I've just started to learn how to play guitar in earnest, and it is truly a journey of joy, much akin to when CM taught me how to spin poi and hula hoop back in 2007. (also see http://playflow.blogspot.com )
Guitar is in some ways even more of an opener; I've wanted to play guitar for as long as I can remember. As a child, my mother gave me a "choice" of which instrument to learn; when I chose the electric guitar, she simply said "OK, but first you need to learn the piano." Thirty years later, my mom died and I inherited her buttery smooth Guild acoustic guitar. I learned 5 chords and one song on it, but that was the extent of where I could go with it. I bought a cheap steel-string guitar, and even a really cheap electric guitar (and a really nice amp!), but could never get past those first five chords.
What I failed to realise is that I didn't have any fundamentals. I'd been taking the advice of the virtuoso kid I had met in the music store where I bought the steel-string: he simply said, in patented street smart fashion: forget lessons, forget all the books; just learn as many chords as you can, and learn to transition between them.
Of course, that is the hard course; kind of like telling an aspiring poet: just learn words; don't worry about rhyme, rhytmn, or metaphor.
So in my grand tour of America, I started noticing who had a guitar in their house, and asked each of them to show me chords; I learned them in the same fashion as I learned acroyoga: by watching really closely with my eyes and my heart as actual skilled players plyed their craft of music, imitating the gestures and movements as closely as possible, and committing these gestures to muscle / pose memory.
Thank you to Krish (lead guitarist for the Vaginas), to my dear brother Karl, and to Sid, my first jam session partner (the first place where there were two guitars accessible).
Playing with Karl taught me how nicely vocal harmony could play with live guitar. We belted out the old folk songs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Amazing Grace, and of course, Folsom Prison Blues... that last one really tests the vocal limbo of who can go the lowest. :)
Playing with Sid showed me both the dance of lead and follow in jam sessions (or pickin circles as they're called here in the South), and the intense *character* of each of the chords. Playing A-minor, I could almost *feel* the melancholy in it. And that so inspired me: if chords had emotions, then they were kind of like foods, that is to say that each chord had its own unique character and flavor: bitter, joyous, flirty, happy, etc.
To bring this full circle, Karl agreed to be the caretaker of the old Guild, and got me the most wonderful gift of a Gibson Backpacker guitar, a brilliantly designed instrument weighing in at just under four pounds. Of equal importance, he got me two really great guitar books.
I cracked the first one open today and, as they say, "began at the begin." Once I comprehended that there were actual notes on the fretboard, I quickly progressed to playing a full scale, C-D-E-F-G-A-B and back down again. As soon as that happened, I closed my eyes and the whole fretboard exploded visually as a colorful matrices of notes, and I suddenly *got* the relationship between piano and guitar, both just ways of playing notes really, and now we're moving faster, the Music is coming... :)
Gratitude for all the great teachers in my life, who have given so geneously of their time, music, passion and homes that I might learn the arts of Joyous Living.
