Getting the groove back
I crossed a threshold, and suddenly I have a groove that has long been elusive.
Programming Note: my posting frequency has slipped lately. Work has become rather chaotic, and the next few weeks are going to be insane. But I will get back to a more consistent posting schedule soon.
The one thing I erred in early in my guitar playing journey was not getting disciplined about time. As in keeping a beat, and playing consistently against that beat.
The recommendation that has come down from the ages is to use a metronome, and to play against the tick-tick-tick-tock beat (for a 4/4) to build that counting and groove.
I never bought or owned one, instead I would play against the actual songs from tape (or CD).
When I began working full-time (plus) in the 1990’s a lot of my early discipline was wiped out, and the few times I played out, I struggled to play well with the group. Again, it was my lack of consistent practice that stood out, but the reality was that most of it was being inconsistent in the tempo of motifs and riffs.
Part of this was the era that I entered the world of guitar was the rise of “shredders.” If you are not a connoisseur of the genre, it is typified by neo-classical melodic motifs and virtuosic playing at speed.
An exemplar of the genre is Vinnie Moore:
So, if you are steeped in this genre, you are comparing yourself to these truly amazing artists. And you wanna go fast.
Couple that with uneven learning (that is somethings come faster than others) and an internal desire to crank the speed up to eleven, and that leads to uneven tempos as you speed up what you play well, and slow down what you struggle with. Internally, this “feels” good. And you think that you are playing great, but you really are making a hash of it.
So, that is the backdrop of this post.
The Current Situation
My playing had slacked off in time and frequency since I began in product management. The workload and the travel schedule1 conspire to make it impossible to practice regularly, and frankly I went to picking up the guitar maybe once or twice a month for a half hour a session.
Needless to say, whatever proficiency I had evaporated. Poof.
Then Covid hit. Suddenly instead of 2.5 hours a day being spent in transit to the office, I was at home in my office2 for 12 hours a day, and instead of just working, I would pull the guitar off the wall and plug in.
As I began practicing more, the skills are coming back. I was able to buy a better suited amplifier (my main amp was a Fender Super 60, a tube combo, and it was LOUD. The new amp is a 15 watt Orange Rocker 15, far better suited to my environs) and a microphone to record myself.
Nothing will pierce your feeling of invincibility than hearing the shockingly piss poor timekeeping that you have (or at least I have.)
The way out of this? Practice. Practice. Practice.
So, I have been spending hours playing simple motifs, scales, riffs, and licks.
No, I am not recording every session. But when I did record recently, I was astounded that I was keeping time well. Like consistently.
Message to 18 year old Geoff
If you are getting started playing, don’t skimp on a metronome (seriously today there are plenty of apps for smartphones to provide this service for almost no cost), practice tempo, resist the urge to jump to the interesting things, and neglect the solid rhythm parts that make a song hang together.
And find friends to play with. Sure, you will all likely suck, but as Paul Gilbert says in one of his instructional videos, play with a drummer (use hearing protection) as that will make you a better player.
Something I read back when I began playing in the early 1980s was that Saxophone players in general are better musicians than average guitar players. I think about that often. I have no doubt that it was true then, and is true now.
One of the standard jokes in product management is that most job descriptions state that candidates can expect 25% of travel time. But really that means 25% of the time in on airplanes in the air. I once was on the road 12 out of 16 weeks.
We are lucky to have a small house with enough bedrooms to afford me one dedicated to be my den/office. WFH is great for me!
I nodded vigorously to so much of this. In high school band, we had practice cards that we filled out and turned in to the band director weekly. He thought I was exaggerating on mine; when he called my mom to chat with her about it, she assured him in emphatic tones that if anything, I was under-reporting the time I invested in practice.
Why do you think sax players, specifically, are better than guitar players overall?
Geoff, I genuinely believe there was a revival of the arts all through Covid, where artists of all stripes were locked down, and that just unleashed a massive amount of creativity around the globe. Your story is one example. I have one, too; all of my writing in the past three months was born during Covid times and was rattling around upstairs before I started putting it all down on paper... no, incorrect, I put in down on whatever this is - I am now stacking all of my covid thoughts here! And on music, I've been listening to music and watching music vids for many hours a day starting when Covid did, and I have not done that since I was 18. I'm 70, but I feel 18 again. And I think Covid times did that to me: that and a combo of my UBI (Universal Basic Income) in the form of pension and SS.
So what does this phenomenon of lockdown, UBI, and explosion of art tell us? OR better put, does Oppression breed Liberation? I don't know; let me know in the comments below, and I will write about this very point in my Shines of the Times series I just started today. Things went well in the arts, but I think Spirituality may have not.