I picked up my guitar again

[brian]

It must be about 3 years since I last picked up my old tank of an acoustic guitar. I hadn't even been playing it much for a few years before then, either.

My music for guitar requires a broad arrangements of instruments to accompany, and I knew there was no chance of getting them played as intended - not in the foreseeable future.

Electronic music is different, though. I can record orchestral music for my writing and have it on the internet. True, my soundcard isn’t great and I can't afford to upgrade yet - but at least I can hear something of how the music is supposed to sound outside of myself.

That's the trouble with the guitar - I hear everything in my head and it's going to be hard to get it recorded, still for some time. Perhaps it would be easier if I had a soundcard with no latency. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough.

Still, there's something about having a guitar on my lap and hearing the full flow of the music there. I'd only got it out again to amuse my 16 month year old daughter, Skye, while 4 year-old Hannah Rhiannon played a game on my PC.

We dusted it down with baby wipes - and there was plenty of dust - and then I surprised myself by being able to re-tune it properly within a couple of minutes. Then I started strumming.

My fingertips are a little soft again - and I stopped biting my nails some time ago - so I couldn't even break a four-fingered C chord without some rattle. And I've forgotten the exact chords for some of my tunes - no doubt if I play around I'll find them soon enough.

I never cared to play other people's music on my guitar. While everyone else was trying to copy lead riffs from Guns'n'Roses, Led Zeppelin, and a couple of other metal bands that quickly faded into obscurity - I just devoured chords and experimented with different ways of playing them - different progressive melodies and developing my own style of finger-picking.

I guess I really should look at trying to record some of my guitar-based music. It's an entirely different way of composing for me than on a synth. But there's also something distinctly much more real sounding about a live guitar.

Any excuse to get back into playing it, I suppose.

[Talia]

If you ever come down to cornwall then give me a bell and I'll get other musicians around. I think everyone I know plays at least one musical instrument and I don't think anyone is clasically trained.