Recent Thoughts on Frustration

These thoughts came to me recently:

#1

Could it be that the amount of progress a student makes is directly in proportion to how they handle their pissed-off-ed-ness if they can't play it?

#2

Could it be that the best way to inspire the best attitude towards this frustration is to play a song with the student, and ignore them?

The following are three recent examples of this:

Example One: I was teaching "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer. The student wasn't playing this difficult part. He was able to, but just wasn't playing it. I ignored him completely and played it and left him in the dust. I felt that it was his responsibility to play that part, and he could really own it if he figured it out himself. So he did, and I was amazed that I didn't have to do anything.

Example Two: I was teaching "A Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles. Instead of saying anything, I just played the song and ignored her. I observed out of the corner of my eye how she was playing the song and handling the progressions. Instead of saying anything about the mistakes she was making, I just ignored her and played the song. She had the ability to play it, but the right circumstances needed to be presented. All I did was pay attention to the melody (I've been obsessed with melody these days). And what happened? Confidence. Instead of explaining anything, I just let go and let her own the song. She walked out being able to play it.

Example Three: I was teaching a brand new student how to play chord progressions. The student seemed to have the idea down, but tended to get frustrated in an interesting way when the progression didn't happen. The frustration was there when she couldn't do it, but every time a mistake was made, she didn't give up. No yelling, cursing. Nothing. She wanted to play that chord progression over and over til it was owned. In short, the student's curiosity about the problem somehow helped to own the problem. I didn't have to say anything.

This is hard on my ego because I like to think of myself as a pretty good guitar teacher. Truthfully though, if someone wants to play something, it's not up to me to get them to own it. I think that my mission now is to figure out how to present the correct situation to get them obsessed.

There has to be a bell curve to how much frustration a person can handle and there has to be an ideal way to handle it. More on this, later.