My first guitar was a Yamaha FG300 that my father had bought in the early 70s and handed down to me in the early 90s. I must have been around 10 years old then and, believe me when I tell you, I would have packed it in very quickly if it hadn't been for all the great guitar bands that I was privileged to know about. The guitar had a warped soundboard and an action (height of the strings relative to the fingerboard) that you could park a truck under. Still, I would huddle over it for hour a day like a safe-cracker picking a lock, figuring out the melodies to my favorite songs . I improved steadily and eventually won a few talent shows but it was only when I got my first electric guitar, a pitch black Japanese Fender Stratocaster and went to college to study music that I really saw what it was all about. The relationships between the notes, the formulae, keys, scales and of course round the clock practice enhanced my understanding of music as well as my creativity. I've heard people say things to the effect of, "I don't want to learn music theory/go to school to learn music because it'll hamper my creativity". The truth is quite the contrary. Working hard to strengthen hands and fingers while contemplating the relationships between the multitudes of musical participles makes a musician more spontaneous, and therefore more creative, in the same way that a writer's knowledge of language paves the way for he or she to properly express his or her ideas.
Then there is another matter. The condition and quality of an instrument. In my six years working in a busy guitar and general strings instrument workshop I've seen instruments of all shapes, sizes and in conditions that made the instruments at times difficult to play if not simply unplayable. Nevertheless, it has seldom happened that I have returned an instrument to it's owner without gaining the pleasure of knowing that he or she will derive massive enjoyment from it relative to that which was before derived. I shudder to think how much ground I could have covered on that badly set up old Yamaha if I'd only known a quarter of what I know now regarding repairs and setup of guitars.
If you want to learn to play an instrument, it must be because you love music. The love of music is enough to keep you working out those tunes, but the easier it is to play the instrument, the more you know about the instrument, and the more you understand about the art that is music, the more of a joy it will be to you.
I am currently teaching and repairing in Johannesburg. Students who visit me not only learn how to play guitar, but also learn how to maintain and care for it. Feel free to email me for more information.
I will also be using this blog as a way to share my music related joys and woes with you, as well as some choice tutorial videos that I am making and some videos by other folk too. I will also be posting links to other very cool guitar and music related sites.
Keep those fingers picking.
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