Philip Hii – guitarist

I wrote the Desiderata of the Guitar a number of years ago and had completely forgotten about it. That is, until recently, when I rediscovered it while doing some spring cleaning on the site.

I found the sentiments expressed in the piece as relevant as ever and fit well with the philosophy espoused in the AOV and decided to give it a new lease on life.

Here’s the desiderata, in slightly updated form.

Desiderata of the Guitar

(with apologies to Max Ehrmann)

Go placidly into the practice room,
and remember what peace there may be in playing the guitar.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with your guitar.

Keep your back straight, your fingers loose;
and your touch light as the wind.

Especially know that your body has its own secrets.
If you fight it, you kill its natural impulses.
If you impose your will on it, you subdue its talents.
Rather, let it lead you where it wants to go.

Let your music speak for you.
Do not try to impress your peers.
Jealous persons intent on finding faults will find them.

Avoid loud vexatious persons.
who will tell you their secrets of life.
The world is full of ‘wise’ men,
who hide behind a wall of self-delusion.
Ignore their words, listen to their playing.
Words are cheap, advice is easy,
but diligent practice is hard and great playing is rare.

Trust your judgment, do not follow the pack.
Crowd hysteria exists in all quarters.
Find your own space and believe in it.
Follow your instincts, for they will lead you to unexpected and delightful places.

Listen to everyone and listen to no one.
The great players and the not so great – they all have their stories.
Listen to them and take with you what you need.

As you gain in wisdom, do not be afraid to share it.
But realize that many have not traveled the same paths,
or drank from the same cup.
Do not try to impose your wisdom on them,
let them come to you instead.

Infuse your playing with magic and wonder,
and let it speak of the joys and tribulations of life.
One note played with love and imagination,
is worth a thousand executed with soulless precision.

Therefore be at peace with your guitar,
whatever you conceive it to be.
Practice hard. Strive to be happy.

A number of years ago, I wrote an article titled “Projection on the Guitar” where I described a stroke called the push-stroke.

I learned the technique from Julian Byzantine. The idea is to push your finger into the string before you pluck it. This produces greater vertical displacement of the string which in turn results in a louder tone.

The technique is made for the concert hall where projection is paramount. But it has its drawbacks, chief among them the resulting tension from the pushing.

It’s for that reason that I don’t use it a lot.

Over the years, I’d also developed another stroke which I call the pull-stroke. Here the idea is to pull at the string slightly and then release it to pluck it. The operative word here is ‘slightly.’ This stroke produces a very relaxed touch much like the feeling of letting go an arrow from a bowstring.

The pull-stroke is diametrically different from the push-stroke. The push-stroke is mostly about applying more tension, the pull-stroke about releasing tension.

I’ve taught the pull-stroke for many years now, and have called it by different names to try to describe the sensation in the fingers. One of them was to call it the snap-stroke.

Here’s an old article describing the snap-stroke aka pull-stroke, buried deep in the dark recesses of my site.

So the push stroke and the pull strokes are two completely different techniques. One is a technique for producing more volume by applying more force (vertically) before plucking, the other is a technique for producing ultra-relaxed strokes.

In the world of providing instrumental music lessons, there’s an unwritten code out there.

Let’s say you’re a musician turned businessperson and you want to start a private music school. You rent the premises, you do the advertising, you pay the bills, and you hire teachers to teach for you and you split the takings with them 50-50.

Fair enough. You have overheads and you also need to make a profit. Without you, the school wouldn’t exist, without the teachers, the school wouldn’t exist either. 50-50 is fair.

It’s amazing how universal this business model is. I’ve taught in music schools in Germany, Malaysia, and New Zealand and 50-50 seems to be the magic number. But there’re exceptions. I’ve even been paid up to 70 percent and I know there’s a music school here that actually pays 75 percent to their teachers.

Now, suppose a businessperson comes along and he decides to change this model to 75-25, in his favor. (Without naming names, I know of at least one establishment that’s doing this.)

Let’s say he’s surveyed the market and he’s discovered that there’re a lot of hungry music students who would take the job even at 25 percent. Especially since some of them are working minimum wage jobs at the local McDonalds.

In his mind, teaching guitar is no different from flipping hamburgers and he reasons he’s doing these hungry music students a favor by offering them a job that pays more than minimum wage.

(For our discussion, let’s say that the going rate for lessons is $40 per hour lesson or $20 per half-hour lesson. 25 percent of $40 is $10, much better than the minimum wage of $7.25.)

Here we come to the basic question of fairness. Which is what the occupy movement is all about.

Fairness depends on who you ask.

If you were to ask the teachers, they would probably say it’s not fair, if you were to ask a businessperson, he would probably say it’s fair, he has a right to make a profit.

As a teacher, you can probably guess where I stand on this issue.

To me, it’s clear that teaching guitar is not the same as flipping hamburgers. It takes years of practice and training for someone to get to the point where he can sit down and teach someone to play guitar. (In some cases, four years of college with all the attached costs.) It takes less than ten minutes to teach a person to flip a hamburger.

You decide if it’s fair to equate teaching guitar with flipping hamburgers.

I agree that the profit motive is important. Businesses exist to make a profit. But how much profit is reasonable profit and how much is greed?

If the only motive in businesses is to make a profit, I would say, why not go all the way? Why stop at 25 percent? Why not zero percent? They did that years ago. It’s called slavery.