This March will be 33rd anniversary of playing guitar. And sometimes it feels like there are no more frontiers.
Which is not to say I’ve conquered everything I want to on the instrument; merely that after attempting certain frontiers (being a convincing speed-metal player, copping Chet Atkins licks, getting Terry Kath’s solo for Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4 down note for note), I’ve decided they just didn’t mean that much to me.
Other frontiers hover out there like Moby Dick; getting Nils Lofgren’s pick harmonics (without adopting fingerpicks), getting the alternate-string thumb bass line in Richard Thompson’s 1952 Vincent Black Lighting sounding like I’m not playing after a severe stroke, figuring out Brian May’s guitar tone, that kind of thing.
But it’s time to try something new.
I’ve never really tried to sit down and gnosh out anything on Television’s Marquee Moon. Which makes me nekulturnii, I know; I’m being honest here. It occurred to me that I’ve wanted to figure out Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s parts in Venus for a very long time.
So there’s a project for the long weekend.
Stretch some:
* Guy Van Duser’s arrangement of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”
* Alebiz’s “Asturias”
J,
I can play, but I don’t get to devote QUITE the time to it that I used to.
And I didn’t say “Venus” was a stretch; merely that it’s something I’ve been putting off for a couple decades too long.
I didn’t mean “stretch” as in try to improve your playing, but if you’re beginning to feel like there are no frontiers, you might try exploring aspects of the guitar you haven’t.
Ana Vidovic performing Isaac Albeniz’s Asturias
Thanks for the new vocabulary word. I actually had to look up nekulturnii, or nekluturniy. I’m trying to appreciate any subtle reason(s) for using the Russian word meaning “no culture”, instead of simply using the English term ‘uncultured’ – as one would in an “Explication de Texte”.
The purpose of word choice has eluded me so far. ..