philosophy of guitar

This is the year. I’ve made my new year’s resolution to work hard for this blog to make it better and better. I’ve been blessed with you guys reading what I post and I hope you keep coming back.

My best!

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Stumbled into this almost immediately when I started to look for this Tuesday’s regular N-GD. It follows yesterday’s post about sync perfectly. The video page apparently  links to the filmmakers’s blog. Can’t tell. The short itself is almost 8 years old.

Enjoy.

Other dosages.

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…so can you.

This is an unusual way of telling you how bands work; how best of friends work; how a great team works; how partnership works. You have to be in sync with your partner(s) to make it work - to make music as a whole.

But first, you need to get in sync with your metronome. The importance of that is the difference between you and someone great. It’s never the licks, the riffs, the ‘great personality’ of rock stars that you need to drum into your subconscious.

Speaking of metronomes…

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 I’ll never forget the part in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of  Cairo where Mia Farrow accompanies Jeff Daniels with a Ukulele in a store. It made Farrow very cool to me. Some people have taken the Ukulele and shed a new light on it. Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a good example. So is Brittni Paiva. 

Then there’s someone like Jake Shimabukuro, who is a rock star. He writes originals that makes you question your knowledge of what could be done on the Ukulele. There’s a lesson to be learned there: you go against the crowd with the instrument you love to play and the music you love to listen to - you can’t go wrong. Dedication is just not about practicing your craft. It’s how you embrace your relationship with your principal instrument, no matter how much the two of you look odd together, and tell everyone “This is my instrument, and we are gonna make music no matter what.” Think about it: is it any different than announcing your love for someone? And it’s not just about an unusual partnership with an ‘odd’ instrument. To announce your venture/journey with the coolest instrument in the world will also have its critics - same ones who always have a ‘practical’ solution to your life. It’s not easy, I’ll admit, to step up and tell others how you feel about someone, some decision, or career. But if your heart and gut is collaborating on that - it will have an impact on those around you, mind you, both positive and negative. 

Once you’ve done that, you’ve stepped into the cool zone. And people can’t resist cool. 

I’m in no way suggesting, nor do I know enough about him to do so, that Shimabukuro was anything but encouraged to pursue a career with the Ukulele. All that matters is, this guy most likely than not encouraged some kid(s) to shop for a Ukulele, walking right past the guitar section. That’s pretty cool, I don’t care who you are.

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