When I first started dating my Choir Nerd / Singer / Music Student wife 10-ish years ago, I thought that would be a perfect push to finally REALLY start learning to play an instrument.
* The first truth in this post is that the only person capable of steering your life is you. Thinking anyone else is actually going to be able to “make” you do anything or waiting for “the perfect time to start” a thing is just dumb.
So one night, we visited a local music store and I bought my first guitar.
That guitar sat in corners, quietly laughing at my inability to focus on any one thing at a time forever, until We decided to take actual lessons on an actual weekly schedule with an actual live teacher a few months ago.
She has a huge music theory background to draw on, and learning the fretting and strumming seems to be the biggest thing slowing her down. She’s already far ahead of me and I am OK with that.
I’m pretty much starting from ZERO. No music theory. The musical notation is cryptic hieroglyphs, all I really have to start with is that the spaces in the staff correspond to F,A,C,and E notes. No practical experience beyond a grade 8 class on keyboard.
So this morning I started in on a new exercise.
Look at the staff.
What’s the first note?
It’s close to the space that is an “E” – Oh wait, it is the space so it is an E. Which E? The open E string / String 1 not string 6 / Open E, Open E, 1st Fret F, 3rd fret G, repeated G, down to F, E, 2nd string, 3rd fret D, etc, etc, etc until it’s played.
I ran through that piece, clunkily and mechanically and specifically, and slowly a couple of times and at some point actually read the title “Ode to Joy.”
OH WAIT! I KNOW THAT TUNE!
And then immediately played the damned tune about 3 or 4 times faster now that I had seen the forest.
*The second truth in this post is that sometimes the biggest problem is looking at everything through the microscope at the tiny details instead of taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture.
MECHATRONICS dOt LIFE 