THE MISSING PART ON A GUITAR? YOU

You’ve got plans, you make plans, and there’s always a missing part.

If you’re getting older and reading about the aging brain, you start worrying about your brain, and everyone your age with a functioning brain.

What about that baby boomer brain? Is it getting slippery? Harder to hold on to?

Then you read something about playing a musical instrument to improve focus and sustain concentration.

Sound like you yet? It goes two ways:

The first way: you decide to learn guitar. Like any successful boomer, and we’re all super-successful based on public opinion, you drive your reliable luxury car to the music store and buy the best acoustic guitar in the house.

And a guitar stand.

Then you put your new guitar on the stand and tell everyone you’re thinking about learning how to play.

Might take a lesson, might buy a book, and she’ll be ready when you are.

 

I’ve seen this in person: the hopeful player with the beautiful guitar that sits slack string, not for Hawaiian music, but to ease tension on the neck.

No one is playing that guitar, and no one has played it since it came home from the store.

“I started, but the strings hurt my fingers. It’s pretty though, isn’t it? I love looking at it. Really pulls the room together, don’t you think?”

There’s nothing wrong with musical instruments as furniture, as space-fillers. Ask anyone with a piano they don’t play.

 

You don’t have to build a guitar from scratch as part of the learning process, but you could. (Hey Alex)

 

Fail To Plan? Plan To Fail? Start Sooner Than Later

The second part of a musical instrument purchase as an adult:

For a guitar, pluck the low E string without taking the guitar off the wall. If it sounds off, leave it; if it rings, take it down and hold it like a baby.

Make sure your zippers and belt buckles are covered.

While you hold it, pluck each string and hum along.

In that moment, that very moment, you cross over from being a nobody to being James Taylor.

Feels like a big jump because it is a big jump. You made noise with your hands and your voice, but don’t take a bow just yet.

Thump that low E, the thickest string at the top eight times, no more no less, then pluck the second string down, the A string, one time.

Now the hard part: After eight beats on the E, and one beat on the A, put your middle finger of the hand holding the neck on the third fret of the big E string for one beat.

You are fretting a note like Carlos Santana, then back to the open E for eight, the open A for one, and repeat for two hours.

Open string means no fingertips on the fret. Three notes is what we’re talking about.

What you are doing is playing the intro to ZZ Top’s La Grange.

 

Now Is A Good Time To Start

Play a guitar as a teenager and stop, and the rest of your life you’ll wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped.

Start playing in your twenties and thirties, then stopping, won’t hit the same.

Quitting before you get good enough, feel confident enough, to play in public, answers the question of what could have happened if you had started sooner.

Besides, you can always pick it up again like the guitar player in the picture.

This is the guy who said a decorative guitar adds a classy finish to the room, but it’s more than decorative.

I bought this guitar used from Guitar Center after plucking the E string, then going inside the expensive room and plucking a series of E strings to compare.

Then I took it down off the wall and held it like a baby. Felt snuggly.

I played a G chord, then a C chord, then a D chord, and laid down $200 and took it home.

Not $2000, not $5000, though those guitars look like mine.

I found a sound I liked, compared it to the high end sound, and they were similar.

Similar enough.

It’s bare bones guitar with no electronics and no cut-away body, like all acoustic guitars before the 1930’s.

Adding extras would have jumped the price to $1000, but I paid $200 and feel like I got the best deal ever.

That’s a good feeling when you hold a guitar.

You don’t have to worry about scratching a $5000 instrument. Even better, you don’t have to worry about someone else scratching it, or dropping it.

All you have to do is play it.

Will it hurt your fingers? Only for a week or two, then you’re good to go.

 

PS:

For less finger pain in the beginning, get a classical nylon string guitar instead of steel string flat top.

Open E for eight beats, open A for one beat, press the low E on the third fret for one beat, then back to open E.

Little kids, toddlers, love dancing to La Grange. Add some thumps on the guitar body for drums.

 

PSS:

For parents: Add some guitar noise to the day. Show your kids you don’t have to be an expert to have fun.

What if they grow up remembering you had a guitar that you played badly? Good, but that will never happen because the more you play the better you get.

Only you will remember how much you sucked at the start, and it is a fading memory.

For grandparents: keep breaking out your guitar even if you only play 1-4-5 songs with three chords.

Play the heck out of them. (Hey Tyler)

Start with one chord and, “M M M M M M M M mad mad mad.”