MUSIC LESSONS, LIFE LESSONS, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE

‘Music lessons’ always sound ominous.

Like ‘continuing education’ and its friend ‘life long learning’, music lessons sound like work.

Although the idea is to ‘play’ music, getting to the play part takes time.

Then the question becomes ‘how much time, Big D?’

I found the answer in an unusual place: a guitar.

But first, about that picture.

In a scene repeated over and over since the first guitar landed in a pair of hands at a social gathering, the two Aces Of Axe got it going one afternoon and were ignored.

Has this happened to you?

Before you drop a sad story of unrequited musical passion, if you make noise with an inanimate object you’re not ignored.

However, when you do it on a guitar, two things happen. The audience either pretends to not listen, or they make a request and scream, “FREE BIRD.”

Why do audiences pretend to ignore the musicians? Because no matter how poorly you play you sound like an expert to the non-musical. You know you play a bad guitar, so do they, but you still play better than a non-player.

At the same time, if what’s played is not what’s expected, the wall goes up. Fortunately, music notes travel.

For example, one night three guys in colorful, puffy shirts, played an 80’s Prom revival. They dressed the part.

One side of the room showed up for the band; the other side showed up for Boy George, George Michael, Sting, Madonna, and Bon Jovi. One of the ladies wanted to be Jessi’s Girl.

Tension grew, the two groups squared off like the Sharks and Jets, and the band played on.

Music Lessons For Life

I saw Gordon Lightfoot play the Philadelphia Academy Of Music in 1976. It was in the same house occupied by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the time. Very fancy, box seats, great sound.

Someone shouted a request. It wasn’t Free Bird. They didn’t know Gordon had his own song list. He got pissed and shouted back for them to shut-up, that he’d get to that song.

The concert hall was on South Broad Street, a block away from The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, also known as the birthplace of Legionnaire’s Disease. At the time I lived a few blocks north of city hall.

My roommate was a medical student at Hahnemann, and played a good guitar. He started my music lessons, but didn’t know it. Now he does.

Hey, Meyers.

I thought of Gordon Lightfoot when Big Madonna started throwing her weight around. Nurse Kelly was going to sedate her if she didn’t shut-up.

The band finished the show, packed up, and hung around in case anyone wanted an autograph.

Anyone?

Music Teachers Come In Many Modes

Practice and rehearsal come before playing. In other words, the work comes before the fun, like real life.

Practice is not rehearsal.

For the first, it’s drills and reading and remembering. For the second, it’s applying the drills and readings and remembering with others.

Then it’s show time.

The top pic is practice and the one on the right is the student. Why does he look like an adult version of the banjo kid from the movie Deliverance?

I call it stage presence, or concentration.

The one on the left works to expand musical horizons with epic tracks of orchestral layers of guitar. The one on the right works to keep time.

Together they make things happen.

Guitars come in two versions: the one that gets played, and the one that hangs on the wall, or stays in the case.

If you’ve got one, play it. If you don’t play it, find a buyer who will. There’s nothing more sad than an unplayed guitar. Or piano, or lap steel, dobro, banjo, or harmonica.

The joy of making noise, your noise, is that no one else is doing it, or can do it.

As with two guitars, there are only two pieces of music in the world. The easy and the impossible. The space between is called practice.

Practice? Take if from Allen Iverson.

Get it together, then rehearse. What’s next?

Play time. See you there.