A Girl...

Simon Says - "22 frets, 6 strings, and not much to do with them"

Today I played my new(est) guitar. I've had it now for a few months, and I don't play it nearly enough. It is the guitar I have wanted since I was in my early teens. It is a Gibson Les Paul. It is so sweet. This is not an Epiphone Les Paul rip-off. It isn't a Les Paul Studio. It's the real thing. It is made of a lovely amber wood, with a quilted grain pattern on it. It has a slim 60's style neck which is perfect for my relatively stubby fingers. Jimmy Page could/can stretch his fingers from fret 1 to fret 10. I cannot, so the slim neck is a must. (btw, as I type this, Tina Turner's version of "Whole Lotta Love" is on my stereo. It's surprisingly good.)

I play through a Fender DeVille 212 amp. Those of you who cock your head in confusion should just not worry about it, because it's a great combination, even though it does rattle a bit when I run over muted strings. Still, I am just not a Marshall Stack kind of guy yet. Give me some time.

The reason that I am not a Marshall Stack kind of guy is this: I'm not that good of a guitar player. I'm not bad, don't get me wrong. I can hold my own on a good day. Leah says she first swooned over me for real when she heard me play guitar. So I'm not terrible. But I don't have the sort of expertise that can really make this Gibson sing.

Today, I was playing along with Appetite for Destruction. I accidentally left my copy of this album in the glove box of a rental car, so I have been without for about 3 years. Well, I got a copy from a good friend last week, so I have been listening to it again nearly every day. So, feeling very much like Slash, I decided to put it on the stereo and play along on my Gibson Les Paul (Slash plays a Les Paul, dont' you know...). So there I was in the martini lounge (living room), with my Les Paul and my Fender Deville and feeling very Slashy (except that I was in my bathrobe), and ready to rock.

Well, as I played along, I realized that I really need to practice. Wow, really. Maybe some leather pants would do the trick, but I think I just need to play and play to get better. I'm stuck on all the same riffs I've been playing for 5 years. I need to take some lessons or something.

The good news is this: I realized a few days ago that if you practice, you get better. I am turning into a very competent bass player, now that I play for about 3 hours every Thursday night with my band, and usually fit in an hour or two once or twice a week. So maybe if I can figure out how to fit that sort of time in with the guitar, I will notice a similar improvement.

There is one other way to get better at an instrument, and that is to be not so terribly popular. When I was in high school, I had lots of time to myself. I wasn't traditionally unpopular, but I didn't have folks breaking down my door either. However, I lived a long way from the rest of my friends, and didn't have my own car. So I spent a lot of time in my bedroom all alone. Your first thought may be that I spent all of this time touching myself. A good guess, but not necessarily true. I actually spent all that time (a lot of it, really) playing harmonica. And guess what? When you spend 3 years doing little else, you can get pretty good at harmonica.

So, I guess I need to reduce the demands on my time, become unpopular-or-without-a-ride, and hunker down on the guitar.

Sigh... I am one of those born-to-be-a-rock-star types that wasn't actually born to be a rock star.