What’s your relationship with guitar?

Hey all! Just on the road heading back east, so haven’t had the usual amount of time to film content. So I thought I’d share a story of a lesson I had with MY teacher, Jim.

I’ve been taking lessons with Jim for…on and off?…30 years. He’s in Nashville, TN now, and I’m in Albany, NY. Jim’s 70, and, we are using FaceTime for our distance-learning. Both of those things makes this story even more awesome.

I was playing through a Bach piece in our last lesson. So, the lesson usually starts like this:

A few minutes of catching up on how practice the last week was
Jim says, “Ok, go ahead and play the piece”.
He listens, and makes some notes while I’m playing, and when I’m done he’ll…
Review the measures/areas where it may have needed help, lacked musicality, etc.

So this particular day his lower back was hurting him. He said, “Sorry! I have to walk around the room while you play, my back really hurts, but I’m listening”.

I played the entire piece (called an “invention”). It’s about 40 measures.

Jim was walking around for all of it.

He sits down and says, “Hey, that was pretty solid but you missed an F-sharp in measure 3”.

Yep. Sure enough, I checked. I was playing F-natural.

The guy was up and walking around, listened to the whole piece, and knew exactly WHAT MEASURE I missed a note in.

As he is having some issues with playing temporarily, he can easily teach a great lesson without touching the guitar. Maybe grabbing it once, something like that.

THAT is the relationship I want with music, through my guitar.

The guitar is JUST the vehicle. That is all. It’s just the thing we do with our hands to make a sound. It could be bassoon. A violin. A cello. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The guitar just happens to the poison I picked. Something about it, I guess. It sure isn’t the most comfortable thing to play. I saw Kurt Cobain, Eric Clapton, and Neil Young doing it, so I thought what the heck. However, violin was a close second! They were too expensive, though.

Hearing a note just 1/2 step out of tune without even LOOKING at the sheet music while someone (or a recording) plays is the relationship I want with music. A true desire that is pretty much a yearning that takes constant, daily work to fulfill. I don’t wanna be Eddie Van Halen. Don’t wanna be Stevie Ray Vaughan. Don’t wanna be John Mayer, Eric Clapton, George Lynch, Les Paul, or any other “great”.

I just want that close, loving, intimate relationship with pitch on our instrument.

What do YOU want from your relationship with guitar?

If you don’t know, or can’t use words to put these thoughts and feelings into form…you risk not making progress…thus…not getting closer to what you truly desire musically.

I hope you liked this story from last week. I’ll just be here east of Sioux City thinking about Bach :)]

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