Self doubt threw me off the path for decades

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I can't really give a clear-cut answer to how long I've played guitar. When I was young music was my entire life but I lacked the confidence to seriously take on an instrument.

I studied piano for about 2 years without reaching any real level of proficiency. It was hard to be motivated when I wanted to create rock songs and I was forced to learn classical music.

It was frustrating being taught by people who knew nothing about writing music. My parents came from a generation that thought it took years and years of serious practice to become good enough to write or perform music. They thought you needed to learn musical notation. Never mind that despite the crazy Beatle-heads they were, they completely overlooked the fact that the Beatles couldn't read music.

And so when I banged away on the piano, they'd make a comment about how annoying it was and how I'd never play if I didn't take it seriously.

I may be filling in a few blanks here as I can't remember a lot of this, but I distinctly remembering being made to feel that making music wasn't as fun as it was to listen to. Although I was given an electric guitar at the end of high school, I didn't have an amp to plug it into, and I already had so much self-doubt that I shied away from it quickly.

I was used to studying hours every day, only to get B-'s and so I thought I was just incapable of becoming good at anything. Later I'd learn that I could learn anything much faster than school or a class could teach it if I was allowed to do it on my own terms...but this lack of confidence basically just made me a dabbler.

I sang in a band because singing was the one thing I didn't need to practice hours at to get to a B- level. In university I wrote a few riffs and learned the pentatonic scale and that's about it.

I didn't get serious about the guitar until I was out of university, and even then, I was more serious about song-writing and focused on making what I could with limited skills. I learned the different modes and all the shapes of the pentatonic and major scales and started writing songs while learning from Youtube videos.

Every year I'd write 2 or 3 songs, and after 2 years I added a cover of Sam Cooke and a cover of Tom Waits and I had a setlist worth of music to play so I forced myself to play a few shows even though I was poorly underprepared.

"I'm just not much of an instrumentalist" I said to myself. And so it was.

There's a lot that happened after about 5 years of playing music that I'll go into more depth about another time, jamming with my roommate on occasion, a 10 city tour I did, and hanging out with awesome musicians and learning from them.

Through all that, I always said, "I'm not an instrumentalist or even a musician, I'm an artist first and a songwriter second".

I still don't claim to be an instrumentalist, and I don't think I ever will, but I have become addicted to leveling up at guitar these days.

The final motivation that got me over the gap of actually finding practice exciting is an idea I had for future shows.

I want to jam, even if I'm by myself. And so I bought a loop pedal and decided to get better at improvising by attacking my weakest points. Those are pretty clear, it's my basic ability. I never did drills daily, only occasional and never thoroughly, and so I don't move around the neck naturally.

It's been about a month since I got serious about this and I can feel my speed on guitar has almost doubled. The 15 years of casual playing doesn't hurt, but the biggest thing is just that my hands weren't loose enough or strong enough, and drilling daily has fixed that.

I'm currently working on 3 songs, and when one of them is finished, I'm going to have a show. I plan on playing 4 old songs, 1 new one, and two jams in the beginning and middle of the set. I've played about 50 shows in my life, but this will be the first on electric guitar.

It's a strange thing to be getting serious this late in the game, but I know I was made for this. I don't really think I'll ever become a household name, but I know I'll be able to fill up a cafe or bar one day, and collaborate with even more awesome artists, and to earn a living from my creative work. Since I blog here and write novels, and hope to organize some events and produce other artists, I don't even have to rely on just music.

This post was originally suppose to be about how my style has evolved over the years, but I guess it became a history of how I got over my insecurities and started taking guitar seriously.

There's more to it, but if you've read this far, please believe me when I say your passions are always worth pursuing, and it's better to have fun with them than to put too much pressure on yourself to be this or that with them.

All my music and fiction can be found at linktree

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