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Patience, faith and rewards

2/28/2013

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Patience. If you don’t have it you’re in for a lot of disappointments. I confess that I get impatient at times, as I think we all do. The other major part of my life beyond my music is fishing, which I love to the point of borderline obsession. I have learned a lot over the years of fishing for striped bass near my home on Cape Cod, and in far away places like Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Florida, the Caribbean and Costa Rica for dozens of other species. If I hadn’t developed a reasonable amount of patience my guess is that I would have given up fishing long ago, because as the old saying goes: “That’s why they call it fishing, not catching!”

Hopefully, what I’ve learned about patience while fishing has transferred to my guitar playing and teaching. Over the past five years or so my playing has progressed more rapidly than it had over the previous twenty, which is very gratifying. Lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that I keep a much more open mind these days about what constitutes “good” music, or music that is worth putting effort into. Playing every Saturday morning for three years at the Daily Brew has certainly helped. But I’ve also learned to not give up on a piece of music that may have seemed impossible the first time I tried playing it.

This is something that I do my best to convey to my students. Some “get it,” some don’t. A few have gotten quite frustrated and I think secretly they don’t believe me when I tell them that practice, and most importantly, the acceptance that mistakes will be made – perhaps for a long time – will sooner or later lead to success. I know this is difficult because when a student is in his or her lesson and we’re playing a piece of music together my playing tends to cover up some of mistakes the student is making. This is much more palatable than when the student is sitting alone at home (and perhaps a family member is listening in another room!) and those mistakes just seem to happen over and over in spite of one’s best efforts.

Barre chords may be the biggest source of frustration in learning to play the guitar and always test the student’s patience. Every single guitarist in the history of the instrument has struggled with them; I know I certainly did. I try to convey to my students the importance of the mechanics of playing them (dropping the wrist, straight barring finger, thumb centered behind the neck, separation of other fingers) but that is just the starting point. I truly believe that teaching someone to play barre chords is rather like teaching someone to ride a bike: you can explain the mechanics perfectly but ultimately it comes down to the person finding that perfect balance point on their own. Falling down comes with it, no getting around that.

A very few students have something of a breakthrough moment – almost suddenly and for no apparent reason a technique or a chord seems to work. But for most it’s a gradual process with the percentage of success gradually increasing. This is where patience really plays a part. You have to hold onto those small successes, build on them, and look back at when there was no success at all for the psychological benefit. Keeping things in perspective builds confidence, and confidence reinforces patience.

As time passed in my fishing endeavors I began to catch more fish until I got to the point that in spite of the results on a daily basis I was confident I was doing everything right. There are times when I pick up the guitar and try a hard piece of music and it just seems it will never sound decent. Then the best thing to do is either put the guitar down for an hour or so and then come back to it, or play something I know I can play reasonably well. The point is – I have confidence in the knowledge that at least from a technical standpoint I’m playing correctly even if the end result is less than satisfactory. Sooner or later, I tell myself. And you know what? Sooner or later that piece of music comes out pretty damn good!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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My top ten music fantasies

2/19/2013

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My top ten music fantasies:

(with apologies to David Letterman)

10. Martin names a signature model after me.

9.  Shawn Colvin calls me up and asks me to be her lead guitarist on her next concert tour. Or Mary Chapin Carpenter.

8. I wake up one morning, pick up my guitar and miraculously find that I can play blues as well as Duke Robillaird.

7. I am asked to do a restaurant (instrumental) gig at a nice local place every Saturday evening, for decent pay – but the management doesn’t mind if I take an evening off to go on a fishing vacation once in a while.

6.  I finally discover a guitar that is even sounding, resonant, responsive, easy to play and hold, sounds great both amplified and acoustically, has plenty of natural volume, is beautiful in an understated way – and doesn’t cost two arms and three legs.

5. I have a manageable number of students who always show up right on time for their lessons, always remember when payments are due, practice regularly, and are both enthusiastic and realistic at the same time.

4. (in reference to #5…) Always am able to offer my students music to play that is challenging, gratifying, interesting and FUN – all at the same time.

3.  Sit down on my back deck on a warm summer evening with Paul Simon or James Taylor, talk music and play a few tunes together.

2.  Hear the Beatles live, in their Apple studio, writing and rehearsing Sgt. Pepper.

1.  Just one more time, play classical guitar duets with my dad.

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Bridge Over Troubled Water, guitar prices & speaker break-in?

2/15/2013

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Time for more random observations. As always, your comments are welcomed.

I had a request from a student recently to learn to play “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” This is one of those classic songs that I think many of us kind of take for granted and it was fun to revisit it and come up with a new arrangement for guitar. I believe the original recording was in the key of D Major but not having anything remotely near the signing range of Art Garfunkel I transposed it to A Major and spent a couple hours fooling with the changes and various inversions of the chords and came up with something that sounds pretty good, I think. It’s always a challenge to come close to what’s done on the piano (the primary backing instrument on that song on the original recording) with a guitar. I took a few liberties with the basic structure but the result seems pleasing and only moderately challenging for an intermediate level player. Hope my student likes it.

I had forgotten the beautiful, simple but deep and heart felt lyrics of the song, just another example of the genius of Paul Simon. I’ve seen him interviewed when the subject of that song came up and his reaction was quite interesting. The song has become totally connected to Garfunkel, which is logical considering his soaring vocals but Simon made it very clear in the interview that it was HIS song; in fact, you could sense a bit of bitterness that the song is so identified with Garfunkel. The complex and sometimes contentious relationship between those two, friends since high school in Brooklyn, is well documented. I suspect that one of the reasons they created such fantastic, timeless music together has a lot to do with that relationship. The same could be said of Lennon and McCartney. Is genius in collaboration inexorably linked to competition? I suspect it must be. In any case, it seems that every few years they put aside their differences and appear on stage together at some event. Wouldn’t it be great is Paul wrote some new music that would benefit by more singing with Art? I doubt that will ever happen but you know it would be wonderful.

And on a totally different subject….

I continue to be amazed and somewhat amused by the prices people expect to get for used guitars on Craigslist and Ebay. Even on the guitar forums, where people should know better because the audience is much more sophisticated you see some crazy listings. For example, right now there is a listing on one of the forums for a used Martin D-28 (“in as-new condition”) for $1999. Good luck, pal. That guitar can be had brand new from any number of reputable certified Martin dealers for almost $200 less – with Martin’s famous lifetime warranty!

I wrote in this space recently about a trend of rising guitar prices for premium, American-made instruments but I often see on CL and EBay some listings for imported guitars by the likes of Alvarez, Yamaha, Takamine and others for close to what they sell for new. At best, those guitars are worth about half their discounted retail price the minute they leave the store. And that assumes they are in close to perfect condition. Do they actually sell for those prices? I sincerely doubt it. Live and learn.

And another thing…

I am about to replace the primary (12”) speaker in my trusty Carvin AG100 acoustic guitar amp. It has served faithfully and well for ten years but the original speaker is beginning to fall apart, which happens. I posted a question on one of the guitar forums about buying a premium replacement speaker and I had one very interesting response. The guy who wrote is supposedly some kind of minor recording star who features himself quite the expert on all things guitar, recording and sound reinforcement related and he has a substantial ego so I take what he says with a large grain of salt but here’s what he said.

He maintains that ALL new speakers need a break-in period of at least 50 hours (!) to reach their maximum potential/best sound. This was news to me, to say the least. I followed up asking him if this was true of all speakers – guitar amps, PA systems, even home stereos including premium ones. He replied that yes, they too needed that break-in period. Now, this is a bit curious to me. If this is true and there is anything like a noticeable difference in sound between and new speaker and one that’s been used for a while, how can a consumer buying a new unit reasonably expect to get an accurate idea of what any speaker will sound like in the long run? Or put another way, have I mistakenly rejected certain amps because I was disappointed in the sound when I should have hung in and given them more or a chance? I need to do more research on this quite startling statement by Mr. Expert and would love to hear from anyone reading this about the relative merits of it.

I will be replacing the speaker this weekend and I’m considering listening to it as soon as its in, then running some recordings through it for many hours, then listening to it again with my guitar. I’ll report on the results!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Music in Key West

2/6/2013

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Just back from a week-long fishing trip to the Keys, something I try to do each winter to escape the dreary gray Cape. Although my days of doing the classic Duval Street Crawl are long over it’s always interesting to walk down that famous strip in Key West and take in the sights and sounds. We did that last Thursday night and I observed some interesting things, music-wise.

As always, there was plenty of live music, everything from bands to single guitar players to the always outrageous and funny drag queen shows at a couple bars. Sadly, I’m beginning to see signs that the best days of KW may be behind that famous party town. Quite a few empty store fronts and a certain desperation from the hawkers trying to get the sparse crowd on the street to come in to various bars, restaurants and shops. But the most energy and biggest crowds were in bars that had single guitar players banging out high energy (and somewhat lame) versions of rock, country, Irish and of course Jimmy Buffett tunes. I must say, I give those guys credit for “going for it” if nothing else.

Which kind of begs the question: how long can we as guitar player/performers expect the crowds to keep coming for those types of acts? Perhaps I’m over-thinking this, but the bottom line may be that it really doesn’t matter all that much how good you are at your craft as long as you put it out there with energy and enthusiasm. There is no way you could call any of the half-dozen guys I listened to for a few minutes each very good guitar players but…. They were good enough. Good enough to keep the crowd involved and drinking (a key element in this equation both in terms of acceptance of a sketchy performance AND making the management happy!). It appears that in Key West at least, you can still make a decent living as a single guitar player if you know a few dozen Jimmy B. and Kenny Chesney tunes, with the occasional oldie sing-along thrown in. God bless ‘em.

I was thinking about my theory that energy trumps talent when we happened upon a nice little place called Two Friends. We stopped in because I saw a guy playing instrumentals on an acoustic/electric nylon string guitar, seemingly very similar to what I do at the Daily Brew every Saturday. We sat at the bar and it was immediately obvious that the guy was very good. He was also using a looper device but using it in a very subtle manner, not just recording a track to play lead over and blasting away. In fact I doubt anyone in the place knew he was using it – the most effective application of that device in performance that I’ve yet heard. I made a request – “Corcovado” by Tony Jobim, and the guy was thrilled to play it. And he nailed it, including the lyrics in Portuguese. I made sure to clap loudly, which made the crowd wake up a bit and they too began clapping at the end of each tune. This in turn seemed to inspire the guitarist to ramp up the energy in his playing just a bit and all in all it turned out to be a great set. I made sure to leave him a decent tip in his tip glass when we left.

But as we walked out the door I noticed another guitarist playing in a bar across the street. This was a side street, not on Duval. And he was trying to do what the guys down on Duval were doing. He was using a looper too, and not very effectively, just playing random riffs over a simple set of changes. It was a large place and there were a handful of people at the bar on the other end of the room, totally disinterested in what the guy was doing. It was kind of pathetic. But hey, he had a gig….

So maybe, after all, there IS hope for a guitarist who skips the Jimmy and plays well. I certainly hope so!

I was feeling pretty good about this until I got home and checked the web site of the Two Friends bar/restaurant. And there, on their page detailing the entertainment at the place was only one write up, all about their (apparently) popular regular entertainment: karaoke. No mention whatsoever of live music. So it goes, I guess. In Key West and everywhere.

Peace & good music,
Gene  


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