Two Steps Back

I have been playing guitar since I was about thirteen. While high school band and chorus provided me with musical training, a fair ear, and a chance to play a single-voiced trumpet, I never found the time to take guitar lessons, never took time to get some formal training with my favorite polyphonic instrument. I am, as it were, entirely self-taught. And obviously, as a teacher, I lacked certain skills.

It didn’t hold me back. In the small group of friends and acquaintances in which I usually performed, I could hold my own. I played by ear, with the help of the chord diagrams in the easy guitar sheet music, and the fact that so many folk, rock and pop songs are three chords and a bridge. If it hadn’t been for John Denver, I’d've been sunk. But after thirty-some-odd years, I needed to take it to that “next level” people too often talk about. I’ve swallowed my pride, and submitted to the ultimate indignity.

I’ve signed up for guitar lessons.

Some of my friends, the non-musical ones, might be kind of surprised at that. I mean, a few of them have seen me hold forth for six hours straight, never repeating a song, and playing until my fingers bled.

Literally.

My musical friends know it’s what I need to do, however. I need to put my soul into it, into the guitar itself. The songs that I’ve written have withered to nothing because I have nothing new to put underneath the words that sometimes spill out in torrents. I must find more materiel with which to build the musical framework, upon which those words can become something more than maudlin, childish attempts at profundity.

Or so I hope.

So, I’m going back to school, or at least to private lessons. I will finally put my money where my mouth is, take the lessons, and start, as my high school band director called “woodshedding”, by which he meant, “take it out behind the woodshed where no one can hear you and practice, practice, practice”.

What do I want to do with it? Maybe nothing. Maybe write more songs, maybe just learn to play guitar better. Maybe give up all this singer-songwriter stuff, and play “Recuerdos de la Alhambra”, and the guitar transcription for Bach’s “Suite for Two Violins” (yeah, like I’ll ever be that good!). Or maybe I’ll start playing bluegrass.

One thing for sure; in a few weeks, I will have new grist for the mill: new skills, new knowledge, new inspiration.

I’ll have my music back in my life.