Wednesday, September 07, 2005

 

Finger-Pickin' Good

I had my first lesson with Lou today--and exactly what I was expecting: we're going to clean up some sloppy technique and re-learn some basics, and move on to blues scales and fingerboard theory.

Lou had a very simple piece of advice that can probably apply to many things:

"If you have the basic techniques down well, anything you play, no matter how simple, will sound good."

Reminds me of an open mic I went to in DeKalb years ago: there was a guy there who strummed some covers that may have seemed like cheezy, simplistic song choices (James Taylor and Elton John) and some basic 3-chord ditties he wrote himself, but his strumming was so clean and his voice was so clear--he just sounded great. Sometimes simplicity really works. In fact, I think sometimes it's harder to make simplicity work.

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