Guitar Gear

I was conversing with a friend of mine who just received his conditional black belt in Tae Kwon Do this past weekend – very great accomplishment. During the course of our conversation, he said the one missing ingredient in his study of martial arts is developing his “chi.” He believes in chi, but is having a hard time grasping what it is all about. Chi is a Chinese word that describes the natural energy of the universe. For sci-fi folks, it’s the equivalent of the Force in Star Wars. Without going into detail, the development of chi is at the heart of martial arts, though it is downplayed in the US because we live in such an empirical society where everything needs to be explained. In any case, my friend wanted to know more about developing his chi. We’ve had previous conversations about this subject, and I’ve related how I developed my chi over the years, so I showed him some techniques. But that’s really not what this blog entry is about…

During our conversation, I said something that compelled me to think about my guitar playing [actually, I’m surprised I even said it]. It was simply this: “Sometimes, in order to even start a journey, you have to give yourself permission.” For quite a while now, I’ve experienced a bit of a block in regards to improvising, admitting that I can’t do it, or saying that I’m purely a rhythm guitarist. Even the solos in the songs that I’ve recorded are the result of countless takes, where I’ve memorized the lead. That’s not so bad, Brian May talked about doing this on some Queen records back in the day. But for me, I realize now that it was fear that was blocking me; my fear of people thinking I sounded bad.

But something changed in me this past weekend. I wrote a new song for Church and I only had an hour or so to lay down tracks so my band had an idea of how I wanted it to sound when we performed it. So I open GarageBand, picked out a click track, laid down the keyboard and bass parts, then laid down the two rhythm guitar parts, then finally added the vocal parts. Realizing that I wanted a bit of solo at the beginning of the song, I quickly recorded a solo in the first 16 bars of the song. I did a quick mix and master, output the song, and wrote it to a CD.

On the way to Church, I listened to what I recorded, then realized I did every single part in one take each – even the solo. I know it’s not a very sophisticated solo, but it was the first time I just put something down without thinking about it. That really inspired me for the service where we were going to do a couple of songs that would require some instrumental interlude.  To make a long story short, when it was my time to solo, I just – did it. I told myself, “Don’t think about what you’re going to do, you know the fretboard well enough now. Just feel the music.” After Mass, someone came up to me and said they really enjoyed the music, and the way I expressed myself on the guitar. How’s that for affirmation? Admittedly, I was somewhat nervous because all my solos had been fairly calculated in the past – I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do, and how I was going to do it. This time, I was on a bit of shaky ground because the only thing I started out with was the key of the song.

The point to all this is that in giving myself permission to solo, I was able to just do it. Did I make mistakes? Sure I did, but nothing glaring. For the very first time in my life, I was able to just let loose and express a message using my guitar. After Mass, I realized that I could probably have done this for a long time, but my fear of soloing kept me from doing it.

So give yourself permission to pursue your dreams and goals.  Like me, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you can accomplish.