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[lollum_dropcap]I[/lollum_dropcap] thought that I’d take a small break from lessons today to share an experience I had with you.
There are a lot of great teachers at Berklee, and I studied with many of them during my four years. There was one guitar teacher however that I always wanted to take lessons from but never did get the chance. His name was John Baboian.
John’s recognition of my musical sensibilities would always get me through when I felt as if I didn’t belong…
Odd as this sounds, even though I only met him for ten minutes during my first week he had more of an impact on my time at Berklee than anyone. I had my performance audition with him when I started at the school.
The Bad Idea
Prior to starting classes I had the big idea that it would be a good to take a year off from playing to shed any bad habits and then relearn from the ground up at Berklee.
This turned out to be a bad idea.
When I got there I was a mess. My reading was awful, my theory was spotty, and my chord soloing was nonexistent. The only thing that I had going for me was the ability to perform the song Signe’ from Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album.
When it came time to audition I could hear the student before me wailing out on some Alan Holdsworth style licks from John’s office. That’s a hard act to follow and I was stressed, but John was so upbeat and friendly and he put me right at ease.
He ended up scoring me low on the three areas I listed above and rightly so, but when it came time to play my piece he recognized that I had some talent. He even said something like, “I can see you have some musicality there.” I think I ended up getting a 5 or so in that area which I felt was pretty good.
As a film scoring major I feel I really received a solid grounding in music theory but never got to play the guitar as much as I would’ve liked. I would often tell people that I played the pencil.
Not having your chops together can make you really self-conscious when you’re surrounded by such great players at the top jazz school of the world.
John’s recognition of my musical sensibilities would always get me through when I felt as if I didn’t belong at Berklee.
As far as I saw it the other areas in the audition could be taught (and I finally did learn them) but to have the music inside you is something you have or you don’t.
That recognition helped me make it through and I finally got the opportunity to thank him recently.
My life really could’ve gone another way entirely if someone else had done my audition.
Have you ever had a teacher help you on your way when you needed it most. Let me know in the comments.
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