic for a grand total of around 55,000 yen. I’m quite satisfied with it. In fact, last night at my usual haunt I jammed a bit with Risa and another local musician named Onishi. That man is hilarious as well as being a great singer himself. I am constantly astounded by how talented these two are. It is also worth noting that Risa has taken to learning some English songs, so there’s that to look forward to on my weekends, too. I realize everytime I join this company how important “proper” and early starts are. When I started learning guitar back at the end of my high school years and the start of my college years (I put down the instrument after 2 years of obsessive playing for the sake of reading more and doing homework) I never played with a properly tuned instrument. In fact, for the first two weeks I didn’t even play with a tuned guitar at all. Consequently, I am with a basically absent ear for pitches, the effect being my inability to identify any note that I hear. My obsessive playing has backfired in that it has ingrained in me a block to note recognition, to the point that I cannot even identify the quality of my own voice in my head. In other words, bad practice has made for bad results.

It is important, thus, to recommend “proper” practice, or what amounts to conventional practice. By “conventional” I mean an adjective qualifying a thing (“practice”) that follows social norms or expectations. One of my goals in teaching (or pedagogy) is to make pleasurable autonomous learning, of making self-motivated reflections or meditations an aim in daily living. The first step I think is to accept those around you, and to converse, share, and debate with them. Ultimately, we have to accept that “best” is proper, or conventional, at first. In other words, we have to start somewhere.

Which brings me to another development I’d like to briefly share: I started vocal lessons! I had a “free” trial lesson earned for purchasing my acoustic guitar. That lesson was humbling, embarrassing, and exciting. Here I was in class getting taught by a native Japanese singer who hardly knew English. What did she mean by “giri giri”? What is a better English word for “way,” the word that she kept using to describe how my voice travels? And more to the point, how can I take language and translate that through my BODY? How can I “imagine” my head passages and lungs expanding so that those body parts actually do expand? The basic lesson for the day was to “open” my head, to “make big” my nose and eye passages, as well as my belly to engage my diaphragm. We spent the first 10 minutes on stretches and breathing exercises. Next we practiced some humming, and then the teacher had me sing with her “Stand By Me.” The end of the lesson was the most shocking experience I’ve had: She made me sing into a live microphone and to imagine that I was on stage! So embarrassing! But this embarrassing experience was one of two things that compelled me to sign up for the monthly lessons. The other reason was that she seemed in control and confident, not to mention a lot of fun (supposedly, she sings at clubs “funny dramatic pop songs”). She had down a teaching curriculum: stretches, breathing, humming, singing, live performance. This rigor is something that I feel that I need, as I have always lived my life “on my own,” “as my own person.” Or, in other words, I have always had too much arrogance in my undertakings. But shocks are needed from time to time to open up my horizons again.

Because I didn’t get a good picture over the weekend with me playing guitar, instead have a picture of me before getting my hair cut! I cut my hair yesterday so for my next blog I’ll probably talk about my shopping and hair cut experiences.