Daily lessons in music
by Matt Skates, nw news editor

     If Michael Daily had a teacher as good as he is, he would be 20 years ahead of where he is now.
     Daily, NW Campus’ classical guitar instructor, believes in sharing himself with his students.
     “I think that people who are so arrogant they don't want to share their art through teaching are taking away from its development,” Daily said.
      Daily is a hidden treasure on campus. Most people recognize his superior musical talent, but don’t realize that only a few decades earlier, at the tender age of 16, Daily was opening up for the Grateful Dead.
     Of course, the word tender is used lightly. By that time, as the guitar player in a coffee shop house band, he had already plucked out a few chords with such up and coming stars as Linda Ronstadt, Randy Sparks and John Denver.
     Daily’s parents gave him his first guitar, a Sears and Roebuck model, when he was 5, and by age 6 he had taught himself to read music.
     “I just loved it, and I took to it. I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life,” Daily said
     As a young player, Daily was turned on to folk by his parents.
     He learned to mimic many Peter, Paul and Mary guitar parts before learning that he was trying, with a great amount of success, to do the work of two guitars.
     “I was a little bit of a late bloomer for the hippie era,” Daily said.
     “But being involved with the coffee house stuff and my mother’s hanging out with all the hip people, I was pretty close to that culture. I consider myself a conservative hippie,” he added.
     Unlike his parents, Daily was already a fan of classical music when he was hired to play guitar in a flamenco dance group.
     “I was hired because I could improvise and play fast. They figured they could teach me the rest.
     They taught me how to hold a guitar as well as other things that were very useful when I decided to play classical guitar,” he said.
     Daily auditioned for the musical group Swallow when his friend, the bass player, recommended him to the 30-year-old leader of the group.
     “He was skeptical at first, but I went and did the audition, and he liked it. Even at my age, he couldn’t find anybody better, so I became the lead guitarist in the group.”
     The band was together only three months when they competed in and won a local battle of the bands contest, winning a trip to California to compete at the next level.
     After winning their second competition, the band was approached by Jerry Garcia, who asked the group to tour with the Grateful Dead in their ’72 national tour.
     “They liked us so much, in fact, that we were asked to come back the next year,” Daily said.
     Daily has since gone on to pursue teaching, not because he has to do so to eat, but because he feels it’s his duty.
     “One of the sad things about the ’60s was that as a lot of those people got older, they turned into being just as materialistic, just as greedy and just as self-centered as they thought their parents were,” he explained.
     “It used to be that the masters of a profession always taught. I feel it’s always important to make myself available to the community to help those who want to learn,” he said.
     The lineage between students and their teachers goes back for centuries, Daily said; it is kind of an artist family tree.
     His students quickly discover that unlike many teachers, Daily uses an almost scientific approach to teaching.
     Daily spent a tremendous amount of time studying the physics of the guitar in college, and now uses his research to customize each of his students playing styles.
     “If [a student] played at the same angles as I do, [he] wouldn’t produce the same kind of sound, so I help each student develop a playing style that fits his body,” he explained.
     Daily now finds himself playing for a younger crowd as he is now a father.
     His wife is an accomplished pianist, so there is always music in the house.
     “It always astonishes me how slowly the development of human relationships moves in relation to technology. I didn’t understand that until I had kids. There are just some things I can’t teach him that he’ll have to learn on his own,” Daily said.