Learning the language of music - my journey.

Ham

I’m on a journey at the moment, I thought I’d document it. Some people may find it interesting, some may have contributions, some may get bored, quickly. But onwards.

Let’s establish where I am first. If you were to ask me, can you play guitar? I would first have to assess whether or not you were a musician in any way, shape or form. If you were not, I could answer, “sure, yeah, I can play” and strum out a few tunes, maybe a bit of blues, stuff like that and you might have even been slightly impressed. On the other hand, if you are a music-maven my answer has to be “No way, Jose”, which is closer to the honest truth.

A journey has to start somewhere, this one starts before I picked up a guitar, growing up in the 60s and dreaming of being a rock star, who didn’t? I had an odd upbringing, and music was no part of that. When I left home(as soon as I could), I got myself a guitar and a "how to do it" book. That along with a few other books is what served me over the years, without any discernible natural talent and devoid of any ability to sing (if my life depended on singing two notes in tune, I’m a dead man) that tells you all you need to know. 

Those rock star dreams didn’t die immediately, as I trained to be an accountant, I saw myself on stage, performing in a suit as a unique selling point for my image. I sometimes wonder if that idea somehow infected an embryo as it was fertilised thousdands of miles away, and Joe Bonamassa was the outcome. My single public performance was when a then-girlfriend got me to play at her family’s street party for QE2’s silver jubilee. (FTR, 1977, the year Joe Bonamassa was born)

Fast forward loadsa years, to the point I’m about to retire. I’ve always said to myself I was going to finally take guitar lessons, and that’s what I have started to do. 

The title for this is “Learning the Language of Music” because that’s what it feels like, those of you who speak fluently probably don’t even notice it. As it happens, I’m fortunate in having a reasonable facility for learning language, I speak a few and generally pick up new ones quite quickly. Music, it appears, less so. I feel that it is certainly on the same path as spoken word, but for whatever reason demands a lot more work. This thread is intended to chart my journey, the struggles and achievements on the way.