Troy High School’s instrumental music program is fairly diverse, encompassing marching band, jazz band, and orchestra. These programs are all alike in relative rigor, most if not all offering (and often requiring) after-school practice, with many opportunities for performance at concerts, sporting events, and assemblies throughout the year.
Naturally, this invites more rigor, after-school practices, more consistent drilling, more challenging music, opportunities for multi-year enrollment in these programs, giving accolades and competitive opportunities (every Troy student’s dream), etc. However, among these programs, one class stands out as an outlier: the guitar class.

Guitar is not as focused on performance as the other instrumental music courses. This, I feel, is the main difference from its sister courses. It is also typically a one-year course and, by most students I know (myself included), considered a light class—we don’t get homework, as we usually receive adequate practice in class for our music. Speaking of, the music we learn is less rigorous than band, orchestra, etc.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that the guitar is simply a different instrument, which means guitar songs are intended to be on the surface, typically less complex. Other reasons include the fact that the guitar is used the fewest times per year compared to other instrument classes. We perform in two concerts per year: our holiday concert and the May end-of-year concert. We also do not perform at any other events. The other instrumental bands do, and therefore it is in their interest to perform more complex and precise music to put on a good show for their audiences.

Without this pressure, guitar students are left without the weight that other music students have throughout most of the year. In many ways, guitar is a relaxing class, a respite in many students’ days—it also gives a coveted year-long art credit (something many Troy students are hard-pressed to come by). Generally, the class feels light, and while we do practice with the rigor expected in a Troy class, it can feel, at times, like the bare minimum. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Again, an easy-to-pass and easy-to-enjoy class.

At the same time, some students join the class out of a desire to play in much the same capacity that students in other performing instrumental music classes do. Thus, we are faced with a conundrum: prioritize the students who take the instrument most seriously, at the likely expense of the majority, or sacrifice that minority for the majority to have a fun time, and force the students who want to become rockstars on the guitar to turn to outside resources, inevitably cramming a potentially already busy academic, personal, and work life.

My opinion is that the class should opt to remain a casual class, an alternative for those who want to explore musical instruments without the full commitment the rest of the instrumental program demands. The instrumental director at Troy has chosen this route, too, for the most part, while incorporating more performances into our roster. The holiday performance was a recent addition to guitar, and we have floated the idea of one or two other concerts, although this is still in the air.

Another suggestion is a second-year guitar option that would offer more performance opportunities. Perhaps one that would focus on modern styles of playing rather than classical style. This has been criticized for bloating schedules and budgets. Instrumental music already has a wide array of sub-programs.

If this second year of guitar is meant to be a separate, higher-level experience, then this class would be separate from regular guitar I. This raises issues of time constraints for the school’s instrumental music director’s schedule and the program in general. It could also require the school to spend more on buying guitars and fixing up old ones—already an issue, seeing as multiple school-lent guitars have, up until recently, had one or more broken strings that have taken months to get replaced.

Ultimately, there is no clear, easy solution, but this isn’t much of a problem for the vast majority of guitar students, who simply join the class to get some performing arts credit for college, learn an instrument, and have a fun class that is only really half a class. This is the core appeal that sets guitar apart from the core instrumental music program at Troy, and for it, I, as a guitar student, am grateful.