A short post about guitar

I love being musical.

I took something called a Multiple Intelligences test for one of my classes today, and one of my highest ranking "intelligences" (or, how I make sense of the world) was Musical Intelligence.


Music just makes sense to me. Music totally moves me. So if I ever post music on my blog it's because it really meant something to me. I have long ago abandoned the notion that the same music that moves me will be just as wonderful to someone else, but sometimes I like to share a little something.

I've been a piano player for a long time, and this hard-earned skill comes naturally now. I look at a chord and the muscle memory in my hands knows exactly what to do without my thinking about it. My hand knows what shape it needs to make in order to play a fifth or a fourth, or a ninth. It's so effortless now that it's easy to forget the long road to mastery.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I started picking up guitar a little over a year ago. There is nothing like picking up a new, and totally different, instrument to remind one of one's humble musical origins. For what feels like the longest time, my hands have been at an utter loss what to do unless my conscious brain gives them direct orders. And there's the callouses, too. You cannot play guitar well unless you lose a little sensation in the tips of your fingers. Not too much, but enough to resist the urge to scream in pain every time you play.

Well, time has passed, and slowly but surely, I am acquiring mastery by degrees. I have mastered individual chords--meaning, I can play them without thinking about them or looking at my hands (for the most part). I can strum using just the right amount of pressure. I can finger pick simple tunes. And yeah, I can pick out other tunes by ear--laboriously, but I can do it.

Mastery takes so much practice. Sometimes, after a while, you just have to put the instrument away for a while and let things "marinade." Let new neurons form. And then, magically, when you come back to it, you've improved. Suddenly, you can play that riff from Stairway to Heaven with a little more ease and strength. Suddenly, your finger is strong enough to hammer on that note instead of picking it. Suddenly, before you know it, 24, 25 years old does not seem too old to pick up a new instrument.

Did you know that Martha Graham, one of the most famous dancers in all of history, did not take a single dance lesson until she was 22? That, my friends, is quite ancient by dancers' standards.

So anyway, to conclude this "short" post, I will post a video of the song I am currently working on. Things are going really well. I expect I will have mastered this song before too long. At least before I'm dead. Here's to hoping. And practicing.

"Autumn Leaves" by Eva Cassidy