Saturday, July 23, 2011

Blues


Took another blues class from Dave Mullany, along with another, much-more-accomplished-than-I player, Chris. 


A good teacher can make things ever so much easier, and Dave is good.


I can't say that I see the light at the end of the tunnel by any means, but I am aware there is a tunnel a few miles up the road I need to get to ...


Taking the lead is still awkward, and since I don't know but a couple of scales, really limited, but having a couple of good guitarists playing rhythm makes it easier. If I spend some time learning major and minor scales and some CAGED stuff up the neck, that will be a good start. Dave laid out what could be a couple years' worth of stuff to work on, and that's the road I'm headed down.


If you are in Portland and don't have anything else going this next Sunday morning, Dave will be playing the Woodstock Farmer's Market, on Woodstock, in Southeast, starting around ten a.m. tomorrow. The market features something called Giga-Bike, where you can still on a stationary spin-bike and pedal, and that powers the music amps and electric instruments. How cool is that? 

2 comments:

  1. This may be a pointless question or one which has no answer but which endeavor did you initially find more challenging, becoming an author or a musician?

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  2. Musician.

    My natural bent was in the literary realm. I liked music and I could play some, after a fashion, but it was harder.

    I was pretty comfortable with words early, and even though I wasn't accomplished with them, I was undaunted -- I was going to be a writer and it was only a matter of how long it took to get it together to do it.

    I didn't know any other writers when I started, so there weren't any folks for me to compare myself to on a personal level, viz: the process of writing. I'd read a lot of good fiction, but had no real idea how it was produced.

    When I started to get more serious about playing the guitar, I had long been exposed to some pretty good players, enough to see how much more they knew than I did. I realized I was too far behind to catch up, but that I'd do the best with what time I had.

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