Author Archives: Spencer

About Spencer

My name is Spencer. I started taking guitar lessons in 1972 at Guitar Showcase in San Jose, CA. I took lessons at a steady pace and got familiar with jazz, rock and blues styles. I was in my first band at 16. At 18, I enrolled in West Valley College in Saratoga, California, as a music major. I took classes in Music Theory, Classical Guitar, Piano, and Voice. I received my Associates of Arts degree from them in 1979. When I was 20, I began teaching at Guitar Showcase in San Jose, where I started. This studio spun off and became Showcase Music Institute. I taught individual classes and workshops there, on such diverse topics as the solo in the movie Crossroads and How to Prepare for an Audition. I had originally taken lessons from Jim Bruno, who was a busy working guitarist, bassist, singer, stick player, and sax player (and anything else he can get his hands on). When Jim decided to make me a teacher, I wanted to continue taking lessons so I signed up for instruction from Jim's original teacher, Warren Nunes. Warren was a legend in jazz guitar in the bay area. He really stressed phrasing and how to play to the chord progression. I have his CD, "Half Moon Bay" and it's incredible. I spent about 12 years at SMI. That experience has forged me into an effective, prepared instructor who can work with a wide variety of ages an interests. My goal has never been to sound just like my teachers, but to take from them and create my own sound, my own signature. And that's what I try to do with my students, many of whom are working in bands today.

Return to Forever in September

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Hey folks –

Well, it’s been 2 months since I’ve been back to work after my shoulder surgery. I’m back up to teaching full time again, and I can play guitar without pain, although I can’t say all movements with this shoulder are pain free. I still can’t lift weights yet – it might be a couple more months before that happens (the elliptical machine is getting a bit boring….:)

Back in August I saw an ad in Facebook for an upcoming concert – Return to Forever. My first guitar teacher, Jim Bruno, got me playing some of their charts. I ended up buying several of their records (yes, records, those black disks you played with a needle). I impulsively bought 2 tickets for the September 22 show at the Warfield theater in San Francisco.

I invited Jim Bruno to come with me. Jim has known me before I even entered high school. His lessons had a big effect on my musical life. Later I’d go take lessons from his teacher, Warren Nunes, but Jim got me started on my musical journey and since he got me started on Return to Forever (RTF) I invited him. Amazingly enough, he was able to take a break from his schedule at Showcase Music Institute to go.

The opening band was fantastic: Zappa Plays Zappa. Frank Zappa has been gone for decades now, but his music lives on and his son Dweezil put an 8 piece band together to play selected songs from his father’s extensive repertoire. Dweezil is one great guitar player. I found his playing intense and exciting. There were two guitars, bass, drums, keys, marimba, sax and trumpet. At the end, Frank Gambale came out for the last number and traded licks (i.e. taking turns soloing) with the young Dweezil.

Frank Gambale is the newest member of RTF. The line up in the mid-1970′s for RTF was:

Chick Corea – keyboard and founder of the band.
Stanley Clarke – bass virtuoso and co-founder of RTF
Lenny White – drums

At first they released albums without a guitar player. Somewhere along the way in the 1970′s they added Al Dimeola, an incredibly proficient guitarist from New Jersey. He played blindingly fast leads and had great technique. In the late 1970′s, he split from the band and did a lot of acoustic flamingo work, and has won numerous jazz awards.

When RTF decided to go on tour this year, they needed a new guitarist. Frank Gambale has been around a long time and even has instructional DVD’s out which are quite good.

Lastly, Jean Luc Ponti appeared with them. He’s a jazz violinist from France. I have several of his albums too. In fact, Stanely, Al, and Jean Luc teamed up for a CD called “Rite of Strings”, a play on words with Stravinky’s “Rite of Spring”. I have this CD and it’s great.

The concert was great with only colored lighting for effects. No fog machine, no pyrotechnics, and no theatrics, just world class musicianship. This band has been together since 1970 – that’s 41 years! I’d like to have a band that lasts 2!

All in all it was a great evening, plus I got to catch up with Jim. Although I hadn’t known Jim for 41 years, it’s pretty close to that. Our paths hadn’t crossed for years and years but there was quiet time over dinner and the trip up there to catch up on our lives and the people around us.

Next blog will be a lesson on the circle of fifths. Stay tuned.

Spencer

The Reinvention of Fast Fingers Guitar Lessons

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Greetings, all -

Earlier this year I made the decision to re-vamp my web site.  I am a software developer by trade during the day, so I figured “I can do this” and slapped a no-frills website into place with just the basic information.  And it worked, I got local guitar students, but after 3 years it was time to put a new coat of paint on.

I took time off from work for some shoulder surgery and redesigned my site from the ground up with wordpress.  It’s not perfect, but it makes a lot of things easier.  Today I threw up some photos and a new theme, as well as new background wall paper.

I’m still not done yet – I need to put a photo page up of my guitars, as well as a video page of my instructions on youtube.  But for the most part, I’m here in my new home.

Please feel free to leave a comment with suggestions on what you like and what you don’t.  I’ll pick this blog back up with a new leson in a day or so.

Peace out

Spencer

 

July – a recap

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Hey all -

July has been a very interesting month for me. While others are out water skiing, flying to far off destinations, I worked one day (July 1) and taught one guitar lesson (July 2) and then underwent shoulder surgery to smooth down a bone spur that was causing me a lot of pain.

What this meant was sitting around, watching a lot of TV, icing my shoulder and doing painful physical therapy. I upgraded my cable and watched HBO, Showtime, movies, comedy, and DVD’s from Netflix. While that may sound great, and it was, it gets old.

I’m back to work and teaching again so look for some more music oriented posts from me – soon!

Spencer

Greetings from Fast Fingers Guitar Lessons

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Those of you who know me know I took some “down time” to get my shoulder fixed, and while I’m on the mend, I decided to totally redesign my website.  I’m using wordpress and I find most things are fairly easy about it.

I managed to import my older blog posts from blogger.com, so I’m happy about that.  As I work through my WordPress book, I’ll be adding photos and videos and information about lessons.

Keep practicing!

Spencer

 

Metal and Bebop

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Hey all -

I took lessons from Jim beween 1972 to 1978, then he made me a teacher. Then I took lessons from the late Warren Nunes from 1980 to 1981, about a year and a half. Both teachers (more so Jim) were responsible for shaping my approach to playing.
One staple of their playing principles were to forget about modes. What are modes?
Let’s start with the key of C:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 or 1
C D E F G A B C
So in a “modal” approach, C to C is the “Ionian mode”. D to D in the key of C is the “Dorian Mode”. E to E is “Phrygian mode”. F to F is the “Lydian Mode”. G to G is the “Mixolydian mode”, A to A is the Natural minor scale but also called the “Aeolian mode”and the B to B is the “Locrian mode”.
My teacher’s preferred approach was to use chord shapes within the context of whatever scale we were in (Major, Pentatonic of blues) and this is still what I primarily use.
As my sons have introduced me to more and more Metal – Speed metal, death metal, thrash metal, Garage Sale Metal (ok I made that last one up) – I got interested more in the guitarists than the bands themselves. Some of these players are nothing short of amazing.
Metal is a niche market. It’s not like pop and blues where guys like Clapton can tell Fender “you’ll make the guitar like this” and they do it. These guys have difficulty being a commercial success. Don’t think Metallica – who have a couple of hits – those hits generate royalties and a nice income. Think “Dying Fetus” – what, you never heard of them? See?
As a result of limited financial success, I assume, a lot of these killer guitarists teach. Hey it’s a good way to make money and solidifies your understanding of musical theory and concepts (it worked for me). So these guys have instructional youtube vids out there, usually promoting their pay for DVD.
Besides the fact that they all tune down a half or a whole step, and many play 7 string or 8 string guitars, their playing seems be centered on 4 approaches:
1) scales/modes
2) arpeggios
3) legato (hammer ons and pull offs) through the scales
4) fast alternate picking through the scales
Before I get into #1 above, let me say this : metal guys aren’t the first guys to play blinding fast music. Look at Bebop (“be-what? Who is he, some rapper dude?”). Let me explain.
Before there was the internet, and radio stations all across the country, music traveled with bands. This meant that if an area developed a style of playing, it took bands traveling across the country to get the word out. The new music would be heard by local musicians in their town and they’d pick up on it. In this fashion, styles of popular music would normally take about 10 years to change – we’re talking the 1920′s, 1930′s, and 1940′s. And if you study these styles, each style seems to be an answer of sorts to be different than what is currently popular.
In the 1940′s it was the big band era – everybody wanted to dance – why not? The world was in WWII and they needed some form of escapism. Then we were out of WWII and the world needed a way to celebrate.
But out of that, these jazz musicians wanted to not play for happy dancing couples but to play for their art, their music, to test the boundaries of harmonic structures and playing technique. So after WWII and into the 1950′s, Bebop was formed.
Bebop is a franticly paced, complex jazz style. Charlie Parker (sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) are probably the two main pillars of this genre, but they guy I like more is John Coltrane.
John played tenor sax (my fav sax) and was technically very, very proficient. He wrote an historically complex song called “Giant Steps” that changes keys all over the place.
In 1958, Downbeat magazine used the term “sheets of sound” to describe Coltrane’s playing. This same description could be used to describe what some of these modern day shredders do.
OK, metal is not bebop – harmonically metal is still very basic, but their long runs tend to center around various modes in a singular key. (in quick key changes, like giant steps, I’d still much prefer a chordal approach). These long, fast runs create a “sheet of sound” that maps out the tonality of the mode in blinding speed. In this sense, I can see the use of modes to improvise with, going a bit against the advice of my teachers (but that was in the 1970′s pretty much).
So I now am working on modal exercises that are meant to be played at fast speeds. It’s not difficult for me to see them because modes are usually built on major or minor scales. It’s more of an adjustment of my approach, not a departure from it.
Shred on….
Spencer

But I’m not Chinese!!

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Hey folks -

Yes I know that title makes no sense, but hear me out.

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article written by Amy Chua entitled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” which inspired thousands of comments, both for and against Ms. Chua’s article.

Her article boiled down to a few main concepts -

1) Getting A’s is the most important thing (no sports, sleep overs, etc)

2) You MUST take piano or violin

3) Anything less than an “A” is unacceptable unless it’s gym class.

Well, I read the whole thing and to be honest, I didn’t see it as all bad or all good. There were aspects in that article I liked.

No, I’m not advocating taking away your child’s right to food, water, and bathroom breaks when practicing. I think that hammering a young person into conforming stifles creativity and self expression. But some of the ideas expressed in the article might be key to getting past road blocks in your (or my) development.

First, I would take “failure is not an option” and instead use “Aim High”. When my boys struggle to get good grades in a class, I don’t push for a B anymore. I tell them “There’s no reason why you can’t get an A in this class so work for it”. Even if the A doesn’t come, they will do better than if they’d aimed to get a “B”.

Second – positive mental attitude. My sons have struggled with this at times and I have too when it comes to my day job.

Four years ago I had my dream job – the one I’d worked for, gone to school for, and finally had it. I was successful, I’d built a team that was getting the job done. But a reorganization of upper management put in place a new VP who played favorites. Unaware of this, I went about business as usual and when I went on vacation (2 months before reviews) I came back to a list of complaints from my director who had gone through all my work while I was gone. The complaints continued, I got a bad review and pushed to another team. My replacement, who I met with, said within the first minute of our meeting “The VP said I had a job here as long as I want it!”.

I went to manage a team in an area I didn’t like. A year later I was moved to manage a team I liked even less. Then I was given a chance to go back to computer programming in Java again, I took it, and while the work was interesting, my new boss hated me. Another bad review, kicked off THAT team and landed where I currently am now.

Now my new boss has been fine, the work somewhat interesting, but guess where my attitude was by now? Right, in the dumpster. And it stayed that way for a while.

Recently I’ve been working on changing my attitude, if not for the company, at least for the quality of work I should be doing. With a bad attitude towards your school, your teacher, your work, your boss, there is little room for success. My son criticized his school everyday and came home with some really bad grades.

My suggestion?

Stop saying/thinking negative thoughts. Catch your self in the act “this job is horrible” – and interrupt it with something else. Find satisfaction in SOME aspect. For a student, you can watch that D turn into a C, then into a B, and finally an A.

Focus (i.e. stop being lazy): When one of my sons struggled with math, I asked him how many hours a week does he spend on soccer? His answer: 30. How many on math? 2. Guess which one he was better at?

We need to make up our mind that we are GOING to do something and it starts now. Once started, it gets easier. I hate to clean my desk. Hate it. But once I get started, I don’t want to be interrupted until it’s done, cleared, and smelling like some sort of furniture polish.

Set goals – I will do “this”, “this” amount of time or for this long or this many times a week.

The more you accomplish, the more fun something gets: This is a point that Ms. Chua makes towards the end of her article after berating and ceaselessly pressuring her 7 year old to play a piece on the piano. When her child was able to play the piece, the joy, the relief, the sense of accomplishment gives the child new confidence. Ok, this is a valid point. But for her, the ends justifies the means. I won’t do that to my kids (as much), but I will push. I will remove distractions, I will ground my kids, and I will work with them on what’s stopping them from being successful.

The same thing goes for my work. My work had been sloppy. My manager has noticed it and mentioned a few things. From here on, I plan to dot the i’s and cross the t’s – and maybe I can stay here long enough to find a new job elsewhere :)

Check your attitude, focus on goals, and remember success builds on success.

Spencer Out

"Protect yourself at all times…."

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Anybody who has watched a boxing or MMA match has heard those words given by the referee at the beginning of a fight in the ring or cage. But they apply to aspiring shredder guitar players too.

I remember reading an article about Yngwie Malmsteen who complained about tendonitis in his left hand (I cannot find the article now). As I remember he said something like “I never warmed up, I just picked up the guitar everyday and played as fast as I could. I’m proud of this album because I was in a lot of pain during it”.
Recently I’ve been watching killer shredder Rusty Cooley play pentatonic scales, which are traditionally played with two notes per string, stretching out to playing 3 notes per string. Now I’m hearing that other players are playing the major scales, traditionally 3 notes per string, at 4 notes per string. Or 5.
The result is a dramatic change in the texture of the melodic line you’re playing, as well as very quickly traversing the guitar neck from low to high and back again (almost like sweeping arpeggios).
I’ve been working on these techniques myself too and noticed a few things:
The hand is just like any other physical part of your body. Every athlete warms up – especially before exercises of great speed (sprints for example) or strength (bench press with a barbell). EVERY single piece of documentation about exercise mentions to warm the body up before stressing it to reduce injury. In fact, even for low or moderate exercise.
The major scales for me pose no real stretching issues for me, so I practice those on a metronome for a couple of minutes at a very safe, borderline “boring” tempo. Then I bump it up 10 beats/min. Then another. Then another. You can feel your hand warming up – there’s more blood circulating to it. This is extremely important to keep your hand healthy.
With regards to stretching out on these 3/4/5 note per string scales – START SLOWLY! The beginning of the neck is where the frets are wider and pose the biggest challenge. One way to give yourself the optimum angle is to play the guitar on your left leg (not the right) and elevate your left foot. This is what classical guitarists do and so does Rusty Cooley.
When I first started working on my stretch, I did a whole note scale exercises – using my 1st, 2nd, and 4th finger on my left hand:
String Fret Finger
6 1 1
6 5 4
6 3 2
6 5 4
Shifting to the 5th string, the fingering remains the same:
Fret
2
6
4
6
4th string:
3
7
5
7
3rd string:
4
8
6
8
2nd string (notice there is no change in frets from the 3rd string due to how the guitar is tuned)
4
8
6
8
and 1st string
5
9
7
9
Then reverse the pattern 1st string down to 6th.
Master this pattern before attempting to go a wider stretch. The pentatonic pattern will require the stretch of 6 frets, as each string will require some combination of a whole step and a minor 3rd (3 half steps).
Additionally, don’t work these intensely at first. Take frequent breaks – go play something easy – it keeps your hand warmed up so then you can go back to the more challenging pattern. You should feel NO PAIN. I don’t mean the finger tips – your calluses will get built up, I mean no pain in the hand. If you do, rest it. Don’t get frustrated and push through it. Your hand will unfortunately reward you with pain, swelling, and a forced vacation from playing.
I did a general search for guitarists with tendonitis and I got an interesting list (Note, this list is in no way exhaustive and I have no way of verifying this):
Leo Kotke
Steve Vai (he admited in an interview I read he switches to .09 strings in the studio to go easier on his hand, but plays with .10 live).
Robben Ford
Alex DeGrassi
Yngwie Malmsteen
So if these guys can get it, any player can get it.
So to recap:
1) Warm up for at least 5 minutes, gradually increasing your speed (use a metronome)
2) Practice your stretching exercises (like the whole tone scale above) first – master it before trying to stretch one more fret
3) Guitar on left knee and elevate left foot for best hand angle
4) Take frequent breaks as you work on your new skills
5) NEVER push past pain if you feel it – take a break. If the new technique just hurts, give it a rest for a few days then go back to it.
6) If you get chronic pain, see the doctor. You’re likely going to have a take several weeks off from the instrument (hopefully steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 keep you from getting to this point).
Protect yourself at all times!!
Spencer

When you least expect it…..

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Since my re-entry into the music world 3 years ago after a long break (marriage and kids) I have reconfirmed what I’ve known since 1976:

Bands ain’t easy.

Sure it looks like fun, and all you do is “play” and you make money, and people want to hang with you, but it’s not like that at all. It takes a lot of work to get a band up and running and out the door. I could easily write a book about it all (and several have) but it comes down to this list:

1) Direction – genre, C&W, hip hop, metal, pop, classic rock, 50′s rock, chris rock, the list is endless and often picking which songs to play leads to disagreements in the band
2) equipment – the PA, the mixer, who’s gonna run the mixer, microphones, etc
3) Personel – the BIG one. More on this below
4) Promotion – In the “olden” days you needed a photo, a set list, and a demo “tape”. Now they want a portfolio on nice paper, photos, CD or DVD (preferred), cards, web site, myspace page, facebook page, mailing lists, and maybe even a twitter account with updates like “Working on a new song while Bob goes to buy a new set of drumsticks!!”

Once you get a gig, it doesn’t stop there. There is arriving on time, setting up, sound check (hope you brought 2 of everything cuz chances are you’re going to need it some day), dealing with the club owner, home owner, wedding party, whoever is in charge. You play 4 hours with breaks, hopefully get paid, then comes tear down, wrapping cables, hauling the stuff out to various vehicles. It’s now 2:00am. If it’s a Friday, you probably got up around 7 to go to work that day or go to school. The elation of having a nice performance (hopefully) carries you through the rest of the packing and driving home, but by 3:00, it’s milk and cookies (or Jack in the Box) and lights out.

Gee, this sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? And if you’re doing club work, the worst paying type of gig, don’t count up your total hours (setup + play + tear down) and divide by your pay. You’re being paid barely more than the kid who served you your Jumbo Jack on the way home. (Hey, they’re not all that low paying but some are!).

So why do it? Why not flip burgers as a 2nd job and not worry about the whole “self employment” responsibilities of running a band?

Because it’s fun. Well…it CAN be.

Back in the late 1980′s I worked my way through San Jose State in a busy little band called Undercover. I made more money with that band than all the other bands I’d been in combined. Our female lead was very good, and eveybody on stage was experienced. Life was good, right?

Wrong. I hated it.

Just like high school, adults can form “cliques” and this band of 5 had a core of 3 people and normally excluded the guitarist (me) and the drummer. These people would make plans right in front of us and not invite us – little things like bowling, or big things like the Who concert (that was ok, I got better tickets from my roomate for that and enjoyed a gloating chuckle at their expense next practice when they complained about the lousy seats they had).

In other words, it became a job. It was something to make money with and that was it.

This second time around, I worked on surrounding myself with people I could like and respect, with mixed results. Some people were nice and couldn’t play (can’t have that). Some people pretended to be nice and weren’t (can’t have that either).

I resigned myself to only original work with a band named LIPSHOK when I was contacted by an old friend here on facebook. He was starting up a band and wanted to know if I was interested. The lineup is nearly complete but as we started to audition people, the #1 priority was “is this person a good fit for our band, our personalities?” I think that’s a great approach. You spend a lot of time with these people – 4 hour rehearsals, and on gig nights more like 6 hours. If someone gets on your nerves (like those Undercover folks did) it can make it a long night.

I’m hoping I’ll be gigging by the first of the year with these guys and will finally be able to answer the question “Where can I go to hear you play?”

Stay tuned…

Spencer

Changing Direction When the Familiar Doesn’t Work

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Hi ya -

If you’ve been following my posts, and they’ve been infrequent to say the least this year, I was in a top 40 band at the end of 2009 and into 2010. I made mistakes with band personal, material choice, and not following my gut instincts, the band folded, and I’ve been not playing with anybody for months.
The current economy is hitting the working musician hard. Many bassists we auditioned were already in another band, but looking for more work. Established bands (that is, web site, DVD, complete lineup, tons of experience and professional package) were scrambling to get more than 1 gig a month. (News flash: if you’re in it for the money one gig a month is not meeting your needs).
I realize now that trying to start a cover band (i.e., a band that only plays hits from other bands) with no connections, limited equipment and weak vocals was just not going to work. It’s tight right now and club owners and booking agents are going to go with known bands, not new ones.
So I felt validated that my decision to fold it was the right one. Still, I stuck my profile out on bandmix.com just to see if anyone would ping me.
And four months later someone did.
Scarlett Dark, lead singer for LIPSHOK , an all original metal band out of Hayward wanted to see if I could possibly add something to their new material. They have a CD out on iTunes called “In the Darkness….Light”.
OK, they have a CD, they have a full line up (vocals/keyboard, bass, drums, and guitar) – and just what do they need me for?
Primarily Scarlett wanted to know if I could write music. The answer to that is yes. She wanted to know if I was available? Again, yes. It appears that members of the band have too many commitments to put forth an effort to produce another group of originals. Scarlett has done all the writing and wants input, as well as someone to record with.
I met them in their home in Hayward where they converted their detached garage into a fairly sound proof practice studio with recording equipment. Scarlett’s husband Phil has a good nose for bargain equipment (this I envy!) and happily showed me some of the gear he’s picked up : amps, mixers and even a 7 string Ibanez guitar.
We played for nearly 3 hours. First, I followed a chart Scarlett wrote. Then we tried out different styles on the same chord progression. Phil said “Man, I love the chops, but can you change gears and play real melodic?” I guess I was more in “impress them” mode so I slowed down, and built more melodies around the changes rather than show speed.
Next, we worked on a piece that I had been playing around with for quite some time. I built this riff around B Phrygian mode (this is B to B in the key of G: B C D E F# G A B) I liked it because it reminded me of Yngwie Malmsteen. They grabbed onto that and started building a chorus and bridge to it, Scarlett writing down the chords and promising to write lyrics to it.
In the end, it was a very satisfying and promising start. We are trying to schedule another practice for this weekend and continue to flesh out this tune and a few others.
So, in the end, I’m not really replacing anybody but a part of a new start with these nice people.
This is only the 2nd all original band I’ve been in. Everything was top 40, and money, money, money. Some key points with my new direction:
1) Venues – places to play – these are limited. Not everybody wants to hear original music and in this genre of metal (think Nightwish to get a flavor of what they sound like).
2) Time on stage – usually one set. I’m used to being in a top 40 band where you take the stage for the whole night. Normally original bands play with other original bands in the night. It is not uncommon for 3 or 4 bands to play in an evening.
3) Money – ha, not much. Maybe enough to cover gas.
So why do it? Well, if it’s so hard to crack into the top 40 circuit now, I might was well go with artistic expression. With only a 4 piece, my corner of the song is wide open for me to embellish. It is my hope that my input will be significant and maybe…just maybe….we make a CD.
Now that would be cool….
My next blog will be more on metal playing, speed shredders, and 7 string guitars.
till then…
Spencer

Keeping it Simple

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My original guitar teacher had a real positive attitude about being able to do anything with the guitar, that he passed on to me.

Tonight, I was watching the ChickenFoot DVD with a friend. We are admiring Joe Satriani’s guitar work when he said “To me, YOU sound like that”. I smiled at the compliment, because I’m not as good as Joe or most great guitar players who spend 8 hours a day playing (I have a day job!) but I look at it this way:
Anything, no matter how complex, can be broken down into it’s smaller and simpler pieces. You master one piece at a time, one after the other, until you finally can do the whole thing. After all, a marathon is only putting one foot in front of the other (yeah, I know – for 26+ miles!).
I didn’t say the end result was easy or not requiring hard work, patience, perseverance, or most importantly – desire. Being a great guitarist, runner, computer programmer, or writer comes with looking at the small things first, then gradually put them all together.
In this sense, I never limit what I can do on the guitar (unless it’s physically impossible for my hand to stretch too far). For me, a new skill on the instrument is only a question of how much time it’s going to take me.
Keep it simple, and you can learn anything from how a nuclear reactor works to how Joe Satriani get’s those crazy runs on the guitar.
Keep enjoying the summer…
Spencer