A number of years ago we got Wii Lego Rockband with a drum kit, microphone and guitar. One of the songs that I loved the most was Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’. I remember us having so much fun singing and playing away. We were so good (or so we thought)!
I was reminded of it the other day and thought, “hey, I want to learn that song for real on the guitar’. First I looked at Ultimate Guitar Tabs to download the music. Guitar Tabs is a website where guitarist (and other musicians) post scores that they have interpreted of any song they want. The website also has members vote on songs they want the team at the website to create a version of, this is called the “Pro Version”. There were a number of versions of Free Fallin’ on the website, including a pro version. I downloaded the pro version, but quickly realized that it was too difficult for me. The next version I went to was the most liked and it rated itself good for novice guitarist. It looked doable, so I downloaded that version and started to work on it.
I then noticed that there were a number of videos that I could link to through Ultimate Guitar of online guitar lessons that taught Free Fallin’. The first one I went to was by an online guitar teacher that I have used a number of times Marty Music. (he has more than 2 million subscribers!). The problem I have found with Marty in the past is that he can skip over things pretty quickly, I suspect he is teaching to a higher level than me. I really liked part of the way he explained the song, but I thought I would take a look around. Plus he had one chord that required my fingers to stretch over 4 frets, and there was no way I can do that – not yet anyways. The next one I looked at was Groovy Guitar Guy. Instead of putting the capo on the first fret, he put it on the third fret which meant the chords were super simple G, D and A. He quickly went over the three different strumming patterns that were used. It seemed easy and attainable.
I worked on that for a while and was still struggling a bit so I looked online again, and found another video… I then looked to see how many online videos there were to teach this song and found there were well over a dozen. I could have over 12 different teachers giving me different ways to learn this classic Tom Petty song!
I stopped after looking at three, but I realized that from the three I looked at there was not one that was perfect for me (and I noticed there were NO videos of women teaching how to play this song, another issue the ever elusive gender equity!!!). Each of the videos I looked had something that was helping me to learn Free Fallin’, but each one fell a little short (like the pun).
This made me think about learning in general, and in being a teacher in particular. There are going to be students in my class who ‘groove’ on the way I teach, and there will be others who do not. So as a teacher, I need to figure out different methods I can employ to reach different students. At the same time, I should be thinking about others who might be able to help the students I can’t reach. Perhaps another student in the class who gets it can help a student who isn’t getting it. Maybe there are other teachers in the school that can help me or the student. Or perhaps there is an online resource that could help out or a guest I can bring to class. There are so many ways to learn, and so many ways to teach and as a learner and a teacher I have to be aware that one model does not fit all.
