My Teaching Years with Mel Bay By Barb Sieminski I grew up with Mel Bay even though I m much younger! Ok, I actually grew up with Mel Bay s Modern Guitar Method, Books 1, 2, and 3, and also have the rest of the books in the series, though I didn t take lessons long enough to complete all of them. When I was 10 years old, I got my first guitar for Christmas a bright red cardboard-like Roy Rogers guitar with a white Roy and Trigger drawing on the front. Little did I realize that I would lead a life teaching guitar myself it s been more than 45 delightful years. The reason I wanted a guitar was because my friend next door had one and because Elvis was all the rage. My parents signed me up for guitar lessons at the Cliff Smith Music Studio here in town; it would later become the Guy Zimmerman Music Studio where I continued taking lessons for a couple years. I would stop lessons in high school and then pick them up again after college graduation, this time with a private instructor, who is still playing with his band. Of course, I was started on Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method, Book 1 (date of publication: 1948) and happily brought my brand-new music book home, all ready to begin learning how to play the guitar. Included with my guitar were a few small pieces of sheet music, which I learned to play Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Red River Valley, Swanee River (Old Folks at Home), and My Old Kentucky Home. I also enjoyed singing along with my playing but my family and
friends paid me NOT to sing! (Just kidding) Today, many moons later, I still go back and occasionally play my favorite songs and pieces from Mel Bay s first guitar instruction book Cradle Song (Brahms Lullaby), Austrian Hymn, Lament, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, Blue Bells of Scotland, Home on the Range gee, I m getting carried away. The fun part is when a student has one of those songs as an assignment I always play it so the student will know what it sounds like before s/he goes
home to practice it. One of the delightful aspects about this book is that some songs are disguised as pieces or exercises and the student doesn t know it until s/he hears me play them such as Sparkling Stella, which is three songs in one Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Baa Baa, Black Sheep, (or Mary Had a Little Lamb ) and the Alphabet Song. Many times when I went to a music store to buy a new Mel Bay book for a student, there were other, newer, methods which I looked at and always came back to Mel Bay because... as I told my students, Mel Bay is much faster, and it would take 2 or 3 of the competitors beginning methods to equal one Mel Bay book; in other words, Book One of Mel Bay s Modern Guitar Method is a more intensive study using only one book, rather than the competitors 2 or 3 books to achieve the same goal. (It d probably be kinder and safer not to identify the other methods, but you can probably guess which ones they are). Through the years, I ve had as many as 65 weekly students at one time (private lessons), and taught pretty much full time, both at the studio and at home. I held annual fun recitals and enjoyed introducing students to each other; sometimes, I d get two students together to play duets again, from Mel Bay books.
In my musical family we all played instruments, even my parents. I loved that you kept some of the older songs in the book, songs like Carry Me Back to Old Virginny and Little Brown Jug, How Can I Leave Thee, and Old Black Joe (that last made me a devoted fan of Stephen Foster and to this day, I love his songs, though politically incorrect some of them may be). Today, after hundreds of students, I continue to use the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method Book One for beginning students but this time, I use the new, updated one that has two CDs inside the back cover. I also have the Mel Bay spiral-bound chord book, the Mel Bay Electric Bass Method One and the Mel Bay Folio of Graded Guitar Solos. I also branch out and add sheet music and more advanced methods such as Mickey Baker s Complete Course in Jazz Guitar and Fred Gagner s Single String Guitar Melody Playing in All Positions, and Progressive Studies for the Snare Drum (for students who need extra help with rhythm). The student is also encouraged to bring in any songs s/he would like to learn how to play. I have all the earlier Mel Bay books, up thru Grade Seven, and have included a picture of them. The only one missing is Grade Two (green cover) which I can t find; it is hiding in one of my stacks of music that all musicians tend to collect.
Teaching guitar has been and continues to be a great career, and I am indebted to Mel Bay for making my instructing years enjoyable and profitable ones. Kudos to Mel Bay for creating a long-lasting, always current, method of teaching guitar! ##