Day # 53 New Lessons

In the past, a song would resonate with me for one reason or another.  Something about a lyric or a melody would be pertinent to my life experience at a given time.  Sometimes the connection with a particular song would etch itself into my memory and stay there.

This still happens to me, but in the last few years, instead of wanting to remember a certain song, I want to learn to play it.  I have been playing guitar for some years now.  I used to play as a teenager, but never seriously and never more than strumming chords or doing barre chord progressions.  Just enough guitar to try to impress a girl or two.

These days I take guitar seriously despite a distinct lack of talent.  I can play guitar, but the only way I learn anything is by endless repetition.  For me, there is no such thing as inspiration as a direct result of the intervention of a muse.  There is sometimes perspiration after going over and over some bit that a real player would glide through, but we do what we can.

It is ever so slightly rewarding then, when I only have to play a piece a hundred times rather than a thousand times to have it sound like a song.  Such was the case today, when in an evening I was able to get the basic chord pattern down for my latest ear worm.  The song, "The Weight of Lies" by the Avett Brothers, is a great duet of guitar and banjo.  Being only one player and not as skilled as either of the Avetts, I have to slim it down a bit, but it still sounds pretty good.  I can see the possibility that I am dragging a musical cart with rather more oval wheels these day than the square wheels I started with.

I am in no danger of quitting my day job, at least not to pursue my music career, but it is good to think that playing the same piece over and over again just to get the basic rhythmic sequence has paid off in some way.

I keep threatening myself with the idea of doing another open mic.  Better yet is the idea of finding a couple of people to make music with.  I need some musical friends to collaborate with, both to challenge me and to encourage me.  Or maybe just to have some laughs with.