Special Project 01

Prologue 1

I had my very first guitar lesson sometime in September 1974. I was 21 years old and had been playing guitar for about 8 years, but I was self-taught. That is to say, I learned how to play guitar from an idiot. September 1974 was my first semester at Berklee, and guitar lessons were part of the deal.

The thing about guitar lessons at Berklee: they don’t actually teach you to play guitar. They more or less assume that you can play guitar, that you know how to practice, and that following their syllabus for guitar will guide you to greater marketable skills.

The program is geared toward becoming a more proficient professional musician, and perhaps that is as it should be.

I was not particular sharp in my awareness at the time. I was cruising through life on auto-pilot vaguely doing stuff that seemed like it would help me get better. I really had very little conscious awareness of what I needed, but I did have some pretty good intuitions in that regard, which I applied in my typically scattershot and haphazard way. I remember specifically asking my assigned guitar teacher how to hold a pick, and I remember him looking at me with a “what the hell are you talking about? You just hold it” expression on his face. In my second year I signed myself up for classical guitar lessons as well as the regular ones, in the hope that this would address some of my questions about mechanics and what I thought should be rudimentary technique, but mostly I ended up slogging through etudes guided by a very nice fellow who either really had no clue what the issue was, or was too busy with too many students to actually address what he saw. Or maybe I was just too much of a dunderhead to hear or accept the advice I was asking for.

Not ragging on Berklee. Their beauty and genius, at least in the mid-seventies, was that anyone willing to work and apply themselves was welcome. That was me, and I loved the experience, and got things out of it that continue to nourish me today.

But they couldn’t teach me to play the guitar. And I was not sufficiently autonomous in my seeing and reasoning to know exactly what I needed. I just knew I needed something.

Flash forward 10-ish years. I’ve been applying myself as best I can. All recorded evidence suggests there has been improvement in my playing. But nothing has happened to improve my technique, or to address the things that were holding me back. I am keenly aware that I have hit a wall.

In walks Guitar Craft.