Finishing Guitar Zero

I finished Guitar Zero this weekend. I posted about it a little while ago. Yes it has taken that long to read it because I am slow.

I loved the book, though it did disappoint me. I feel like it didn't draw a strong conclusion. He was going gangbusters and then it was like he ran out of steam and just wrapped up the book too quickly. To be fair, there's likely no real conclusion to be made.

Basically, learning music is unique from learning lots of things, but it isn't totally unique. Kids may learn faster, but adults can learn just as well and may have good advantages in interesting ways.

One of the things I feel like he rushed on towards the end of the book is the why. He covered the how pretty well. But with respect to the why...he kind of just said that it might be good for your brain (but then gave lots of evidence that this might not actually be true) and that it might help you make friends. He also touched on the fact that it is rewarding because it allows you to continue working on a skill for a lifetime.

All of this is true. But none of that is why I want to play music.

I've wanted to play music for as long as I can remember. My earliest references to this was the joy I took in making my voice sound (at least I thought) like Paul McCartney's. This was probably around about 1977 or so.  And around then or shortly after I got the urge to learn to play guitar and piano. I think it was because the sounds those instruments made moved me...or I associated them with good times.  As I became a teenager I idolized musicians and dreamed of being a song writer and a rock star (or folk star). I think it was shallow motivation...but strong none the less. I learned chord organ as a child because I was bored. I learned cello in high school because everybody had to learn an instrument. My mom thinks I picked cello because I liked the girl in Fame...but that was total fabrication. I never actually liked Lori Singer. I liked the guy who played piano. No, I played cello because I was afraid to be in marching band because I worried that when I had my period it would show...and because I thought I was too fat to play violin (so much of your body is exposed). True fact. I played cello to sit down and hide. It was a bonus that cello helped me to learn to teach myself guitar a little while later.

Being in orchestra did something for me though...it gave me a taste of what it is to play in an ensemble. School orchestras rarely attain greatness, or even moderate cohesiveness at all, but I had glimpses of what it was to be totally emersed in an ensemble. To forget yourself. To go on auto pilot. To be in the music. Just glimpses here and there...but powerful glimpses.

Today I think that's what drives me...chasing that perfect moment of total emersion. It can happen playing alone, but it is more likely to happen in an ensemble...in a well rehearsed ensemble. People (non-musicians) try to zing me sometimes when I say that I don't like to perform and I don't like to be on stage and I don't like to have attention drawn to me (still hiding all these years later). "Well than why do you perform?" I perform, pure and simple, to play. It is human nature to half-ass something unless you have a good reason to excel. Performing puts the fire under my butt and the butt of my bandmates to do a good job. To practice and to rehearse. And all I want is to play. As often as possible. At as high of a level as I'm able.

BUT ANYWAY...back to the book.

Two things I liked about it is that it sort of outlined how best to make progress (and that it is probably going to be slow) as an adult music learner...and that it indicated that there are all kinds of ways to understand music. I feel self-conscious that I don't know more theory and that I don't have stronger instincts. I'm kind of in the middle...neither a scholar nor a natural. I tend to discount all that I do know though...which in the eyes of a beginner is a considerable amount. Like most things in life, there are many ways of being, and my way is just as legitimate as anyone else's. I shouldn't let anyone else make me feel bad about my way...or let myself make me feel bad about it.