Music and families

I've taken to reading what appear to be extended obituaries in the morning paper. The "Region" section of our paper does longer stories once or twice a week about some fairly ordinary person who's just passed away. They're really charming stories that often reveal some interesting personal history, e.g. Aunt Edna moved here from Romania and bought a ranch in Sonoita, or my dad invented peanut butter, or uncle Fred owned a little store where kids could get snowcones for free, etc.

Anyway, I found one the other day about a guy who was described as an incredible guitarist, but who had never taken a lesson. On reading the story, it turned out that i) he really was an incredible guitarist, and ii) that both of his parents were guitarists and that when he was a kid both parents would routinely pull out their guitars for the evening.

Not to detract anything from the guy in question--who really seems to have been an incredible guitarist and an all-around nice person---but I'm wondering how much variation there is in terms of "music in the home". While the person in question may never had had any formal instruction, it seems like he had almost daily exposure to guitar playing by several family members.

I think my experience is probably pretty close to the norm for most Americans. My siblings and I all had music lessons of various sorts, but our training and playing lasted only a few years. Neither of our parents played anything, though both had had similar upbringings. (My parents are divorced, but I think that's orthogonal.)

So the general question: how much variation on musical "exposure" is there and does that play a role in whether kids pursue music?

The specific question for me: can I honestly expect to make serious progress on the guitar when I did not have extended childhood or current exposure and am no longer taking lessons?

A new book

I'm still working on songs in the Shipton book, but I've got another book that's been sitting around for a few weeks that I've started playing from: You can teach yourself fingerpicking guitar by Tommy Flint.

Fingerpicking, if you don't know, is when you play the individual strings with individual fingers. No pick. No strumming. I've got a few songs like this already, but this is a whole book of them.

The very beginning of the book is way too beginner-oriented, even for me! But I've flipped through the book and the stuff near the end is way more advanced than I've done so far, so I figure it'll be a nice one to work through.

At the moment, I'm struggling with the fact that the introductory material appears to have been written before the dawn of time. It's not so much inaccurate in any technical way; it's just culturally way out of date.

The broad expanse

The other day we went over to our friends AVF and JI's house to make sure that AVF wasn't sleeping in the carport. (Long story; see AVF's blog!)

I was immediately distracted by AVF's classical guitar. I've certainly messed around with them before, but I hadn't held one in quite a while.

I tuned it up and was immediately reminded of the differences: nylon strings, smaller body than my own dreadnaughts, wider fretboard. The last took some adjustment. I felt like I had to stretch even further for some chords.

What surprised me was the sense of liberation I had. I think I must be at a phase where I'm fighting not to run into strings I shoudn't. The wider fretboard made me feel so much more "on target".

And with such light and friendly strings.

Bliss...especially since there was major puppy bonding...and we found that AVF was not sleeping in the carport that night.

Drop-D

I finished the Shipton book (minus a few pieces I didn't like).

I feel like I'm doing some backsliding though. Things don't seem to sound as good as they did a few weeks ago, especially strumming pieces. I suppose this is some sort of plateau that I just have to play through, but it's a bit daunting.

On the other hand, I'm learning a version of the Pachelbel Canon in what I believe is "drop-D" tuning.

If you're not a guitar person, the normal tuning of the six strings from low to high is: E A D G B E. Drop D tuning involves lowering that low E down to D. Thus: D A D G B E. I now have a "chromatic tuner", so this is actually pretty easy to do on the fly. It's amazing how this one little change makes such a difference in the sound of the instrument. That low D is sooooooo low!

Goals

Still working through the same book (Shipton).

One of my goals for my current sabbatical had been to try to finish the book before the end of the sabbatical.

I'm really really close, but there are still 4-5 songs in the book and my sabbatical technically ends at the end of this month.

Hm. I just realized that I have my own sense of making progress with a piece.

• First stage is that I can play all the notes through, off tempo.
  
• Second stage is that I can play them through and it vaguely sounds like the actual piece.
  
• Third stage, would be that I can play through at tempo with the music.
  
• Fourth stage is playing through at tempo with no music.
  

I'm certainly not to stage four with the whole book, but I'd love to be at stage three.

Reading music

I'm still working through the Shipton book. I'd been making what seems like good progress.

A couple of times, I've really stalled. Sometimes I think that's probably normal plateauing, but other times it's been something else.

The fact of the matter is that I can't read music very well. I learned how when I was really young and have had no reason to keep sharp with it over the last 30 years or so. What I find is that when I come to a new piece that's written in normal musical notation as opposed to tablature, I can read it, but it's really slow.

This has shown up in the book several times so far, but I'd come to a couple of pieces back to back in the Shipton book over the last two weeks or so written in standard music and it had slowed me down.

I seem to have overcome it a bit. I can play both through (slowly and awkwardly of course!), but I can get through them. So I figure I'm due a little celebration.

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.