- Six Strings -
(Know Who You Are - Supertramp)
I started learning to play guitar back in December of '18, and the journey has been one full of delight and bittersweet moments. I've frequently found myself wishing that I had somewhere to air my thoughts on what I'm experiencing, and then it occurred to me that I -do- run a blog.
This is your one and only warning. Any post from the Six String collection is probably going to be about guitars, things that have to do with guitars, and my thoughts surrounding that subject as I continue my journey towards being a solvent player.
For those that have chosen to stick around, I'm afraid you have to start at the boring part: The beginning.
My father was a guitarist and a musician. Whatever other virtues and faults he may have carried around with him, music was probably the single most impactful thing that I took away from my relationship with him. To this day, I listen to his music and I lust after the same kind of high fidelity audio that he did, to say nothing of the equipment to play it on. Taking it one step farther and learning to play guitar wasn't something that I was ever keen to do as a child, however. Instead, I focused my attention, albeit briefly, on the tenor saxophone. Because saxophone. I learned musical theory and basic compositional skills for the few years that I pursued the instrument and then promptly put it aside for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.
I didn't seriously consider playing an instrument again for many years. I briefly flirted with learning to play the guitar when I was 20, but had no way to teach myself beyond downloading chord charts from a very underdeveloped internet at that time, and I rapidly lost interest.
My father passed away in early 2017. While a great many things were taken from his family when that happened, a few things remained. Among them was his prized Martin D-35 Dreadnought, an instrument that he played for nearly 50 years before his hands could no longer make it tell its secrets. I was fortunate enough to become the caretaker for that instrument, but with it came an unexpected responsibility.
It was my intention to have a velvet-lined shadow box created for the guitar, to shield it behind glass and preserve it as best I could. When I began inquiring about construction, I came face to face with a very different reality. I learned that acoustic guitars cannot simply be stored if they are to remain functional; they must be played.
I could have simply taken the Martin out of its case once a month and idly strummed it, but the thought of simply making 'noise' with it was offensive to me after listening to my father do so much more for years and years.
So I bought a guitar of my own and began to teach myself to play. The responsibility to preserve the instrument, and the legacy that came with it, demanded no less. In return for my efforts, my father's Martin began telling its secrets to me as well.
That's for another time though.
I started learning to play guitar back in December of '18, and the journey has been one full of delight and bittersweet moments. I've frequently found myself wishing that I had somewhere to air my thoughts on what I'm experiencing, and then it occurred to me that I -do- run a blog.
This is your one and only warning. Any post from the Six String collection is probably going to be about guitars, things that have to do with guitars, and my thoughts surrounding that subject as I continue my journey towards being a solvent player.
For those that have chosen to stick around, I'm afraid you have to start at the boring part: The beginning.
My father was a guitarist and a musician. Whatever other virtues and faults he may have carried around with him, music was probably the single most impactful thing that I took away from my relationship with him. To this day, I listen to his music and I lust after the same kind of high fidelity audio that he did, to say nothing of the equipment to play it on. Taking it one step farther and learning to play guitar wasn't something that I was ever keen to do as a child, however. Instead, I focused my attention, albeit briefly, on the tenor saxophone. Because saxophone. I learned musical theory and basic compositional skills for the few years that I pursued the instrument and then promptly put it aside for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.
I didn't seriously consider playing an instrument again for many years. I briefly flirted with learning to play the guitar when I was 20, but had no way to teach myself beyond downloading chord charts from a very underdeveloped internet at that time, and I rapidly lost interest.
My father passed away in early 2017. While a great many things were taken from his family when that happened, a few things remained. Among them was his prized Martin D-35 Dreadnought, an instrument that he played for nearly 50 years before his hands could no longer make it tell its secrets. I was fortunate enough to become the caretaker for that instrument, but with it came an unexpected responsibility.
It was my intention to have a velvet-lined shadow box created for the guitar, to shield it behind glass and preserve it as best I could. When I began inquiring about construction, I came face to face with a very different reality. I learned that acoustic guitars cannot simply be stored if they are to remain functional; they must be played.
I could have simply taken the Martin out of its case once a month and idly strummed it, but the thought of simply making 'noise' with it was offensive to me after listening to my father do so much more for years and years.
So I bought a guitar of my own and began to teach myself to play. The responsibility to preserve the instrument, and the legacy that came with it, demanded no less. In return for my efforts, my father's Martin began telling its secrets to me as well.
That's for another time though.
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