Credit:Christopher Riggs doesn’t just play the electric guitar. They deconstruct it. They strip it down to its most fundamental elements. Forget scales, arpeggios, and even standard tunings—keys and harmonies are myths, anyway. Riggs eschews these things entirely, instead dragging their guitar to the brink and inviting usThat’s not to suggest that Riggs—who’s also a music teacher for Chicago Public Schools—is incapable of making conventionally attractive sounds in conventional ways.
“It’s a very satisfactory feedback loop,” Riggs says. “To me, that seems to fit in the framework of stimming . . . like, ‘This sound needs to be very specific, and I just want to keep doing it.’”It goes without saying Riggs is not your typical music teacher. Though their students aren’t preparing guitars with electrical wire and bottle caps or writing atonal compositions, that same spirit of exploration remains crucial to Riggs’s classrooms.
“Especially on the south side, you have plenty of schools where the only special class is gym, and that’s incredibly sad,” Riggs says. “To know [principal Iysha Jones] was prioritizing those things made me really happy.” Riggs also teaches an elective class every Wednesday afternoon. It’s nonevaluative, meaning no one is graded, and it’s even more exploratory than their other classes. Some students record original songs, during this period or before the school day begins , with Riggs walking them through the basic steps of the mixing process. Riggs then listens to these recordings and looks for specific techniques—such as the use of triplet rhythms—to discuss in their other classrooms.
Riggs’s artistry has also been influenced by their students. At Wadsworth, they learned about TikTok from their fourth grade class and subsequently joined the platform, so they could reference it during lessons. Riggs posted a video playing guitar, and other users liked and commented on it. Their account,, has since evolved into a creative outlet for Riggs, who has an audience of nearly 14,000 followers.
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