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Brian’s latest, truly enlightening “philosophical” video has also inspired me to take stock of my own musical journey.
How did I, a completely unmusical person, come to play the guitar?
Around 1964, a buddy came to me and declared categorically: “As a singer, I’m starting a band. Harald will play the drums, Freddy will play guitar, and you, Dieter, will play bass.” This was followed by my first music school, insane amounts of practice, and after a year, my first amateur performance.
A few years later, I taught myself rhythm guitar. I discovered a new world in the 1980s and made a leap forward in my playing technique with classical guitar lessons. In the early 2000s, I had a fundamental experience with public band performances. After that came piano lessons, which also broadened my horizons.My years with active melody have been particularly instrumental in my progress. I am constantly working on playing technique, scales, theory, etc. (with varying degrees of success). The problem, of course, is that when you focus on one particular area, you tend to neglect other areas where you also have deficits. But that’s just the way it is.
For me personally, “listening to and understanding music” means liking and playing as many styles, playing techniques, instrumentations, sounds, etc. as possible. What I’m not particularly good at is free improvisation.
When I set musical goals, I have to take into account that I’m turning 80 this year.
If I were younger, I would work really intensively on improvisation and understanding the fretboard, for example.
Instead, I have decided to spend the rest of my active time doing what I really love most: cover versions of well-known and lesser-known songs, a wide range of instruments/blues/countryfolk/classical music, and, of course, Brian’s wonderful and instructive lessons. No more, but also no less.Dieter
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I have already achieved most of what I set out to do when I got started. Now it’s more about getting the techniques down and not forgetting what was learned. I totally see how if I were to stop playing for a week or two, it would set me back quite a bit, so being consistent with the daily grind of working on something to improve my playing or learn something new or make what I know already sound as good as I can is my main goal.
To help me in the memory department, I’m taking Brian’s advice about writing some things down on paper. I usually use the computer for note taking but he is right about hand written notes. There is something visceral about the process. So what I did yesterday was to create some fretboard worksheets. Just blank guitar fretboards that have spaces to write down the notes or intervals of whatever I’m working on. It could be as simple as note recognition, or writing in arpeggios for the song I’m working on. It could be scales, or formulas for scales, but the bottom line is writing my ideas down on paper and then applying it to the song or technique I’m working on at the time.
If you have ever visited Ricky Comiskey’s channel on YouTube, the guy loves to teach guitar theory using a piece of paper and some colored markers or even just a pencil. I truly believe, by teaching others in this manner he is actually making himself a better player and deepening his own understanding of guitar music theory. If his viewers were to get the most out of it, they would pretend they are teaching someone else what they just learned and use the same paper and pencil to do it.
I love what Brian said about simply using what you have right now and recording where you are at with it. I don’t record myself often enough due to the process takes a lot of time and energy to do recordings and then get the darn files off my phone. My PC died during my last recording session and that sent me down a path I didn’t want to go down, but had to accept the fact that my day was ruined and I just had to work on the immediate problem at hand. You will start seeing more recordings of where I’m at on the Journey in 2026. I might label them as early 2026, just put the month and year in there to make it clear when it was recorded.
Here is the fretboard worksheet that I made. Just print it out in landscape mode and it should be centered on the middle of the page. Like I said, this can be used for a variety of things you may want to take hand written notes on.
Go slow and practice correct technique, and your abilities will dramatically improve.
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Yes, I’ve often asked myself “Why am I doing this? Who is my audience? What are my goals?” But the answer keeps changing, so I decided to just do it for fun. My uncle was in the infantry in WWII, and one of his favorite expressions was “Just take two salt tablets and march on!” I don’t think they even sell salt tablets anymore, but potato chips and beer work pretty well well, interspersed with a bit of guitar playing.
Sunjamr Steve
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I’ve done academic studies (trumpet, piano) and the cover band thing (bass.) Electric guitar is purely for my own joy, I find it meditative. So ultimately my goal is to find pieces that I enjoy playing and come back to. My goal is to play guitar everyday with a smile. I just had my 5 year anniversary on AM and I have no plans to switch up yet! I just love the content here, always keep me coming back for more.
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