One of my few regrets in life is that I never learned to play a musical instrument.
I just turned 42 years old this past week. It may be too late.
When I was in first grade, my teacher played the guitar for us. I remember vividly her playing Cat Stevens’ “Moon Shadow” as well as “Eddie cucha catcha camma” (some nonsense song). I don’t remember much from back then, so clearly this made a profound impact on me.
Since then, I’ve admired greatly anybody who can play a musical instrument. So many people can do it with such apparent ease. But a guitar feels like a tree trunk in my own hands.
Now I’ve got three kids of my own. I would love to impress on them the importance of music and if I can play an instrument for them, that’s the best shot they’ve got of “getting it”.
I don’t need to tear off a rock-and-roll guitar solo. All I want to do is to be able to strum a guitar and sing some songs with my kids, and maybe give them some visibility into how awesome it is to be able to create music.
Is that too much to expect from myself?
I got a guitar for Christmas two years ago. Apparently, I’ve been talking about this for a few years and my wife got me an inexpensive, but good quality (according to the Amazon reviews), Takamine S35 Jasmine acoustic guitar. She knows me well enough that it probably wasn’t a good investment to go all in and spend a grand on a great one.
So here we are, guitar in hand. And on my 42nd birthday I decided this is the year. So I acquired the Learn & Master Guitar training course from Legacy Learning Systems and I’m on my way.
I’m calling my birthday (Jan 28, 2010) “Day Zero” in my journey of learning to play guitar.
This blog is one of those mental games you play with yourself. Declare a goal out loud to make it real, and all that. I’ll chronicle my progress here. I hope you’ll follow along.
