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ODY: 28/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 17, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Same stuff, different day, but I don’t get bored when I’m picking out a tune, getting pick-quicker, rhythm-ready, feeling what I’m feeling, reeling, real-ing and dealing. Four weeks of musical motion, appealing to feeling. Tonight was good, and I found the weights again, too. One for one. 

48 weeks to an OD (New) Year. Email message from the Itinerant Artist. Ben is a natural teacher. “Finally got caught up on the Old Dog entries. Great stuff. Your writing and intensity are fun [but] you’re really going about this in the strangest fashion: it’s fascinating, and impressive. Though you may not be accelerating your ability as fast as another Old Dog might be, you’re going deep and bloody seriously…That said: Get a bloody teacher already! And keep rolling!” Thus spake the IA. Oh yeah? Who is this other dog? I’ll pee on his practice chair!

“If it ain’t rough, it ain’t right,” said the Pistons on their way to playoff implosion last year. (I suspect the rap reference is a horny and misogynistic one, but that may be prejudice. Correct me.) I know one thing: my way is the hard way. The IA’s “strangest fashion” feels like home to me. Yeah, I hear you. I need to get out more.

ODY 27/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 16, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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As per yesterday’s prediction, tonight was indeed a wonderful evening, full of learning, careful attention, sensational munchies, belly laughs and the sympathetic sharing of a believer’s Islamic journey. All of that goodness was in our living room, though, while the Dégas had to wait down in the down-down ‘til nearly midnight for me to make musical havoc on its strings. And I did, strumming my three-and-a-half chords, picking out my two-and-a-half tunes and even improvising some swingy bits in my basic blues. Now that I liked!

But as for the “tenacious discipline” that somebody was blathering about yesterday – its tendency to leak out into other chambers of the spiritual warrior’s life, its ability to cross over from musical dedication to a BodyMovin’, I’m-not-just-a-midlife-string-picker-but-a-studly-workout-demon-too kind of ethos – well, scratch that. 27 straight days on guitar for the Old Dog, but a fat oh-fer-three since I noticed how amazing I was with the weights.

A guy has to work awfully hard to suppress humility, it seems to me. There are so many ways to learn it.

ODY: 26/365. Tenacious D.

Posted by :James Howden On : September 15, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Hmm. “Got” the Bonanza theme might’ve been pushing it a bit. I thought I’d run through it enough that I’d remember how the innovative part ends, but I had to work it out all over again. Maybe tomorrow the tumblers will click into place. I’m now at the point where I could polish it and “A Blues Riff”, especially the latter, to sound pretty good with an hour or two of concentration. That’ll be for the weekend. But here’s the thing that might actually be interesting. (And there’s no accounting for taste, yours or mine, so here goes.)

Discipline might be a viral thing. It seems to leak beyond the boundaries of the thing being practised (and, sometimes, can be caught from the person doing the practising – this is why running backs used to go to the sand dunes for savage off-season workouts with Walter Payton, why ambitious ballplayers ought to make friends with Albert Pujols). In more youthful times, I often noticed that regular prayer and meditation were somehow easier during the days (or longer periods) where I’d worked out physically. Among other things, this puts the lie to the I haven’t got time excuse. It’s like when pro athletes publicly say “It’s not about the money”, which nearly guarantees that it most certainly IS. “It’s just that I don’t have the time”, without fail, means “I don’t really want to but I’ll never admit that to you or myself.”

So it’s 26 straight evenings on the Guitar Diet. And since I do my practice in our tiny downstairs library, I’m noticing (and getting excited by, even reading) the great books that I insulate my basement with. Furthermore, my dumbbell set has been leaning dustily against one of those bookshelves. Somehow, virally or otherwise, the I WILL of playing guitar has been transmitted to the Well, Alright of a quick set of lifts and stretches, even when I enter the library Old Dog Tired and as motivated as a plump squash. Fulfilling one promise makes the next one easier. One workout leads to another. Well, except for tonight. (And, ah, last night.)

Tomorrow should be sensational, though.

ODY: 25/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 14, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Only 68/73rds of this experiment in personal re-novelty, this “Old Dog Year” of learning guitar, remain. I like fractions.

After two hours watching a vibrant and feverishly competitive practice of Canada’s best amateur basketball team and wondering if I was wishing to blow that whistle again, I returned to my own subterranean training session. No floor burns, no ankle turns, no sweat. (And don’t forget, coach: no herding sullen teens toward an objective only you can imagine. No making chicken soup out of chicken, um, feathers.)

Didn’t much feel like work, but was surprised to find that the 30 minutes flew. I went back to my dogged progress in figuring out how to play the theme from Bonanza, and I’ve got it, even the almost-intricate part. I’m sure it’s pretty eccentric fingering, and I’m a long way from ease in the saddle, but that was fun. More fun with the blues, too. Almost like playing music.

ODY: 24/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 13, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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So, no more F7 for awhile. (Oops, wait, no. It’s just F.) I need A7, B7, D7 and E7 for Another Blues Riff, a strummed one this time, that the IA sent me yesterday. I tried all four of them separately tonight. Each one sounded like a bag of cats,  just swung at varying speeds. Conclusion: I am nowhere near this thing, and four new chords at once was a ridiculous thought. D looks manageable, on first fingering.

Conclusion the Second: I should not try to tune my guitar, any guitar, by random fits of intuition. I couldn’t hear much change in each individual string as I tried to figure out which way to turn the knob, but even these ears could hear that familiar chords sounded worse than ever. Bags of cats being, say, nudged repeatedly across a hardwood floor.

ODY: 23/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 12, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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After a largely pointless and haggard day, I didn’t want to practise tonight. Calvin Junior required considerable maintenance and the odd holler, and the Old Dog was having trouble managing even the well-established trick of getting a six-year-old boy to sleep. (Come on, man, you should be able to handle this on the fourth go-round!) I just wanted to crawl into bed with The Poisonwood Bible. (Good novel. It’s got me.)

Ever notice — this is the way it is for me, at any rate — that it’s hardest to keep the promises we make to ourselves? Practise I did, though, the full 30-minute monty. The blues are smoother, but I’m going to blame my broke-neck Dégas for the muddiest chords I’ve heard in a week and a half. Sigh. The Itinerant Artist, though, good as his word, had sent me an email with nine new chords to try, along with a renewed insistence that I get regular lessons. I was nearly obedient. I made the call to the Ottawa Folklore Centre, a remarkable place whose musical offerings of various kinds I virtually toured this afternoon. I’ve checked the bios of their guitar teachers. I’ve ranked them according, largely, to their facial hair and what I can read of their Genuine Guitar Chops in their eyes. Ah, vanity.

By the way, I tried F7, sort of a modified barre chord. (Yes, the learning goes on. I now know how to spell “barre” chord, which brings me zero percent closer to ever being able to do one.) And 45 seconds trying to make my fretful fingers do the F7 thing brought them to a spooky spasm of rigor nearly mortis. All in all, though, it was like somebody once said about golf, or some other frustrating form of alleged amusement: a bad half-hour at the guitar is better than 30 minutes of spectacular dishwashing.

ODY: 22/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 11, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Today is full of commemorations of massive murder, but the IA had more urgent questions. “He taught you bar chords? Those are hard! Jacob still refuses to even try them.” Jacob is Ben’s friend. Ben, eldest son, Itinerant Artist, was having his long-distance chance to hear how the Old Dog Year is going. He’d only been back down from the Arctic for a week or two, no Internet connection yet but the phone works. He’s a gentle pile of bones, but the IA did had some strings to pick with what the Teen Vegan Punk-rock Intellectual (his bro) had chosen to start me up with.

The IA is a musician and a sometime guitar teacher – and he’ll go back to his music degree sometime, too, I’m sure – so he has a little stronger background than the TVPI. (But I can learn from anybody. At any distance.) He had praise for my efforts, including a truly catastrophic attempt to play the blues over the phone without a warmup. (I haven’t played it that badly in at least a week). 

“You’ve played every day on a broke-neck garbage guitar? For how long? That’s a victory right there!” Thanks, IA. And you’re right about another thing, too: an experienced, face-to-face teacher might not be a bad investment. One wandering phone call brought encouragement, a promise of emailed chord diagrams to expand my repertoire, and also inspired a pretty satisfying guitar workout. So maybe feedback helps. So maybe I do need more regular and immediate instruction. But hiring a teacher? Well! That does seem like rather a public commitment, don’t you think?   

ODY: 21/365. Is It A Habit Yet?

Posted by :James Howden On : September 10, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It’s three weeks of daily practice, and my fingers are getting organized and a little tougher. I can now make chord changes, from E major to A minor to A major. They’re clumsy, but I’m sometimes surprised to find fingers almost where they’re supposed to be without lookin’ at ‘em! “The Blues Riff” is coming along; had a few short stretches tonight where the rhythm was consistent and I was just playing, not thinking. (Reminded me of the advice of a veteran teammate back when I was an over-earnest leadoff hitter for a hotshot fastball team: “Howdy, don’t think too much! You’ll hurt the ballclub.” Okay, Rip. Heard you then, hear you better now. Isn’t that always the way with advice to the young?)

And the last couple of nights, I’ve started to pick out an old standard rock ‘n’ roll bit. (Is it from “Blue Suede Shoes”? Could be.) What I’m hearing is Chicago’s Terry Kath winding up a wandering solo jam with something familiar in the Live at Carnegie Hall album, aka Chicago IV. It’s another cliché for my arsenal, and hey, it’s almost enough to make an aging canine believe in a renovated repertoire…

I’m starting to have a little more fun, and this may even be habit formation of the constructive kind.(Cool!) And the Old Dog Year has only 49 weeks left.

ODY: 20/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 9, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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So I went for a plod this afternoon, and it was better than usual. The ankles only muttered at me today, no screaming, and there were even some short stretches where I was running on autopilot. So, a little rhythm, for a change. Oh, and a Sign From God.

Okay, I don’t actually believe in angels, at least not the It’s a Wonderful Life kind or the Touched by an Incredibly Good-Looking Television Angel kind. (Why do we want angels to have bodies, anyway? Oops, hey, I can feel you starting to worry. This is Old Dog Year: My Quest for Midlife Guitar Glory. You haven’t stumbled into a theology ‘blog. Trust me. I know a really roundabout way to get there.) Besides, the guy with the sweatshirt was hunched over as he walked, and he looked tired, anxious and lonely.

But on the other hand, he was wearing a sweatshirt with “MUST” embroidered on the chest. I didn’t know whether it referred to a tech school or a personal imperative. (Or the stifling odour of attics or armpits.) Not that I’m utterly self-absorbed, not that the entire world exists to prop up my private obsessions, but even lonely old men in parks remind me that I MUST play my guitar tonight. So I will. Even I can read a sign like that. Day 20. (Only 345 to go.) 

ODY: 19/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 8, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Howden’s Law, Article 17 Subsection B: When you’re an Old Dog trying to learn a New Trick, it’s always good to have a six-year-old around. 

It had been a late night out with the friends, laughing and feasting and raising our spirits. Calvin Junior – who lacks a Hobbes, but makes up for it with any number of bears and doggies and especially Skyler, the bald eagle and our Sam’s main squeeze – was shockingly cooperative about bed-prep when we stumbled in the front door, especially when I suggested that maybe I’d combine my oh-no-I-still-have-to-do-guitar-practice with his hunkering down. I sang “Advance Guards”, an old sweet song of longing by Seals and Crofts. Can’t play to it, but just the sight of the guitar in my arms was mesmerizing for Sam, and not in any narcotic way. (“Lie down, bub. No questions, just you and Skyler and the CuddleZone™. No, honey, down. Pretend that you’re going to sleep or something.”) Tried. Took my tortured, twanging run through les blues, and looked up to find Sam (and Skyler) wide-eyed and elbow-mounted. “Are you done?” “Yup, that’s it.” And then he clapped. (Maybe Skyler did, too.) Melt my heart and hope to live.

I hit the basement for some more runs and chord changes and absolutely brain-dead strumming, but I’d already had what I needed. CJ Sam has what I’m looking for. He shows me the beginner’s mind. It comes so hard to most of us after about 15, it seems. All that wonder. All that simple acceptance. All those hoorays. Thanks, buddy. You’re a good little teacher.