Since Khushi is one of my most talkative students, sorry, the Queen of talkative children, I'm going to write like she talks. Despite me telling my students from Day 1 that practice is key, and regular training is the only thing that matters when it comes to learning the guitar, Khushi too didn't heed my advice. She wanted to challenge every single idea, advice, and exercise I taught her. She complained she didn't have time, she had projects, exams, and the regular obstacles of a child, but I still had to teach her somehow, and scolding students is just not my style.
And while I was figuring out how to get across to Khushi, there comes Muskaan (Khushi's twin sister), who would simply get all the lessons without much effort and even learned how to sing on the strumming pattern without me teaching her. Now this demotivated Khushi even further. After discussing both Khushi and Muskaan's dynamic at length with their mother, I figured Khushi is going to need trickery and pampering. I did scold her twice cause she was creating too much chaos in the class. But she respected her mom and my authority a little to control her chaos.
And then I executed my plan. Which was simply making her play her song and nothing else. For 2 months I paid extra attention to her and trained each chord shifting exercise with her and made sure she got the tempo. Her song's tempo was 130, and we started as slow as 70, then 75, 80, and moved all the way to 130. I was so happy when she finally reached 130. I wanted to work on her chord clarity and vocal pitching for the next 2 months, but we ran out of time.
It wasn't my plan to play the guitar in her video, cause people undermine a student's effort if I'm playing the guitar with them. But Khushi's mom had given them an ultimatum that if they don't train guitar at home, she was going to stop the class. And I didn't want Khushi to lose out on her video just because she acted like a normal goofy child. I was training Khushi to play the guitar alone on the metronome, which is tougher than synching with a guitarist by your side. The only thing missing was her chord clarity and her vocal pitching skills. Which if you observe, are still bad. But in my eyes, Khushi had given her best to reach so far. And hence, deserved her video and the praise that follows. So, I compelled her to get the video done cause I knew, with me playing with her, we were going to make a good video.
Khushi struggled with the metronome, shifting chords, holding the plectrum, her elbow placement, and reading the inverted chords, as all the learning material I had was for right-handed students. And despite all of these obstacles, Khushi never gave up on her guitar. She didn't train at home as much either, but she worked hard in class.
By the way, we played the song on 130 Tempo. We had earphones in our ears feeding us the metronome, which means we were extremely tight. And man was I blown away when we recorded the video. You should watch the Behind The Scenes video. Khushi made at the max 2 mistakes during her recording session. I made more mistakes than Khushi. Khushi's accuracy, focus, and concentration were off the charts. Despite all the heat and her fingers hurting, she played the song phenomenally well. And I am extremely proud of her for her efforts and her skills. Khushi is going to be an amazing songwriter and singer, just like her idol Billie Eilish, if she ever chooses to be a singer-songwriter.
Thank you Khushi for recording one video with me.
Thank you Muskaan for your moral support to Khushi during her video recording.
Thank you Meghana for trusting Khushi in my hands.
