I’ve now been working in Berlin for about a month, and one of my main responsibilities has been teaching bass, guitar, and piano lessons. GSBTB has an Open Music School (OMS), which gives group music lessons free of charge to any adults in the community that are interested. Most of my lessons had about 15 students at a time. OMS is the reason I initially reached out to GSBTB, because they had a listing online about needing a bass teacher. 

I have a decent amount of teaching experience, having taught bass for about four years now and piano for two. All of this experience has been within the framework of the school system: in both Seattle and New York, the students I’ve taught have attended schools with robust music programs, which means that the purpose of our lessons has been to advance their playing as efficiently as possible so that they can be placed into a high ensemble.  

Teaching at OMS is completely different. The students in my lessons are adults who choose to attend in order to make friends, build community, and relax. The music is the excuse. Because this is so unlike my usual approach to music, I remember spending the first bass lesson feeling frustrated that the other teacher wasn’t explaining the music theory behind the Tame Impala bass line we were learning. And in the guitar lesson, I tried to make each student figure out every chord by matching each pitch by ear, until one person finally whispered to me that “this wasn’t how they usually did things.” 

In college, everything I do feels like it can be a means to an end, or a way to accomplish something. Subconsciously, I think I’ve let this mindset creep into my approach to music, too. I want to work on simply allowing the music to be, and to appreciate that I get to play in the first place.