By: Joshua Friedman
Hello GuitarCurriculum teachers!
I hope you all had a restful holiday break and a great start to your New Year! Over the past year I have had the incredible opportunity to meet and talk with so many of you. All over the country there are so many amazing and passionate teachers doing remarkable work. Thank you for all that you do to bring joy and music to young people every day.
Over the holidays I had the chance to speak with Connecticut guitarist Benjamin Tint about the new guitar club he started at his school. What he and his students have accomplished in 4 months is inspiring. I am so happy to share a little bit about Benjamin’s work with these students.
If you have a story, performance, recording, or anything else you would like to share with the GuitarCurriculum community please reach out to me at joshua@austinclassicalguitar.org!
Benjamin Tint is a guitarist and educator based out of Connecticut. He is a founder of the Connecticut Guitar Guild (https://www.connecticutguitarguild.com/) a society for classical guitarists in the central Connecticut area. The guild holds free monthly gatherings and provides a supportive environment for all levels of players to perform and learn. Benjamin also hosts The Lone Guitarist podcast, a freeform virtual hangout with some of the biggest names in classical guitar, including Scott Tennant, Davis Leisner, and many more. The Lone Guitarist can be found wherever you listen to podcasts, and video episodes can be found on YouTube. Watch the most recent episode with Gohar Vardanyan here!
What is your experience teaching?
I am in the middle of my 6th year as a classroom teacher. I teach a digital general music class to grades 6, 7 and 8. The class is great, it runs out of a computer lab where the kids get to learn everything from basic piano skills to advanced DAW functions. In past years I have taught choir and band, and this year I am teaching guitar club!
As a guitar player, and more specifically, one who did a lot of private lessons before entering the school system, teaching was a big paradigm shift. There were a lot of struggles at first. The content stays the same, but the methods of delivery, the structure and the relationships are profoundly different from studio lessons. It takes some getting used to but the transition does happen. Anyone who stands in front of a classroom for a prolonged period of time knows exactly what I mean!
(Benjamin’s son refusing to leave his father as he leads his ensemble’s first performance)
Tell us about your Guitar Club.
Guitar club meets two times a week, after school for about 2 hours. It is open to any of the students that go to my 6-12 school. In the 16 weeks I’ve been running it (the time of this writing), I have had over 20 students stop by, engage in different capacities and decide if guitar is right for them. I currently have 8 students I would say are regulars, although I welcome anyone at any time.
Guitar club has been such a rewarding and surprising experience. I am shocked sometimes, students will show up who didn’t really enjoy my teaching in middle school, and be psyched to learn the basics of guitar with me. As a school teacher, when a kid wants to be there it makes your day.
In addition to new students, I have been able to collaborate with kids across the building for other resources. A senior, Zach (who is not in guitar club), was able to build us a guitar rack for our brand new instruments (picture below). I was able to work with his woodshop teacher to discuss construction plans and grades. In school we call this cross-curricular teaching. I wasn’t trying to do any of that, I just wanted a guitar stand and I knew he could do it!
There's a similar story to the one that got us our logo. Aiden, a 10th grader, drew up a mock design for our Instagram page at the beginning of the year. He asked if the school could pay him to add some pizzazz to the logo and we were able to make it happen!
The lesson in all of this for me is that relationships go a long way. These two high schoolers don’t play guitar but were still able to use their real-life skills to contribute to our community.
Our first performance was for our school’s Hispanic Heritage night in the middle of this past October. We played Tango #1 by Matthew Hinsley. That performance was a little tricky, I was still getting used to group lessons, we had kids all over the skill and experience spectrum and I didn’t prepare properly for amplification. Knowing what I know now, there’s some stuff I could have done better. But the experience was great and the kids played very well.
We were finally able to record one of our first pieces, Meditation #1 by Travis Marcum. This was such a cool piece. We spent two class periods working on this project. The first day, I brought my MacBook, Scarlett and SE8’s from home, went over the basics of how the microphones worked and we spent the next 90 minutes tracking. The next day, we enlisted some new members, Caitlin and Ishfiah to help with the video recording. We played the mix over the SmartBoard and had the kids “fingersynch” while we shot video. We threw the whole thing together and put it on my work channel.
What music are your students learning?
My kids learn all sorts of things in guitar club. Ultimately, I want them to be able to play something that brings them joy. I also want them to be literate but that really can't happen if they're playing repertoire they hate. We always start off with reading some music, transition to ensemble music, and then get to our "free choice" section. Some kids work out of the Hal Leonard guitar method books, others works on solo repertoire from the traditional canon (Duncan, Sor, etc.) and some students spend that portion of the class working on their electric chops. This is the time of class when I'll pull the advanced kids aside and show them barre chords, or work with the newer students on counting 8th's. All that good stuff! The kids love the music provided on GuitarCurriculum.com. The fact that there are so many different styles really makes them happy. Tango, Izika Zumba, Beginnings - all of the non-traditional pieces are what the kids want to do. To me that’s such a relief, I don’t have to worry about getting the kids hooked on traditional music. For some kids it works, for others, it doesn’t. Sor is great, but he’s not the only pathway into this fingerstyle-composed music.
what are your goals with this club?
Right now the goal is to book a concert for the end of the year that has duets, group pieces and solos. I’ll probably use a large amount of music from GuitarCurriculum but get other pieces from standard repertoire (Duncan, Hal Leonard) or Matt Hinsley’s Classical Guitar for Young People.
I also want to get some of those logos printed on school shirts!
Eventually I would love to get the kids on a bus and bring them to a Connecticut Guitar Guild meeting. Either to play or to hang out and meet other players. There is such a stigma about what we play and who plays it. Classical guitarists in general are really insular and exclusive. If we want to be taken more seriously we need to show people the power of the instrument. As Eliot Fisk once said about the guitar, referring to the piano “we don’t have the volume they have, but they don’t have the charm we do”. I think this instrument is so charming and special. The fact that we read notes and study counterpoint shouldn’t scare beginners off. We shouldn’t make them feel like this style of music isn’t accessible to them.
Any advice you have for other teachers wanting to start a program?
If you want to start a program do it. Just do it. Make sure you collaborate with your students. My guitar club has a portion dedicated to electric guitar. I don’t really enjoy teaching electric these days but it’s important to my students. Why wouldn’t I include it if it means that much?
Also, if you’re not a guitar player, reach out to one. Reach out to me. I’d be happy to share whatever I can.
