A boy and his guitar.
I found the guitar at the age of 12 after having been fired by my piano teacher years earlier.
I had a thing against sitting still for long periods of time.
The doctors called it ADD and prescribed me meds that ended up in the same napkin as my broccoli.
But as I simultaneously entered puberty and watched my parent's marriage dissolve I returned to a simpler music form - trading 88 keys for 6 strings.
I still wasn't much good at sitting still or painfully feeling my way across the fretboard, but I was good at making my own chords up.
I must have played more chords no one has ever heard of in those early years than Django Reinhardt.
I played them not out of some musical gene inside me, but as a desperate boy looking for anything to express himself.
I started with one finger chords, wrote whole songs with that one finger.
Next I graduated to two finger chords, then three, four and even some where I wrapped my thumb around the bass string to get 5 finger chords on the fretboard.
It didn't matter that no one had heard of the chords, because they were communicating something deep inside.
I think about that boy and his guitar when I'm teaching new students.
I want my students to feel the joy of the instrument for as long as they can stand it.
I want them to make whatever sounds they can to start because even in the simplest of sounds there lies incredible untouched emotions.
What sounds are you making?
Jam soon,
JB
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