MUSIC LESSON AT GUITAR CENTER

A music lesson with the usual suspects?

Nooooo.

With an array like this, from first guitar to last, there’s only one thing to do: Guitar lesson.

Which means go looking for another guitar at Guitar Center.

So I did, and much to my surprise I found someone else doing the same thing.

Well, almost the same thing.

I found a couple, not old, but not young, with the guy playing a $4000.00 Gibson acoustic, a Hummingbird.

He looked like a rocker, a band guy with long stringy hair, but a friendly face with a welcoming smile.

Probably mid-30’s.

She looked familiar, not like I knew her, but knew her role: she was buying her man a new guitar.

She sat on a stool with an expectant look, like she’d been there before.

I know the look, but not the guitar. $4000.00? What the heck?

 

So, I listened in while he low-balled his girl with, “I just don’t know. I mean, it sounds good, but? It feels like it’s either this one, or that one.”

Me: You sound good. How about I play that one while you play yours, then we switch. That’s one way of telling the sound.

 

I started playing what he’d been playing, which surprised him, then he kicked in. (G-C-G)

He did a little more. I copied it when he came back to rhythm, then did a few runs for him.

Fun times in the guitar room with $8,000 worth of guitars.

 

Me: These guitars sound fine, but this one is the one. You can feel the wood vibrate. But why $4,000.

Guy: Oh, I know. And my kids will need braces soon.

Me: You have kids?

Guy: Two girls. Twins. And an older boy.

 

Mid-thirties guy, three kids who were not with him, and a woman who might have been his wife, or not, and me all sharing a moment of musical intimacy.

It was band-night all over again on a Sunday afternoon.

 

Rock Star 101: Look The Part

After I broke the ice and we started playing together I noticed something: he struggled with two chords.

He told me he was ‘getting back into guitar’ which ordinarily means he used to play.

The guy had the rockstar look, an easy expression of confidence like he knew what he was doing.

He just didn’t sound like he knew what he was doing, which is what probably made him lay his last guitar down.

I said any choice would be good, but there might be another guitar and to keep trying them out.

Or, put his favorite guitar on layaway so it would be there if he decided it really was the right one.

About this time a lady tried to enter the room through the door I was blocking, the inner-room of the guitar room, one of two inner-rooms, the other being more of a soundproof closet, or sauna.

I stepped aside and she joined right in with, “Guitar Center takes anything back within forty days, I think. I’ve brought back loads of gear with no questions asked.”

Me: With no problem?

Her: None.

Me: I ordered a guitar that they shipped from San Antonio. But it got hijacked in San Francisco and I got my money back.

Her: I’m not surprised.

Me: Then he’d better buy it today.

Guy: Do you work for Guitar Center?

Me: No.

Guy: It sure seems like you do. You know a lot about these guitars.

Me: Nope, I’m just doing the opposite of you. I’m trying not to buy a super-expensive guitar.

 

With that out of the way I showed him how to play Foggy Mountain Breakdown, my guitar store version of Stairway To Heaven.

 

Guitar Room Revelation

I walked out of the inner-room and the lady followed me, telling me about her guitars like they were her children.

Which is normal in guitar world.

I was about to ask to see pictures when someone turned on the sound system inside the inner-room.

Except there’s no sound system in the inner-room.

In crystal clear high tones in descending order, it was the guitar guy strumming a six-string and singing like an angel.

I don’t remember the song, but it sounded familiar, like James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful.’

It was a moment, an unexpected shocker of a belting-it-out-vocal that he kept going as I left the big room.

His wife/girlfriend was the only audience that mattered while he sang for his new guitar.

 

 

I hope she bought it for him, or approved of him buying it with the spare 4 Gs he had.

The lady with the guitar family agreed:

Lady: He ought to buy it. My guitars were all more than I could afford when I bought them, but the price fades the more you play them. Then it grows back when you sell them.

Me: Have you ever sold one of your guitars?

Lady: What? Of course not. Why would I buy them in the first place if I was ever going to sell them?

 

 

PS: Guitars don’t re-string themselves. If you have a guitar with no strings, and have the replacements, and want to play? What do you do?

 

PSS: The more you play guitar, the better you get . . . sometimes. Even if you don’t get better, you’re still coordinating activities between your brain and body, your fingers, your ears, and showing focus and concentration.

Your #1 Baby Boomer Blogger says, “Do that.”

 

This ends your music lesson here for today.

Your’s starts right . . . now.

I can’t hear you.