ELISA corpus file Englisches Seminar Universität Tübingen What I do 02 What we do Hi, I'm Phil, speaking from Edinburgh in Scotland. I am a guitar teacher, and it covers various areas. I've been doing this for about twenty years, and a variety of different styles. Started off teaching blues guitar, but obviously everyone doesn't want to learn just blues. So it's kind of developed from that to doing a whole variety of different areas of music, a tiny little bit of classical, mostly rock or pop or reggae or country, a little bit of jazz and some funk. And it's mostly driven by what the pupils want or what the students want to learn. I mean a lot of stuff that perhaps they ask for is not what I choose myself, but actually I really enjoy most of it, which is great. What tends to happen is, with younger kinds - when I say young, I'm talking about like nine to thirteen . They are generally just interested in kind of rock stuff, chart stuff, whatever. Although their tastes extent way back sometimes to Nirvana and Heavy Metal and, you know, Grunge and stuff. Does it depend on the parents' taste maybe? Yea, also definitely, if their parents have exposed them to a lot of interesting music, then they definitely will come and ask for things. Red Hot Chilly Peppers seems to and Pink Floyd, that seems to span the ages, you know, all the way from the more mature students through to the younger ones. The people I teach 04 Getting started Most recently I've been teaching private individuals, some school work, some work in prisons. And the work in prisons came about I'd been doing a rock course in a local school, and one of the local Young Offenders Institutes had phoned the rock course to ask if they could get a guitar teacher. They were really, really struggling to get a guitar teacher. So I wasn't sure this would be a good idea anyway, I went along, checked it out and ended up staying there for about fourteen years. And it was actually amazing. There was a lot of really talented players and we gradually developed a routine, whereby a couple of years we would maybe have a concert, taken from the guitar classes, because they were it was not just like guitarists, you know, there was bass players, drummers, singers and so on. So, yea, and from the point of view of the prisoners, the benefits for them I would see as the fact that because they were locked up for hours and in every day, the chance to practice an instrument was invaluable. And also, it kind of gave them something to be good at other than villainy, if you know what I mean. Another thing to work towards. In some cases they left, going on to perhaps go to music college. Or, not too often. It was more just as a hobby or something like that, but it was beneficial. Teaching music to prisoners 06 Education and training So, what's different when you teach people from the prisons and people outside? Outside? Well, one of the things that I noticed is that, you know, the folks outside have all been to school and so on, whereas a lot of the guys in prison had never really attended school with any regularity at all. They had either skived school or been forbidden to go to school because they were their behaviour was outrageous or whatever. So they a lot of them didn't have much experience of school at all. So they weren't all that confident about coming into an education unit, necessarily to do straight education. But the chance to come and to do guitar sounded a bit more like something which would appeal to them. And a lot of times once had investigated guitar, they would discover that it wasn't such a bad place being in an education unit, and they would maybe go on to other subjects. I'm just trying to think what the difference is. Because they were actually very keen to do guitar or to do music or whatever, they were very attentive and keen to work, worked hard. So in fact they were probably better behaved than a class outside in some cases, surprisingly. How I got started 04 Getting started What have you done I mean, how did you come to be a guitar teacher? It just is a gradual development actually because I was playing as a hobby for myself from school days really. And I actually wanted to go for lessons at one point but I could not really afford it. And so a local guitar teacher, a jazz guitar teacher in fact, was kind enough to pass on some information which I was able to work on with at home, and I kind of learn some of the techniques. And that gradually developed over the years either working on his material or working with bands and things to the point where friends were saying it would be a good idea to give lessons. And the thing is if you've not trained in a college or something or that type of thing, then you think there is no way I can do this. But in fact it's one of these on-the-job learning experiences where, in fact, you're learning quite a lot as you teach. And it's just developed over the years, so I'm very lucky that it's come about that way, that I'm able to continue doing that. And the prison work that now I no longer do unfortunately because not because of the prisoners, the prisoners are great in most cases, but the management style changed in the prisons as it has in a lot of colleges, and it became very hard to work there. So I've moved on to other, either teaching privately or . How I teach 06 Education and training So, whom do you teach mostly? It's usually school kids, well, sometimes school kids, sometimes adults, if it's a night class, it tends to be a group of adults. So, it's groups as well as individuals? Yes, yea, the groups if it's a night class, it tends to be a group of maybe sixteen, usually adults between thirty and sixty, something like that, and . How does that work to teach an instrument in a whole group? Are they all at the same level, or do you go round and do things individually? Yes, that's a good question. That was actually one of the things that developed, I suppose, in the prison classes, because a lot of the guys had quite a short attention span or got impatient very quickly, it was necessary to keep them occupied the whole group occupied. So it was necessary to have some of the guys learning basic stuff like chords, other more advanced guys learning scales or lead patterns or whatever. And that type of thing works well in a bigger group as well as with night classes whereby absolute beginners can be learning basic types of chords and the folks that are a bit more advanced can either play scales or lead guitar of more advanced chords, things like that. And it's actually the nature of the classes is more like a jam session in a pub or something rather than necessary, you know, an academic lesson. Although if people are interested individually and asking about a little bit of the theory behind the scales or whatever, then that's where it would be a case of doing it with them individually. A music therapy project 05 Project examples So that's been the main area of work. Although, after leaving the prisons or what made it possible to leave the prison work was another development through an organisation called Art Link who They take musicians or artists into care homes, hospitals to work generally with people with severe learning difficulties. And in some cases it's one to one almost in a nature of a music therapy session. And other times it will be groups of people. And initially the contact through Art Link was with individuals, but what happened was it turned that in fact it was possible to work with groups and involve people who perhaps wouldn’t get involved in movement and stuff in doing other areas other than just purely music. Meanwhile it developed into doing maybe Tai Chi or different types of dance whether it be salsa or meringue or Ceilidh dance, you know, a variety of different styles of dance. And I mean the one area that really surprised me was the fact that even people in wheel chairs were able to get involved in doing Tai Chi. I mean I had read years ago that this was possible, but I couldn't quite see however, it has developed that it is because, you know, part of the exercises is preferably doing even in a wheel chair. So that's great, because otherwise people who may otherwise just be sitting around are actually doing movement in the Tai Chi area or in the dance classes or whatever, yea. So, that's been a really nice development and it's continuing to grow in the meantime. The instruments I play 02 What we do So, do you play any other instruments, other than the guitar? Yes, after a trip to India I've got a passion for Indian drums, which I still play a little bit, but in fact they are actually too quite to use generally with Western music. So, I've found myself moving over to African instruments - djembe and congas and different things like that. Congas, which are a bit louder and will work you know, you can use them in a band situation, and so The band I play in 02 What we do Can you tell us a little bit about the band? Yea, sure. It's a Ceilidh band, although a lot of the time we end up perhaps playing for weddings and birthday parties where there is music other than Ceilidh music, regular rock stuff or whatever. But the Ceilidh music is the main feature and it's geared towards dancing also . What is it, Ceilidh? Ceilidh traditionally is a gathering and it used to involve a whole community, some people singing, some people dancing and doing these Ceilidh dances. It's come to mean nowadays generally a Ceilidh dance. If you see a Ceilidh advertised, it tends to mean there is an evening which is organised for Ceilidh dancing. We have a very good caller who teaches the dances, and it's a set tradition, these dances have been, in a lot of cases, been used for hundreds of years. But in fact there are a lot of new ones always developing as well, and so, the band plays for that type of dancing and . So, what's your band like? What do you do, and what do you do in the band? Ok. In the band I'm mostly playing bass guitar or percussion, although if we're doing a wedding or a birthday party or whatever, then there is usually a call for rock music, so I'll be doing vocals and electric guitar and programme a drum machine and things like that, because it's not really practical with instrumentation that we use for the Ceilidh music to do the rock stuff, you know. When you do you kind of swap instruments round to make that work. And so it's kind of fifty-fifty, at a lot of weddings, it's necessary to do rock music and plus Ceilidh. At other occasions people just all they want is just Ceilidh music, and that's fine.