MORGANTOWN – After spending a great deal of his career teaching others to pilot ships and tugboats as a U.S. Merchant Marine, Frank Hobbs switched his focus to teaching something he’s a little more passionate about.

Hobbs joined the Butler County Arts Guild after his retirement last November and offered to provide guitar lessons.

“They were just looking for things to do for the community, so I volunteered to teach,” he said.

On Thursday, Hobbs taught the fourth guitar lesson in a series that meets each week and is supposed to wrap up by Christmas in the Butler County Arts Guild’s building in Morgantown.

Though he had larger turnouts at previous lessons, three dedicated students appeared Thursday night, each with an acoustic guitar.

At the front of the room, Hobbs displayed a chart showing all 12 of the notes in Western music as well as explanations of the half-step, a progression from one note to the next, and whole step, a switch two notes up or down the sequence.

“This isn’t as much fun as just picking up your guitar and playing it, but if you learn this stuff, it’ll make it that much better,” he said.

All three students remembered learning the chords for “Amazing Grace” played in the key of A from a previous lesson.

Thursday’s lesson revolved mainly around how to transpose the song into a different key.

“Some people may not want to play ‘Amazing Grace’ in A. They may want to play in D, which would be good if you have a higher voice,” Hobbs said.

Switching to the key of D involved taking the notes used in the key of A, and swapping each one out for the note five half-steps ahead in the sequence.

“Music is very mathematical and if you learn a song in one key, you can play it in any other key,” Hobbs said.

With Hobbs’ guidance, the students figured out how to transpose the song into the keys of D, G and C. Each time a student correctly said what the next note in a sequence was, Hobbs handed him an orange sticky note.

The sticky notes, Hobbs said, are essentially raffle tickets. At the final class in December, he’ll put everybody’s sticky notes, which will have their names written on them, together and draw one. The winner will receive an acoustic guitar.

Don Elmore, 11, who started playing drums in school this year, said he wanted to give guitar a shot as well.

“We have a lot of guitars at our house. I like hearing one play good, so I wanted to start guitar lessons to kind of play like that,” he said.

Don wants to learn the guitar so he can play country music and will continue taking lessons with Hobbs as long as they’re offered, he said.

“I feel like guitar just goes well with country music, and I like country music.”

Hobbs said he has 51 years of experience playing guitar, having started when he was 14.

“I was in my first rock band when I was 16, played a lot of Credence (Clearwater Revival),” he said.

Focusing mainly on gospel, country and classic rock, Hobbs has played guitar in numerous bands during the six-month periods when he was back home from duty.

“I think once you get bit by the guitar bug, you can’t stop,” he said. “I can’t watch a TV show without a guitar in my hands. It’s relaxing.”

Hobbs said he has not discussed continuing to teach guitar lessons with Roger Givens, president of the guild, but would like to start new classes or continue to teach his current students more advanced techniques.

Hobbs said teaching has given him the opportunity to refresh his memory of important concepts. “It’s made me search my own knowledge,” he said. “It’s one thing to sit there and play because it’s easy for me to play by ear, but I wish I’d known more theory.”