Categories
Thoughts

Guitar playing. A reboot.

Intro

I’m unsure whether to call this my blog, guitar playing diary, confessions of a sinning guitarist? Any which way, welcome to anyone reading this brain dump by a mid-40s guy from UK who used to play guitar, and may say again that he plays guitar. Depending on how this goes.

Around 15 years ago, I started having guitar lessons with Gordon Ormond, a gentleman whose life was filled with music, guitars and guitarists, and passion for all three. I spent several fascinating years having lessons with Gordon, combining theory, guitar technique and song tuition in a way that I continue to appreciate and be able to reference today.

I’ve little interest in playing in a band, and so my playing reached a point where I wasn’t particularly improving because I didn’t have a clear driver to focus me on practicing. Being able to play the guitar parts of some of my favourite rock songs was, and is, great. However, as the single motivation for practicing to the level that was needed, it wasn’t enough, and my guitar playing gradually was replaced by other interests.

Until relatively recently.

I didn’t resume at the start of the pandemic, running was the activity that grabbed me initially (to be more accurate, eating and drinking was the initial habit, and running followed as a necessity with gyms, etc, closed, and I quickly started to enjoy it).

Running now is just part of my day, or at least most days, and my renewed interest in guitar playing has been driven by a good friend of mine taking advantage of time at home to reinvigorate his own interest and playing. Hearing his enthusiasm, how he’s extended his knowledge and skill level re-engaged me with the enthusiasm for starting to pick up the guitar again myself.

Why do this, anyway?

The blog, or the guitar playing? The two may be closely linked, but let’s take the guitar playing first.

I’ve always loved music, right back to my first memories I can remember being intrigued by it and immersed in it. The Beatles, The Stones, The Hollies (to name a few) by my parents, and Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky by my Grandad. Playing music, though, never came to me particularly easily, and has usually ended by me becoming distracted by something else.

As I’ve become a little older, and an even smaller amount wiser, I’ve realised that’s because I didn’t have any particular goal, or direction. I’ve also realised that whilst I love guitar music, and playing the guitar intrigues and enthuses me more than any other instrument, playing the guitar for its own sake perhaps isn’t the driver I need.

It may be that the tool for that driver is what I’m using to write this, my MacBook.

Nothing revolutionary here. At all. That’s fine though, I don’t need to be pushing boundaries in a general sense, just in a personal one, and being able to combine guitar playing with other instruments (virtual or otherwise), and to create a “whole” that can stand up on its own, by myself, fascinates me.

However, to achieve that wider aim, I need to improve in several areas. Actually, in some areas I don’t need to improve; I need to start.

Starting with my guitar playing.

So why the blog?

If I need to improve my guitar playing, why am I pressing keys on a keyboard rather than fretting notes on fretboard?

Accountability. A word that’s used regularly in my “daytime”, and one that I want to bring out for my musical endeavours. The key here is the accountability is to myself: to educate myself, to motivate myself, to enthuse myself.

In answer to the question of “why do this?”, this blog is my way of being accountable. This is going to be my journal of my trip back into guitar playing and, to take that further, music making in a more creative sense. Let’s see what my inspirations are, what my fears are, my inhibitions and what situations just make me feel like picking up the guitar is too much hard work, either mentally or physically.

If anyone reads this then welcome, thanks for ploughing through to here, and let’s see where we go.

Categories
Thoughts

Two years later…

Well, what happened?

Perhaps more than’s indicated in this blog.

Quite a lot, actually.

Quite a lot of learning new music, investigating new information, chatting to new people, and of course “investing” in new kit. All in the name of the guitar.

What hasn’t happened is me nailing down what you might call a proper practice routine. A regular routine, yes: but not one that’s set up to get maximum benefit from the time I spend with a guitar in my hand.

It seems to be a common question, or a series of questions: “how should I practice?”, “what should I practice?” being the most pressing two. It seems to me that the key to answering those is first to understand what you’re looking to achieve, that is to set out some achievable goals. When you know that, you can work out the steps that you need to progress through to meet those goals.

Write them down

Make them specific. Make them achievable, and make them achievable in a way that fits the amount of time you have (per day, per week) and the amount of time before you want to be able to tick off that achievement.

It’s a much better feeling to have goals that feel achievable, that you can feel yourself moving closer towards achieving, than something that sits on your mental horizon like a particularly-grumpy teenager, scowling at you from a distance.

To take an extreme example, “learn the main guitar solo from Comfortably Numb and be able to play along with the record” is more achievable than “learn the main guitar solo from Comfortably Numb, record it over a home-made backing track including bass and drum parts and upload to Soundcloud”. The first one is focussed on learning a specific section of a piece of music, and that itself is likely to be challenging and stretching. The second relies on a series of complimentary but separate skills across different disciplines which if you try and combine is likely to lead to failure.

It should be something that you know will fill you with a sense of achievement when you achieve it.

It should be possible to achieve within a defined amount of time, say four weeks. That means that when you achieve it, you can look back over a recent period and see that the effort and focus has paid off.

Above all, write the goal down. Write it on a post it. Tape it to the fridge, or your amp, or stick it on your laptop. Have it somewhere you can see it everyday. Tell people what your goal is to bring it to life and to help you be accountable for working towards achieving it.

Having talked about goals for a little bit, I’m going to go away now and write some down. My first goal is to be back within three days (rather than three years), to talk about a couple of guitar-related goals that I’ll have written down, and perhaps to talk a little bit about how I’m going to achieve them.

Have a happy Monday.

Categories
Guitar Thoughts

First steps…

What have I done so far?

The first thing to do is restring your guitar, right?

Ok, great, that’s done. Whilst watching Lewis Hamilton (apologies, Sir Lewis), win in Portugal on Sunday.

A quick note…

I’m going to try and avoid talking too much about gear. Kit. Etc. Mainly because I could just talk about that, and nothing else. Thus exacerbating my problem of not concentrating on what will help me improve. New kit can motivate, so can indirectly drive improvement, but in itself doesn’t often directly improve. Certainly not for me (I’m fortunate to have a good standard of gear to play with, and I may well acquire more of it, but focussing on that isn’t going to drive the improvement that I need).

Back to the discussion…

Strings, on the other hand, can make a material difference. Brighter, fresher, more responsive, they can be described in different ways. Environmentally-unfriendly is another way, so I’m going with Rotosound 0.10s for for the first time (they, like me, are made in UK, and so avoid being distributed around the world for me to get them onto my guitar). Nothing so far has made me feel that’s anything other than a good decision, so I’m looking forward to trying them out some more.

What’s that? New strings require tuning, and that requires kit? An amnesty on the “no kit” rule then, as I really love my pedal tuner (it’s the PolyTune 3 Noir, for anyone who cares). It works, really well, it’s simple, it stops me being out of tune and immediately assuming that it’s me technique that’s making me sound so bad.

I did watch an interesting – really – YouTube video posted by Anderton’s, a guitar shop based in Guildford that I walked past many times whilst I was uninterested in guitar playing, that compared different electronic pedal tuners. I was quite surprised by the result.

I’ve been motivated by many videos, blogs and general online information, and I’ll share that in a page on this site over the next few days and keep it updated.

So actually, what have I done so far?

I’ve restrung and tuned my guitar. Good start. Critical start, if I don’t want to immediately be put off playing.

Less practically, I’ve also found people at work who I work and chat with regularly, and who are current or lapsed guitar players. What a great way to enjoy five minutes of chat at work during these “remote” times with a new shared interest. Even better, I think I’ve encouraged one of my colleagues to restring their guitar and to remember how much they enjoy playing.