Thursday, August 11, 2005

 

Giving in to lessons

Okay, after years of playing the guitar, I’m finally giving in and going to take lessons.

There’s a bunch of stuff you can learn on your own, then you reach a certain point when you either can’t learn much more by yourself, or you realize, "Geez, maybe I've been teaching myself all the wrong technique!"

I've actually been pretty careful of my technique, checking in with other players and getting DVDs and book from the library, but I've reached a phase in which I want to actually become a good player. I'm just kind of tired of playing other's people songs and playing pop music. I'd like to get to know the instrument a little better for composition purposes--I have music in my head that I just can't get into and out of the instrument.

I don't know, maybe being down in corn country I've also let the bluegrass thing get into my blood. . . no. . . I’ve always had a blues itch, and the bluegrass I've been hearing down here is a close cousin, rekindling the itch.

I think I resisted lessons because they were pretty expensive, but now that I'm out of the urban/suburban area, lessons by decent teachers are actually quite affordable.

Anyway, my instructor will be Lou DiBello at Corson's guitar store in downtown Urbana. I ran into him when I was browsing the classical guitars and he convinced me that some lessons would be worth a half hour a week (along with his minimum requirement of a half hour of practice five times per week).

Done. I'll start next month.

Years down the line good instruction will hopefully get me to that point where lessons can do me no more good, since I'll have mastered the techniques and theory, and learned the proper way to teach myself.

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