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All I Need Is A Mirror And I'm A Star
Somehow I overlooked mentioning this item.
A couple of months I bought an electric guitar at a theatre fundraiser, because, well, this is what I do - buy crazy things at charity events.
Be that as it may, I've been told - by people who know these kinds of things - that this is a very good guitar. But of course, the kicker is that I've never played a guitar before (a brief, fruitless flirtation with the ukulele not withstanding), let alone any other musical instrument more complex than a tambourine. But, it's something that's been perennially at the top of my "things I've always regretted not doing" list. So, I bought the guitar with the silly notion in the back of my head that I would actually learn how to play it.
The nice thing about musical instruments, as opposed to say, theatre, is that you don't need a whole bunch of other people to help make it happen. You can just sit in your room and practice all by yourself, whenever you've got a few spare minutes. And with modern technology, you don't even have to worry about annoying the neighbors - evidently you can plug a set of headphones into a modern, solid-state amplifier and blast away to your heart's content without so much as rattling the crockery in the next room!
Well naturally, my schedule for the past couple of months has precluded much more than picking it up on occasion, and trying to learn a couple of chords off Internet instruction videos, which - truth be told - aren't terribly helpful.
But, just by chance about three weeks ago I came across an advert for something called "Guitar 101" offered at EMP (Better known to locals as "that ugly melted-crayon building Paul Allen forced us to plop down next to the Space Needle".) The price seemed quite reasonable, and although it's group, as opposed to individual instruction, so far, two weeks in, it does seem to be giving us a fairly good handle on the basics - so far as I can tell. All I really know is that the ends of the fingers on my left hand are sore as the dickens, but toughening up. Our instructor, Amy Stolzenbach, is a bona fide "local rock legend", so we're learning from an actual working musician, which is also helpful, because she knows all sorts of short-cuts and "cheats" that you probably wouldn't learn from someone too caught up in formalities; like she says, "if you aren't having fun, what's the point?"
Now, I'm certainly not expecting to become some sort of Rock God after a mere six weeks of instruction, but I figure, if I can learn enough to give me a solid foundation (which may entail springing for "Guitar 102" in February), maybe - just maybe, I'll eventually feel comfortable enough with it to take some more advanced instruction from any of the several musician friends I know who teach such.
Then, we'll just see.Labels: Amy Stolzenbach, EMP, Guitars, Music
Posted byCOMTE
on 8:10 PM
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