75 Godiva, Friday afternoon

[vdistinctive]

Eliot had handwavily spent the week looking up tips for teaching guitar. He was self-taught, himself -- other than the tips he'd gotten from Kaye-Lynn during his very brief tenure as a country music sensation -- and it was a skill he'd picked up young enough that he didn't 100% remember how he'd gone about it. It was good to review some of the bare basics for himself, and besides, it'd been forever since he and Kathy had had their regular teaching sessions. He'd rather missed them.

He'd picked up a fancy auto-tuner so they wouldn't have to spend their whole first lesson on tuning by ear -- they could cover that later -- and a variety of beginners chord books in different musical styles, since he wasn't sure yet what kind of music she'd want to play. Probably not the early American standards or country-western classics that he'd first learned. Though he'd probably try to sneak some Hank Williams or Johnny Cash in there somewhere.

He was, in fact, warming up with some Johnny Cash while he waited for Kathy to arrive. He really had been everywhere, after all.

[ooc: for Kathy and the partners, though if anyone else has a burning desire to visit, that's okay too]

Comments

[vdistinctive]

"It definitely won't hurt," Eliot said. "Even if you don't, you're gonna want to retune any time you pick it back up. Just changes in weather and temperature will pull it out of tune."

[spin_kick_snap]

"But what if it's been sitting in my nice, climate-controlled bedroom for awhile?" Kathy asked. "Or does, like, ambient humidity and barometric pressure and stuff count, too?"

[vdistinctive]

"You're talkin' about a delicate balance between wood and metal." Or vinyl, but Eliot was happy just assuming everyone went with metal ones. "Everything is gonna affect it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Makes sense," Kathy said, nodding. "Loosen the strings whenever I set her down, okay." Beat. "...Do you have a notebook handy? And a pen? I should have brought one, but I didn't think."

Because if you thought Katherine Hana Li was about to learn something and not take notes, you were a damned fool.

[vdistinctive]

"Um." Eliot really should have seen this coming. She'd taken notes about knife fighting. And yet. "Yeah, lemme see if I can find one."

He got up to go sift through a book shelf on the other side of the room.

"You know you're mostly gonna just wanna develop muscle memory and habits here, right? I don't really know a lot of theory."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm gonna go to the library and borrow some books," Kathy said. "Maybe poke Dante for pointers, too. But remembering everything I'm supposed to do is a good first step to me doing it."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded. "Fair enough." His learning style and Kathy's were very different, but they already knew that.

He located a small reporter's notebook left over from . . . some con, somewhere . . . and a pen, and tossed them to Kathy. Val jumped to her feet, ears perked up, but settled back down when Eliot went back over to his chair. "A scuffed up guitar kinda works for my whole music style, but if you want to keep yours pristine, you can probably find a guide for it online or something."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because you like old, gutteral music about broken down cars and lonely towns where your love used to live until they done run off in the factory layoffs," Kathy teased, as if she hadn't been the only other person in Eliot's life who had known who was going to be at the CMAs.

In fairness, though, that was pop-country.

[vdistinctive]

"Yup, songs exactly like that," Eliot agreed. He played a couple jangly chords that could come right out of the Hank Williams Jr. discography, then nudged the auto-tuner in her direction. "But the basics should be the same, even if you're lookin' to play something new and flashy all about how much you love going to clubs and wearing popular brand name clothes and not actually knowing anything about Mick Jagger."

Honestly, even Eliot's five-or-more year out of date knowledge of dance-pop was fairly impressive, considering.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I only dance with boys who look like him," Kathy said. "I keep hoping they'll call me, maybe, on Friday."

Those songs should all be old enough for Eliot to recognize!

[vdistinctive]

"Hot damn," Eliot responded, dry as a bone. "I bet then you call the police and a fireman."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy beamed at him with pride. Modern music! "It's a night I won't remember," she promised, "but I'm the one they can't forget."

Which was true enough in its own way.