[broken thumb]

I have been teaching guitar and voice on the side now for several years. I don't claim to be a master, just someone who is a trained teacher and is willing to help people learn to love and make music.

A bit over a month ago, I got a very special student. He is a developmentally disabled man, about my age. He has, from the very beginning, been very excited to be in a music lesson, holding a guitar and making noise with it. Progress is limited, but we always have a good time.

He can't read. Coordination is a challenge. I am not always sure he can see the different strings as separate things. Picking one string at a time has taken weeks, and it isn't always the right string, of course.

I've been trying to teach him a simple melody, using different techniques to learn how to play three notes, but... It wasn't going anywhere, and tonight, in the middle of trying the new method I came up with during the week, I had a thought - can he count to four? He can count to ten using his fingers, so if he can count to four without using his fingers, then what if I tuned his guitar to an open tuning - would he be able to strum the chord? I'd given up on teaching him to finger a chord in standard tuning, but this thought occurred to me, and I jumped on it and went with it. I tuned the guitars to open D, handed his back to him with a big fat hard felt bass pick that he can hold on to, and in almost no time, he was strumming that open D chord. Over and over. Count to four, count to four, count to to four. He was so excited, he was visibly shaking on the piano bench. It sounds like music!

I tried to see if he could fret across the neck, but it won't work. Next week, I'm taking a tone bar and a bottle neck, and we'll see if he can use one of those.

His caregiver was so excited. She looked like she was going to cry. As I drove away from the studio, thinking about what has gone into this and the breakthrough, I was almost overwhelmed. He played a chord! He strummed it, over and over. I thought he'd never be able to do that. I thought it outside the realm of the possible for him.

I taught a woman this morning how to play her first chord in less than two minutes, versus the number of weeks that I've been working with this man, and then suddenly, bam! Something changed.

Now I'm sitting here thinking to myself - was this a breakthrough for him, or was it more of a breakthrough in my thinking, in my approach? I found something that works for him, by letting his abilities dictate how I try to teach him, rather than allowing what he can't do limit what I try to teach him.