In Stephen Covey’s list of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” he talks about “sharpening the saw” – which is his euphemism for actively learning. He recommends continually putting yourself through education, training, reading books, listening to tapes, etc. And while one most certainly could say that he included this one just to make sure his devotees had continued motivation to buy his stuff, nonetheless, I strongly believe that continual learning one of the keys to lifelong happiness as well as continued mental health and sharpness.
Which brings me to my topic – “Sharpening the Axe” – of late, I started taking guitar lessons again as part of my rededicated devotion and focus on playing my guitar (hence the “axe” reference) and music in 2014 that I shared in my post around the New Year. Since the start of the year, musically anyway, I have …
– Rebuilt and reorganized my home-grown guitar songbook into something far more organized and scaleable. I also printed 15 copies of it, with one designated as a gift for my pal Professor Troutstream, who is also getting his strum on again.
– Created a much more musically-inclined space for myself in our newly-remodeled basement, with all my guitar gear there, space to sit and play both by myself and with others, and also playing along with music on the surround sound stereo system down there.
– Bought one of my “dream guitars” – a candy-apple red Fender Stratocaster. Now I’d love to say it’s an American Custom Shop Stratocaster that cost $2500 or more – nope, a Standard, built in Mexico. (For those that care about this stuff, maple neck, 50’s style headstock, three single coil standard pickups with a hot bridge pickup.) And red stratocasters have been played by my guitar idol/icons for ages – guys like Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, Stevie Ray Vaughn. Looks perfect and plays like an absolute dream. Best value in guitars around – great action, sound, sustain, etc. Not sure why I waited so long to get this. But I love it. Here’s Pete with his:
And me with mine as I was unpacking it from the shipment box:
– And, in the last four weeks, I started back up with guitar lessons.
Over my lifetime, I’ve probably had 40 or so guitar lessons – I took guitar classes back in Jr. High from Mr. Elliott at Central JH in Newton, IA – I think that was 7th and 8th grade. Mr. Elliott taught me the basics but he also taught me to love the instrument and for that, I’m lifelong grateful to him. After that, I took a handful of lessons here and there from various local folks, both officially and unofficially, and also my bandmates taught me stuff while I put down the rhythm with my bass guitar – amazing what you can learn just by watching.
About 15 years ago, when I picked guitar back up, I immediately started with lessons and quickly found that even though I was coming off a nearly 20-year hiatus from playing, that I was close to a better teacher than the teacher. I gave that up, dabbled around in guitar books and such and online bits and pieces, then went through two more guitar teachers trying to find the right match. One guy is a really accomplished Jazz teacher and well, he teaches Jazz guitar, which isn’t what I wanted, and another guy just really didn’t feel like much of a match. A bigger issue is that I was struggling with articulating what I really wanted from this.
Finally, after thinking about it a lot, I figured it out – the handful of things I really wanted to learn were:
– finger style right hand picking on an acoustic guitar
– jazz and blues form rhythm guitar chord work and additional voicings and forms for chord work
But most important:
– how to solo as a blues and rock guitarist.
THAT, my friends is my holy grail. I knew the basics – I had learned improvisation as a bass player back in high school at the hand of Mr. Omanson at Newton High Sschool. It’s all just scales. I even more or less knew several of the scales – minor and major pentatonics, minor and major straight scales, mixolydian scales, etc. But I didn’t know how they translated to actually making a guitar solo sound good and sound coherent. Little things like root notes, bends, riffs, transitions from one pattern to the next, pattern extensions, etc.
I found a teacher near me by searching online, and read his website. Accomplished Blues and Rock player. Good. You Tube videos of his playing, great! Flexible schedules? Now we’re getting somewhere! “I’ll teach you what you want to learn”. Winner winner chicken dinner, ladies and gents! I sent him an email describing my situation and he emailed right back – he thinks he could help – and the first lesson is free as he wanted to see if we had a match.
Well, happy to report we have a match. I learned more in that first 45 minute free session than I learned from all the guitar teachers I had since picking this back up. I just had my third lesson last night and already he had me playing a solo over him playing along to a blues “jam track”. DAMN! Now this is progress! I feel so energized by the learning, I’m having such a blast playing. I play at least an hour a day as much as I can, and for the first time, I can hear the music in these scales. Blues songs are running on my mental iPod on a continuous 24 hour loop.
You know you’re primed for the learning experience when you can’t learn it fast enough. That’s me right now.
Coming back to the central point and theme of the post here though – you’re never too old to pick up something and learn it. Whether you’re just starting as a rank beginner, or you’re doing as I’m doing and going from a medium level to a more advanced level of knowledge or skill, there is no substitute for learning and for getting the learning from a competent educator or other source. Your mind expands with every bit you learn.
Think about it. What do you want to learn? Go learn it.
As you were,
Stew
Stew's Brew 