25 Confetti (first method that start with the 5th position)

AMATEURS, TEACHERS, please listen to me,

Just let me tell you how I have been teaching the guitar for more than 40 years. In the beginning, I soon realized I was teaching « monkeys » how to imitate their master… My students were reading figures instead of music notes, just like people trying to decipher tablatures in the XVI^th century! So don’t wonder why guitarists can’t read! The children’s small hands were supposed to adapt to the same fingerings as the teachers’ big hands. How do you call this? Authority? Vanity?... I felt it was time for me to change my tune… 

I wanted to teach children how to read and play at the same time (like all other instruments). I wanted to offer them the skill and liberty to develop their own fingering, phrasing or sound… You can play the same note at 4 different places and awaken the poet in you, can’t you? I wanted to give my students the power to decide, to be self-responsible thanks to the knowledge of notes and positions. I wanted to give them the freedom to feed their own artistic imagination… One day I decided to break my chains, without fingerings, without fear, and it worked!... But you need to think about it and question yourself all the time…

Would you like to try it?

Norbert Leclercq, December 2016