Getting Past Zero

Some things come pretty easy to me. Enough things, that when I was stymied as a child by violin and then flute, I figured I could stick with things that weren't quite so hard.

My decision was reinforced somewhere around 1983 when I attended my first concert and my profound lack of rhythm was obvious even to my friend who could barely take her eyes off Rick Springfield.

Yet I've had the yearning to do more than just be an audience for pretty much my whole life. I've picked up the guitar (I actually own two) several times but always given up almost before I started.

I'm surrounded by music. Enveloped in music. My grampa used to play "Puff the Magic Dragon" for me on his Gibson. Mom sang in the church choir. I have a talented brother who plays clarinet and guitar (and probably something else I'm forgetting - cello?). Nearly every penny of my allowance and every afternoon of my teen years were spent at Rising Sun Records. My husband plays bass and recently joined a band with a guy from work; he's considering returning to the saxophone he wielded in high school. One of my dearest friends plays professionally both classical and jazz upright bass as well as bass guitar (and seems to dabble in everything). We have friends in local bands and, so help me, just going to hear them play is the highlight of my week or month.

The book

My most recent guitar purchase is a lovely little Fender acoustic that is sized for smaller hands and has a slimmer body that works better with my curves than other guitars I've tried. It came from Jim's Music when our friend Andy, guitarist extraordinaire, still worked there (he's moved on, but I still consider Jim's to be my go-to store). I tried. I used books and found some videos online that helped a little bit, but in the end I put it aside in frustration.  Andy doesn't ask me about my practice anymore when we go see The Jackpot Club.

In January of this year, I ordered a book called Guitar Zero by Gary Marcus.  Before the book even arrived, my husband found a University of California interview with the author - a guy who, like me, loves music but had believed for most of his life that he just didn't have what it takes to play music. Despite a number of failures, a struggle with rhythm and  being flat-out told he didn't have the talent to play, he set out to see if he could learn. Spoiler alert: he did. And in the meantime found some interesting answers to some age old questions about the nature of talent and musical ability.

And that's where I find myself. Intrigued enough to give it another go. Of all the options that Marcus mentions in Guitar Zero, I found myself drawn to Jamie Andreas's Guitar Principles based on a video explaining how to simply hold the guitar for practice. It was a mini epiphany - it's exactly this type of breaking things down to the simplest level that I need to make this work.

I'm expecting the Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar to arrive in the mail any day now and spent some time this weekend heaping some love and tuning on my guitar.

Let's see where this goes.