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11 years: feels funny just saying it.
I passed my 11th anniversary of the start of my TAC journey last may. I have one piece of advice….if I had known it would be possible for me to play the way that I can now….I would have started way, way, way sooner. This last year I figured out how to play everything. I have had enough repetitions within song forms that everthing is familiar even if I have never heard the song. I can sit and play cold with anyone, anytime, anywhere. I always wanted to be able to do this and now I can. I used to be intimidated and that feeling has been replaced by curiousity of “what will that sound like together?”
All that happened one small chunk at a time. Sometimes comprehension came one note in a single measure at a time painfully slow, but the value of the CHUNK will forever remain priceless to me.
My current favorite jam is Tedeshi Trucks Band version of Franklins Tower. Lots of sass to be had in there.
My largest overarching concern to work for the next year is Tone. As I think less about note selection my ear has a chance to begin noticing and refining tone. The best place where I make the greatest progress the fastest in dynamic control while working string tone variables is right here every day with TAC Challenge. It remains my favorite Finger Gym (really it is a whole body gym but that is for another day). I continue to be amazed at what my fingers do as a result of years of challenges. If you have ever had one of those, holy cow did I just do that, moments, you know what I mean. To make my goal specific (and yet admittedly amorphic) I am playing to produce tone that does not have string noise. The stike is precise enough and fast enough it is not heard and the only tone is the bloom of the wood tone from the wood with as little string sound as is possible.
Perhaps my biggest frame change over the last year I now recognize that Repitition is my friend. I wish I could learn a different way but it seems this is how I learn best. I seek it because it yields results and results are where I live. Me and repetition share warm embrace and happily now. I did used to whine my first coupla years. : )
The distance between mediocre and genious is a half step, from there it is but a quarter step more to heaven.
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16 Replies
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Congrats on 11 years! It sounds like you have arrived at one final destination in your guitar journey and are now setting your sights on the next destination. I look forward to visiting all of the same waypoints you have visited during your journey. Here’s to continuing the journey!
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It is a wild place to find oneself to be sure. What is even wilder is that the journey which at first appeared to be linear is rather a series of ever expanding and contracting circles which weave through each other at all times and simultaneously. It reminds me much more of Jeffersons Airplane’s White Rabbit. It gets big and small and crisscrosses in the shrinking and expanding. At least that is my take today.
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TAC was just a baby 11 years ago. I share with you a bit over half that tenure and I understand and share your feelings of continued amazement of what used to be impossible is now routine. Thank you for your contributions to my journey by sharing your “rabbit hole” explorations. Once you have pointed the hole out to me I have enjoyed following it down a few paces. Good health and blessings before you take that last step to heaven.
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Thinking about TAC in its infancy puts a smile on my face. I rememer the first time I met Tony and had about a million thing to say like when you haven’t seen your best friend for a while and then I realised in the same moment…I don’t know this dude and he has no idea who I am. Awkward. It may be my single biggest Boomer/tech collision of record. Makes me laugh out loud thinking back on the moment. 2 seconds later Tony was over it and 5 seconds later I was too. 3 extra seconds for me because I have always been suspicious of long-haired guys with beards. Gotta love how music brings people together.
That last quarter step is tricky. The bannister is removed and there is no net. : )
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Happy 11th @jumpinjeff. Hard to believe its been that long!
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I do share that sentiment. Where does the time go? And then I think about all that has happened in the last 11 years and I realize, Oh There it is!
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I’m not on the forums much any more Jumpin Jeff, but since the beginning (I joined in May-2014) you’ve been one of my TAC guitar heros. I’m fortunate to have met you in person and shared some great experiences in Bozeman together. Congratulations my friend!😀
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Tony S you are one of my muses. Don’t know if I woulda made it this long if I hadn’t run into you! Part of the Orgin story in a multivalent weave. Best to your better half. : )
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@jumpinjeff this post got by me, I’ve had some distractions at home with my mother, but congrats on your 11 years in TAC! What you described is my goal too, just be able to play anything I want to… I also wish I had started about 50 years ago but we start when we start, God knows when we’ll stop playing.
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I am not going to stop today since I already have played and tomorrow looks good! I am so profoundly hooked in my soul, I am pretty sure I should not have shaken hands with that funny lookin dude at the Clarksdale crossroads. You have made a difference in my journey Pete. Thank you.
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Jeff—
This is such a wonderful post you have made here! Clean. Focused. Inspirational. The complete package; the story of exactly where you are– and right where I want to be in a year or 3. I’ll get there…… Hope you are leaving some crumbs to follow……
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I sent you a P/M. can you still get that?
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Yeah– read it just now as a matter of fact!
We were just down (sort-of) in that general area a couple months ago, driving from Newport over to Corvallis, and then also maybe 3 years ago we drove from Eugene out to Florence- (our #2 granddaughter went to Oregon and we were visiting her at the time— and heading home via the coast). So we have been thru Veneta, but I honestly don’t remember anything about it.
Let me do some thinking on sending you a couple tunes……… I am the definition of living behind the times…. on purpose– (I still have a flip-phone….. and love it).
Be cool/ keep in touch.
M
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I feel you: my phone has a rotary dial. : )
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Love it!
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