Category Archives: guitars - Page 2

Falling In Love

Posted by on March 22, 2011 2 comments

The one part of my PhD that I desperately wanted to finish was the artist’s statement. It’s an essay of sorts that describes why one creates. In a way, it’s a “Why do you exist” sort of exercise. I really, really wanted to do it. I’ve started it a thousand times. It’s difficult. There is so much that goes into why I do what I do and the lengths to which I’ve gone to sustain my creative work. It seems that many of the tough and counterintuitive decisions I’ve made over the last 20 years have all come down to being about my creative work. That’s hard to believe given how destructive some of my choices were. That’s all (mostly) water under the bridge by this point but I do want to take a crack at explaining myself to all seven of my readers (and two of those might be me). My little girl is making sure that this will never be properly edited. Let’s just turn on the fire hose and let it run. Here goes.

I wish I could remember how old I was when I decided that I wanted to take guitar lessons. My parents were savvy and decided to make sure that I had some skin in the game so they told me that they’d go 50/50 on an instrument. I did some shopping around at Woodsy’s Music in Kent, OH and figured out that a starter Yamaha steel string was going to set me back $150. That meant I had to come up with $75. It may as well have been a million, but it was near enough to my birthday that I had a head start. I also had an allowance of sorts and a job helping deliver papers 3 days a week. The icing on the cake was my super secret plan: saving my lunch money.

My buddy Jeremy helped me out by packing an extra sandwich in his lunch. I was making an extra dollar a day every time I didn’t eat lunch and the cash started to pile up. Before too long the glorious day came that I presented my mom with the cash that I had been saving in a coin bank shaped like a Tootsie Roll. She was a little surprised. True to her word, she took me to Woodsy’s that weekend and we bought the guitar and I was signed up for lessons. Classical guitar lessons. She was paying so my dreams of being Andy Summers or The Edge or Jimi Hendrix were on hold – or so it seemed at the time. I was just excited to have the instrument.

We went home and I took it down to the basement. I laid it out on my lap and strummed it in what was an attempt at rhythm. I can still remember it. The open strings rang out and I was struck by the volume of the instrument. It was a spruce top with laminated sides. The finish was glossy and then neck was narrow but chunky. It was a standard issue dreadnought and in the scheme of all of the guitars made in the world thus far it was utterly forgettable. But I fell in love.

The next week I had my first lesson. My teacher, Ken, was brilliant. He started off by getting me hooked. The first tune I learned was “Another Brick In The Wall.” He transposed it to the key of G and taught me different strumming patterns on the simplified chords. I was hooked. I took to it like a fish to water – at least intellectually.

I practiced almost constantly. I would sit in my room alone and strum to myself. I took the chords I learned and arranged them intuitively. Sometimes it sounded OK. But what I learned quickly was that I could make sounds that moved me. I could do something that made me feel very alive and in a way that only an early teenaged boy can understand I felt validated.

When I was introduced the the Frederick Noad book “Solo Guitar Playing” I memorized the exercises I was given weekly as though they were holy texts. In a very real way they became my practice. They were my religion. I intoned them as a way of keeping myself in tact in those horrendous days of adolescence. In the dying days of my parents’ marriage the guitar was my best friend. It didn’t ask any tough questions and always responded to everything that I did regardless of my mood. I could wail on it in anger and it screamed with me. I could touch its strings softly and it would sing me to sleep.

Practicing and lessons were the only non-negotiables in my life. Sports came and went. Drama came and went. Girlfriends came and went. The only real constant in my life was music. More importantly, guitar music.

I have talked with other musicians and heard the stories of how they came to their instruments. Many were forced into lessons (invariably Suzuki violinists (shudder) and pianists) or picked it up and were surprisingly good at it (clarinets and flutes) and just ran with it. I have known a few who shared the passion for their instrument with me and had the almost shamanic attachment that I do. Returning to their instrument daily meant healing and focus. I’ve started to understand that there are many who have a relationship like this with their work. Writers, painters, actors, and creators of all media fall into that trance and experience a renewal. I can’t explain it though I’ve read many books on the topic. I’m not sure that I really want to know what it is about six strings stretched over a piece of wood that excites every fiber of my being. The why doesn’t matter. It’s that it does that counts.

By the time I was 18 it was all over. I was completely in love with the instrument, its repertoire, and its potential. The world of music was starting to open up to me though admittedly through a fairly narrow and highly opinionated lens. My feet were on the path.

my instruments: Brune

Posted by on December 22, 2010 No comments

When I think about my patrons, that is to say the people who supported me while I was trying to get my start as a musician, the one that pops to the top is my Great Aunt Mae. She was an important figure in my life. My mom’s maternal aunt, she treated my mom and her offspring as though they were her own. To say she favored my mother would be an understatement of epic proportions. Aunt Mae was an odd duck to say the least, but was always kind and generous to those she held dear. And she held us dear.

She was financially responsible to a fault. On the salary of a teacher, she lived very frugally and was able to make a little into a lot. Every year, she gave us savings bonds for our birthday and Christmas. I can still remember looking at the paper with her to see what the interest rates were. She treated me as though I was an adult before I was 10 and that meant never explaining why bonds were important. She assumed that I knew.

scales

So these bonds piled up in a safe place over the years. I didn’t think much about them. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

I went off to conservatory with a Yamaha classical guitar. It was a cheap student instrument that was not really fit for serious study. Halfway through my freshman year, I started looking at real instruments. That was when I went off to see Roger Thurman in Kent, Ohio. He’s a great luthier and at the time ran a great shop with a fantastic little performance space (he may still have it…I should stop in the next time I’m home). I knew him through a buddy of mine from high school. He was really great about showing me some good instruments and providing me with a fair price. He also cut me a deal by letting me pay in installments. That was a huge risk for him as a small business owner, but he knew where my mom lived so I guess it’s relative.

In Mr. Thurman’s shop, I saw a Brune. It was simple in appearance and had a solid tone. My take at the time was that it wasn’t a brilliant performance instrument, but quite respectable. Having played many instruments over the intervening years I have a very different opinion. It’s a great instrument. It was also at a price that a poor college kid could afford (in installments and with a decent chunk down). But I didn’t know where I was going to come up with the money.

And then I remembered the bonds. I cashed a few in. I paid for a good chunk of the guitar and happily resumed my studies after the winter break with gusto.

I still have it. It has followed me everywhere I’ve gone since I first brought it home. It’s one of two instruments that I have had for 20 years. There are plenty of reasons for my keeping it with me. The simplest is because I love to play the classical guitar. I enjoy the sound and the repertoire. Another is that the instrument itself, that specific guitar, makes me want to play it. I like to touch its strings when I walk by. It’s never work to pick it up and strum. It is inspiring – the best thing an instrument can hope to be. But the real reason for keeping it is because it symbolizes discipline.

I was never so disciplined as in conservatory. Practicing for hours and hours, the focus I developed was fairly impressive. The time passed effortlessly and the act of memorizing music and reading it became fluid. Instinctive. A reflex. There is something beautiful about the ability to step outside of oneself and listen objectively to what is being played. I could do that then. While certainly not at my peak in terms of musicianship, I was dragging myself up the mountain at a good clip. That guitar was with me every step of the way. I don’t know that I spent so much time with anything or anyone as I did that instrument during those four years.

I restrung it a couple of weeks ago and have been practicing every night for an hour. It’s not much, but it’s what I can afford. I’m doing my exercises and reading through etudes. Pie in the sky goals are running through my head about what pieces I would like to have some proficiency with by the end of next year, but there’s a little girl waiting in the wings to derail that with a smile, some crying, and a pile of diapers. It doesn’t matter. The thoughts are there. The joy has returned. And a piece of me feels more connected to something simply because I’m putting that instrument in my lap every day.

My Aunt Mae has been gone since 2005. It hardly seems possible, but the calendar doesn’t lie. I miss her. I’m so glad she got to hear me play.