Emily Falk

But then, you know, as the pandemic eased and my kids went back to school face to face, I had a little bit more bandwidth again and I decided I was going to try again.

And I got a recommendation for a guitar teacher who mostly teaches kids.

And I think that's key because, you know, a guitar teacher who really teaches kids tells you something about what they're willing to engage with.

And I met Gabriel, who's my guitar teacher now and also my son Theo's guitar teacher.

And Gabriel took a totally different approach.

So he was very focused on why I wanted to play.

And he would take little like audio clips that I had of my dad playing and transcribe them for me and asked me for a list of songs that I was interested in.

And then he would write them out.

at a level that was appropriate for where I was and so when I was practicing all of a sudden now it didn't feel like work it didn't feel like okay now I'm doing my etudes and I'm doing the hard thing that's going to get me to this goal later I was already there right I was already doing the thing that was the future goal just at a level that was appropriate for me

And, you know, that's worked really well for my kids, too, that they get to choose the music that they start with.

And, you know, he has them do exercises sometimes as well, but he connects it to their goal, their motivation of the particular song that they want to work on.

And then it doesn't make it feel like there's a separation between them.

the repetitions and the practice that we're doing right now and some future abstract time when we're going to be able to play music.

Well, yeah, I mean, I really appreciate the way that he has done that.

And, you know, also just holding space for why I was there.

Like sometimes at the beginning I would get really emotional and that didn't seem to fluster him.

He would just kind of wait or maybe sit there and play himself for a little bit.

And I think that kind of holistic understanding of like sometimes we kind of

segment off like okay we're here because I'm going to try to get Emily to learn how to play the guitar rather than like we're here to have this experience together and so like I try to channel some of that when I'm trying to get my kids to practice Theo plays the guitar and Emma plays the piano with Gabriel and you know if if I'm sitting there practicing with Theo and he starts you

you know, playing some other song that's not technically his homework for the week, when I'm being my best self, I can take a step back and think about, like, well, actually the goal of this whole thing is for us to be able to connect and do this fun thing together.