Youth

My wife went on a youtube binge the other day and at one point I looked over her shoulder to see what had gotten her attention. Well, there were bunches of videos of dachshunds, but there was one music one. It featured three kids sitting on the sofa playing a bluegrass piece. (I've been searching the site and have been unable to find it again, so I can't post the direct link here.)

There were two guitars and a mandolin. The kids were somewhere in the 6-10 range and they were really good.

What got me though was that they didn't appear to be having all that much fun. They kept looking to the person holding the camera and all I could read in their eyes was something like: daddy, can we stop now?

What really got me was that I feel like here I am pouring my heart into the guitar and I may never get as good as these little kids. On the other hand, I think I'm having more fun than them.

Relax

I think I tense up for some things. I find that's certainly true for pieces that I'm making an effort to play without error, or for difficult chord shapes (bars), or difficult fingering patterns.

I would imagine that, as a relative beginner, I'm generally holding my hands, fingers, arms too rigidly.

While practicing yesterday, I tried monitoring this and really made an effort to loosen up. I'm not sure it sounded any better, but it certainly felt better.

Should it sound like music?

I had another epiphany. Lately, things have been sounding a little more like music and I'd been taking that as a good sign.

Then I began thinking about my son and his violin. He's been playing for years and, over the years, it's sounded more and less like music. At the very beginning, it had lots of rough patches and, though I was proud of every note, sometimes, it was a stretch to find music in there. Later, it sounded like music a lot, and this lasted up until fairly recently. Of late, though, he seems to often work on bizarre scales and exercises that don't sound like music. I suppose the difference is that the bizarre scales aren't supposed to sound like music.

So the issue is this: if this is the typical continuum, where am I on it? I'm thinking I'm at that first break between initial non-musical and musical.

I guess the moral is that the more progress I make, the longer the path to where I want to be seems.

Rhythm

I'm back from my trip, a week away from the guitar and no noticeable backsliding.

I've been working through the Shipton book (described in an earlier post). I'm up to the third part and had been having trouble with some of the fancy syncopated strums. I had a little epiphany today though. I noticed that if I just hold one chord shape it's easier to figure out the strumming pattern, than if I'm trying to do the chord changes at the same time.

This is probably the most obvious thing in the world, but it's fairly typical of my epiphanies!

Hiatus

I'm off to an international conference for a week and, because of all the other carry-ons I'm taking, I'm leaving the travel guitar behind. This may be the first break from daily practice since the beginning of the year.

I'm going to miss it and I worry that I'll backslide.

There's research that shows that appropriate "visualization" can help more than actual practice in some kinds of learning. I don't think the learning involved is middle-aged guitar, but I'm hoping it'll generalize.

Collectors

I just got a new guitar. Actually, it was a very generous gift from my mom on the occasion of a momentous birthday: a Martin D-18. I put up a picture to the right.

It's just gorgeous and sounds like bliss. It's clearly worthy of someone who can play a lot better than I can at this stage, but i) it gives me a goal to shoot for; ii) it was a really nice gift; and iii) did I already mention that it's just plan goegeous?

I think that there is a collector syndrome. My impression is that it shows up most often with men who collect guns, of all things, but I think it shows up with guitars too. I've run across quite a few guys who "collect" guitars. I'm not sure how well they play, but they seem to have way more guitars than they have time to play them. (There are obviously women who collect things too; there just seems to be something very male about this kind of collecting.)

With this beautiful new guitar, I now have three, All Martins.

• LXM A baby Martin for traveling.
  
• DX1R My previous guitar. Quite serviceable and probably the one I'll use for trips where I have enough room to bring a full-size instrument.
  
• D-18 The new beauty. So far, I want to guard it with my life and keep it at home!
  

When I was shopping around for the D-18, I did see some really beautiful Larrivee instruments....

Consumed

I found a new little riff that I'm totally consumed by. It's from a song called "The Junkie Song" by a band called the Be Good Tanyas. I found the tab on the web and it looks like this:

  Am                      C           G
----------3-3-------------------------------
---1----1--------1----1----1----1--0-----0^1
-2----2--------2----2----0----0----0---0----
--------------------------------------------
0----0--------0----0----3----3--------------
----------------------------------3---3-----

Hauntingly pretty to my mind, but really really easy. I suppose I have this naive view that the most interesting music should be hardest, but maybe that isn't so. It would seem that there's music that's hard to play and then there's music that's hard to think up.

I guess the trick for me at my stage is to try to enjoy learning the latter, rather than the former!