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Aren't you glad you got into music?


Phait

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I was just thinking about this...

 

Going through whatever life throws at you (in my case, breakup) can be tough but knowing I can come home and pickup my guitar and write or just play something and enjoy it, or have some kind of catharsis... is amazing.

 

I think when I started 13 years ago I had no real business playing a guitar :lol: but it seems my natural curiosity and desire to learn usually propels me to a spot I'm happy with and damn, I'm glad I got into music.

 

It just gives me something when there's nothing. And when there's already something, it's just another thing to be a part of... to create is an amazing, beautiful thing and I don't know if I'm "blessed" to be able to but I'm sure glad I can.

 

I hope I don't lose any of my hands, much less my right.

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Good stuff, Cooter. I have a direct to disc album by Thelma Houston and "Pressure Cooker" doing that song that is amazing. A great performance with two album sides cut in one take each.

 

I couldn't find a video of the song, but here's the intro song on the album.

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

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Yeah, sometimes I think I`m nuts... been making a living making music for 20 years now. Kind of amazing... it paid for school, my first car, and now a house and kids. Amazing how something you cannot see or touch can be so real. Then when I was teaching years ago, a parent said to me, "Teach my son to play like you." Thats the beauty of music... you can`t teach someone to play like you. You can show them techniques and tricks but they sound like themselves. Now that kid is 18, in his own band playing death metal or something. :lol:

 

Music is my drug of choice. I`ve never tried anything else and for good reason. I have had the most natural highs one can feel. And music, its always been there through thick and thin... my best friend.

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My mother introduced me to The Beatles. It was the greatest single gift anyone has or will ever give me because it has shaped everything in my life in such a way that I could do something as abstract as become a musician, make a living at it and enjoy it more and better than anything I could have ever done otherwise. It's a modest living but it has served me well... Rest in peace, Mom. I love you and always will for what you did for me.

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I was never NOT a musician. I have no point in my memory of not being an instrumentalist, singer, or songwriter. I started on piano lessons at age three, but was already banging on the thing before that. I was playing guitar by the time I was in third grade. You might as well say, "Aren't you glad you got into breathing air?"

 

The answer is yes, most definitely.

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I went through most of my childhood desperate to try to figure out how to make music, conned my folks into quickly aborted piano lessons ("Little Tommy has no musical talent whatsoever") to a tryout and very short period with my grammar school band ("... no musical talent whatsoever... not fair to the other students... waste of our time and your money..." -- you get the idea). Later, in jr high, I saved up 5 months of allowance and bought a barely playable plywood guitar with a neck like a tree trunk and learned to tune (sorta) and learned how to finger 6 chords (with these 6 chords you can play anything -- or, in my case, nothing).

 

But, somehow, when I was 20, in college, and frustrated by the cultural limitations of being who I had thought I wanted to be -- a poet -- I managed to burn through the months of relearning to tune and getting my chord changes to a point where I could get from one to another without dropping more than a beat or two... and, after a long, long time, it started sounding vaguely like music to me. It literally took months of faithfully thumping on the thing (the same guitar as jr high -- and I was not imagining how hard it was to play -- it was an insanely unplayable guitar even in adult hands) while it simply did not sound anything like music and then one day, through the misfingering and stilted, mechanistic strumming, I caught the first glimmer. Later, intoxicated by the simple guitar parts on the first Leonard Cohen album, I started fingerpicking and that seemed to open things up for me considerably.

 

Within about 6 months or so after rededicating myself to finally learning to play, I was actually able to entertain myself -- something I'd barely even let myself dream about.

 

As someone who grew up within the bounds of mostly passive entertainment (aside from rough housing around the neighborhood and, when I was 13, my sudden decision to become a writer) it was a revelation to do something like play music -- much different, although related to my efforts at writing. But the writing seemed like work -- whereas while there was still plenty of work involved in learning to play guitar, occasionally you could just break loose and play.

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I also was forced onto a piano bench at age 5 and later convinced the folks I needed a guitar. I spent the time it took learning to play but the most consistent fun I've had with music has been since learning about computers/MIDI and being able to multi-track. Now with today's fast computers, powerful DAWs and programs like Reason I'm in my own little musical Heaven!

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