These days are tough. Virus running rampant, social unrest and our own personal struggles with life, right? Where do you turn? The obvious answer for the readers of this blog would be: Music, of course! While that is the answer expected here given the context and content, can we get more specific for a moment?

I might pop off the answer that I turn to my guitar when I get down (and I often use that response). That’s the cool answer and that does happen but it is not actually what usually happens. I enjoy taking walks with my dog to cool off from a heated argument or from reading stuff on social media that made me crazy or even the news. I started taking walks in my teen years to take a break from school pressures and all that comes with being a teenager in America. Cycling was also a great outlet for me and I spent many afternoons pedaling away my worries.

The Songs in My Head…

Something that happens in the background, in my thoughts, is a particular song comes to mind. Sometimes I make up a tune on the spur of the moment but mostly it is something I have heard that had the right lyric or mood to suit the occasion. It could be something that allows me to express anger or depression and sadness. Many times, it is an encouraging song that would lift my spirits. Consider the following:

• Don’t Look Back – Boston
• Hold Your Head Up – Argent (quoted from this one recently)
• Fight the Good Fight – Triumph

Growing Up

Growing up, I roomed with a younger brother. We got into scrapes with other kids from another neighborhood and the typical neighborhood bully. One night, he intimated that he was scared sometimes and wondered how I dealt with it. I told him I had a soundtrack running in my head and that would give me the strength to deal even though I was scared. Being a tall kid, I was a target for the local bullies and found myself having to defend myself on occasion. Music, from an early age, was my go-to for strength and encouragement. I never liked to fight but would not back down when challenged.

Later when I had gotten a paper route for a local freebie paper, my younger brother helped me deliver a couple of times. He would flip over the fences into the next yard singing “Taking my time/Just moving along!” from Boston’s song, Long Time. I think he caught on 😉

Today…

It’s been many years since those days but I still have that soundtrack going. The fights are different and more existential than those days but I still derive strength from music much in the same way. The cool thing now is that I can actually play those songs ringing in my head on my guitar. Not perfectly but good enough to imagine myself in front of an arena blasting with a stack of Marshalls behind me. Retreating into my music room and cranking with headphones on (gotta think of the wife who is not a fan of loud 😉 has been a time of solace for me. My wife can tell a difference as I come out buoyed and with a smile on my face.

Let these times drive you to music. Learn to play your guitar so you can make something beautiful or crush the blues with heavy riffing. Anyway you can, do not let the music die within you. Let it out and express yourself!

There is a band named Marbin that I found out about through Facebook a couple of years ago that I really like. They have made their following and created an audience for themselves through social media. They play a type of electric fusion that is an equal mix of rock, jazz, and gypsy. Warning! They are not for everyone. The guitar is loud, the music is fast and intense and their live shows include “Story Time” between songs that can be a bit rude or off-putting to some (e.g. my wife). Still, they are good and worth checking out. They consist of guitar and saxophone as the lead instruments and a rhythm section of bass and drums. No vocals.

If you like the band page, Marbin, you will occasionally get live streams of the guitarist (sometimes the sax, too) playing acoustic at a variety of locations. On the rare occasion, he will play his electric at home. Many times you will be treated to a lesson on guitar (Dani Rabin having graduated from Berklee College of Music) as people submit questions in the live stream.

Typically, he plays gypsy jazz. If you don’t know what that is, take a listen to Django Reinhardt who basically defined the genre decades ago. After that, check out The Rhythm Future Quartet (recordings available on BandCamp). Again, music that might not appeal to everyone but is a style we can learn from. Like classical guitar, it is a style I would like to be able to play but do not have the time to devote to it. However, I can steal ideas and techniques! That I am good at 😉

One of the things I find limits musicians is their lack of breadth in their listening choices. Many stay with only what is familiar or what they know they will like right off. Listening to other styles and genres stretches us as musicians. I listen to what I like, of course, but am always open to something different. Check out studio musicians and they will tell you about how they are able to play a wide variety of styles and that gets them jobs time and again. There is a fun video of Tommy Tedesco, who is famous for his part in The Wrecking Crew hit makers of the 60’s, where he explains how he never turned down a studio gig. If he didn’t know a particular style, he made it up as he went! I wouldn’t recommend this practice but Tommy had to be, at least, familiar enough with a variety of popular styles to even pull off a passable version on the spot.

Listening to other styles and genres gives my playing extra tools that I can call on at a moment’s notice. I watched a ukulele player in a commercial for D’Addario Strings demonstrate a strumming technique he uses that I had never seen before. I tried it on my guitar and it sounds amazing! I don’t use it hardly ever but it showed me a way to break out of my usual patterns. Consider the music you know well. Wouldn’t you like to spice it up a bit but are at a loss as to how? Throw in that ukulele pattern and see what develops! What if you wanted to take a song and play it as if it was written in a completely different style or genre just for fun? One of the guys in my group that plays for a local addiction recovery program suggested we play everything in Reggae. Yikes! I was never a fan but I have listened to it enough to be able to pull off the feel. Christmas music is great for this kind of thing to break it out of the tired old style that it frequently gets stuck in. There is a great version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen/We Three Kings by The Bare Naked Ladies that really moves and actually sounds merry!

Give it a try! Listen around and see what you can incorporate into your playing that livens things up or, at least, breaks old habits and develops you further as a musician. You will be glad you did.

…and I suspect many of you are not either. I love rippin’ fast leads and flashy guitar work as much as the next guy but it is only aspirational at this point. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. It was never a priority so I never put the time in trying to get to that level of playing.
2. It has not been useful in the things I have played over the years.

Priorities

My first love was the drums. However, that was my mother’s last love.
When I said I wanted to play the drums, her response was, “You can’t hum to the drums!” My parents would pay for guitar or piano lessons. My father played guitar and my older brother played; so, it was a natural choice. I reasoned that I could carry a guitar with me wherever I went but a piano? Not so much. (I tried harmonica, too, but gave that up in favor of the guitar). I managed to get a bass at some point, thanks to a younger brother, and began splitting my time between bass and guitar. I could play guitar competently but not nearly as well as my older brother. However, I found I could learn bass parts easily by ear and found myself playing in bands in high school and beyond. I always kept playing guitar, of course, but the rhythm section was my life.
Combining the two pushed me into developing my sense of rhythm that played out when I found myself the lone guitarist when I walked into church one Sunday morning. To this day, I have no idea where everyone went as they never told me they were quitting the group. I didn’t sing and I had No experience leading on my own! Anyway, that’s a story for another day!
All of that to say I put far more effort into bass for most of my teens and 20s and then family life replaced that. Still, I got a good solid foundation in rhythm over the years.

Utility

Later in life as I was able to get back into playing more, I found that I was playing mostly solo or leading a singing group of some kind. If you don’t have good time and a solid sense of rhythm, leading music will be a mess. If you are driving the music and leading singing, there really is no need for a lead break. When they do come up, a flashy blast of notes is not typically the thing to do. Something tasteful and fitting that draws singers back into the next chorus or verse is far more helpful. Sometimes, these happen spontaneously making it good to at least have some chops (no matter how limited) in this area. Can you play the melody when called upon to do so? It’s a great place to start a solo and you can’t go wrong!
Well, the era of the guitar hero seems to have passed for the most part and there is always somebody who can jump in to provide that service anyway. I’m happy keeping the song going and putting in my two cents of solos when necessary. Nobody seems to care (insert joke about how may guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb) that I cannot channel Steve Vai or Joe Satriani or even Eddie Van Halen. I get my licks in nonetheless 😉

That is why I started Just 2 Play Guitar, by the way. I found over the years that there were many people like me who wanted to play or just needed some help and were not looking to set the guitar world on fire with their amazing chops. We will have that kind of instruction for those who want to learn beyond the basics and Glenn Riley is our first instructor to that end. He is a Musicians Institute graduate and experienced, gigging pro. We are very glad to have him!
For the rest of us, though, let’s learn to play and enjoy the ride at whatever level!

A week ago or so, I was in my backyard on our patio playing my guitar and trying some ideas to come up with a new song. There are several ways I try to get the juices flowing and sometimes I have an idea already mulling around in my head that is trying to get out through my fingers. Of course, I was in standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) and trying various chords and combinations. Many times I come across something that sounds like another song I have heard and I will try to figure that out before getting back to finding my own thing. It happens that sometimes I have to do that before getting on with my own creativity as the other song will constantly be in my head crowding out all other ideas. This happened to me years ago and led to the way I play Greensleeves/What Child Is This? to this day. Prompted by the song by Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow off their live album called 16th Century Greensleeves, I played a Dm and went, “Huh, that sounds familiar…” Now I have a cool version for myself!

Like most, I typically stay in standard tuning and just work out the fingerings for the chords as I go. This time, I came up with a cool sounding line but it wasn’t quite there. As I kept working with it, removing notes and adding notes at strategic points, a nice sounding start of a song based off of the D chord began to form. Ok, but the general sound was missing something like a deep bass note. My initial thought was just adding a low D with my bass when I went to record it but I wanted to see what it would sound like, <insert voice from Veruca Salt from the 1971 Willy Wonka movie> Now! Easy solution: tune my E string to D and, Wah lah! instant bass note to go with my D chord. Too bad I don’t have or play a harp guitar, right?

Even better sounding song but I wanted to grab a bit of a melody line or something to give it some movement as I played. Now the fingering was getting a bit complicated. I have long fingers but not that long! I was plucking the low D with my thumb and working out a rolling picking pattern on the higher strings mixing in the melody line – no small feat. I had created a song I couldn’t play dangit…

Well, how about going full open tuning? The idea usually comes with a quick reaction from my brain, “Uh, yeah. Now all the notes will be in places you don’t expect. That’ll be just greeeaaat…” I couldn’t think of another way around it as I continued to struggle with just a drop D tuning. I have recording software on my iPad that would allow me record eight channels and layer everything right there in the backyard but I thought I should just try it first.

Open G tuning goes like this: D-G-D-G-B-D (low to high). Notice that only three strings actually need to change. Not as daunting as you would think. Now, to try my new song… After a bit of fiddling around to reorient myself with the locations of the notes I had previously worked out, the song did become much easier to play! However, there is still the challenge of the finger picking pattern…that still needs some practice. It would be easy to just grab my pick and strum the thing but where’s the fun in that? I had a pretty song emerging and a challenge to improve or work off the rust in my finger-picking – Not bad!

Over the years, I have never lacked opportunities to play my guitar. I’ve been in bands, I played bass for my high school’s musicals, I played guitar almost every Sunday for years in church and on and on. There is always somebody or something that would love to have someone play music. I have seen people roam around with their guitar playing for friends’ parties and the occasional person just wanting to jam in a park or on the beach.
These have been the opportunities that have provided me with years of motivation to practice and learn. From early on playing The Beatles Yellow Submarine in middle school with a couple of friends or playing music for an addiction recovery program at my local church. I live directly across the street from another church and when I see the pastor toting his guitar, I always ask, “Hey! Can I play, too?” He has only turned me down once and that was because he had put together a little combo for some special music that Sunday. The opportunities are always there…if you are willing.

If you are willing to ask: My mother told me, “What’s the worst that could happen? They tell you ‘No’.”
If you are willing to take a chance: So, you are only beginning or don’t think you play that well. Here is your chance to help out and not have to worry about “driving the bus”, as a friend of mine would say. Somebody else is leading and you can just relax and keep up if that is all you can do. I have found that performing helps me see where I can improve and get advice from others (read my previous entry about my experience playing for a church group as a young teen).
If you are willing to fail: Not all of the time but take a hit and get back up! I can’t tell you (well, maybe I will eventually 😉 how many times I blew it in rather spectacular ways. Sometimes there was somebody there to encourage me despite the bomb but sometimes I was alone. Learn and grow, people, learn and grow. You might get the occasional knucklehead who will rub salt in that wound but there will be many more successes you can look back on and enjoy the feeling of really nailing it. Like the golfer looking for the perfect shot or surfer looking for the perfect wave, musicians tend to live for the moments when the music just…well, just sings! You want to be there even if you are a minor player in the effort, a supporting element. It’s great when it happens and makes us want to do it again!

Despite the fact that I have looked for these opportunities, it surprises me how many turn them down. Especially when I ask if they would like to join me! Most of those who have turned me down are musicians who are quite good to start with and seem to look down their noses at such gigs. I can play every bit as well as they can and I have never thought about it in any way except, “Cool! I can play again!” Playing at home by myself is fun and all but nothing beats getting up and really letting loose live. No neighbors to worry about and everyone expects you to be loud! Jam on, baby!
I taught my wife to play guitar years ago and she has said that without these regular volunteer gigs, she probably would not play – Motivation! When I go to just play for a bit at home, she regularly asks if she can join me. Sometimes I am working on a particular skill or challenging song and have to turn her down but other times she is right there doing what she can and asking good questions. If you are finding it difficult to find the time to play, volunteer for something and you will find the time – guaranteed. Now your reputation is on the line. Better get after it.
If you need help with a specific skill area and want to know more about upcoming classes, hit the Learn More link above and join us! I look forward to seeing you in class or around town at the next volunteer gig!

This morning my oldest brother sent me a link to a video from the church where he attends showing the worship team performing a song. As I watched, the video starts out focusing on the musicians and singers on the stage then begins to show more of the congregation in the church all singing along. At one point, a camera pans the front row of pews (do we still use that term?) and there is my brother! I had a reaction similar to seeing myself in a video I had not expected – excited and wanting to see him appear again. Very cool!
We both started playing in church when we were in our teens and I have to credit him for taking the initiative as I just rode on his coattails. I was not very good but had a crush on one of the singers and that made me overlook my terrible lack of ability – Doh! It was at the start of the music group’s preparation of music for the Christmas season just a few months away (Yes, months just not June ;-). It was an understatement to say I struggled to keep up. I had to find a way to contribute without 1) embarrassing myself in front of the object of my affection and 2) not clunk up the whole affair and be asked to leave. I don’t think they would have kicked me out but that is what was going through my head as a young teen in a group made up of adults and a few older teens.
If you have ever really looked at or even attempted to play some of the more common Christmas hymns and carols, you will find guitar chords can come at about one every syllable, at least, that is what it seemed. I had to learn to change chords quickly and count to keep in time for the variations. Fortunately, the group had five (Five!) guitarists and I could hide my playing. The more experienced players also helped me with suggestions and tips to not only avoid messing things up but actually contribute.
I bring these nuggets of wisdom where ever I play. When I hear from some that we only want players of a certain skill level in our informal group (church or other volunteer type of music activity), I remember those days and the things I was taught. I push back and say, “The more the merrier!” looking to impart the same nuggets and more to those struggling players. I was in their shoes so many years ago just trying not to embarrass myself…well, not too much anyway 🙂

Maybe that should be the smell of used record stores? With my local used record store still closed up for the virus, I will have to settle for the “store” part. Just a quick walk up the street near my house by a local used record store, the smell is unmistakable. I spent many days leafing through bins of records looking to increase my collection without blowing my meager teenaged budget. New record stores did not have the same scent – old cardboard infused with particulates from someone’s home… Maybe some ancient cigarette smoke and mold… Maybe a little pet dander mixed in there. Nevertheless, today I was immediately taken back to a day when I found History: America’s Greatest Hits. By the time I bought this album, The Captain and Tenille had ruined Muskrat Love, imho. Not like the original version was that much better but maybe the guitars made it better.

That’s the thing with this album – guitars. The vocals are great but everybody remembers the intro to Ventura Highway and the moody strumming that starts Horse With No Name. Very popular but what really grabbed my attention was Don’t Cross the River. 12 string guitar picked in a rolling pattern like a banjo giving the song the movement of a fast river. This was going to be the song for my first recording attempt! At the time, I had bought an extra cassette tape deck from one of my younger brothers and figured out how to ping-pong between the two decks, and with my trusty old Realistic mixer, was able to create something like multi track recordings in my basement! What magical time!

I figured out how to create a basic rhythm and layer on additional guitars to build the song. Finally, I tried my hand at vocals. As I worked, the first recorded parts would get buried and hiss would gradually envelope the previous takes. This limited how many times I could ping-pong before the copies lost fidelity and ruined the whole effort. There was also the issue of tape speeds being ever-so-slightly off between the machines. If I did it right, I could mitigate that but the hiss was another issue that would have to wait until I could afford a real multi-track recorder (cassette, again) sometime later!
All of these efforts had me playing parts over and over on my guitar not only to get it right before “laying down” the tracks but to get all of the various guitar parts recorded and re-recorded in the process. That was some serious practice time!