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.