Learning Curve

This week, I got to spend about a day and a half with my middle brother, Pat (Dave to you and anyone else not an immediate relative - a long story for another post regarding how the men in my family always seem to be called by their middle names). Anyway, Pat has played guitar for nearly as long as our eldest brother, Bob (whose first name is really Louis...like I said...). This means Pat has slung an axe for, oh, 30 years or so (compared to Bob's 40). While Bob is a guitar virtuoso (no exaggeration there - any of you who attended my wedding can attest to his guitar skills from his rendition of "House at Pooh Corner"), Pat ain't someone to mess with - he knows his chops quite well, and has spent the past few years studying the musical genre known as the blues.

Much like any person who has found himself growing further and further away from the bands featured in Rolling Stone every month (I stopped reading when they basically turned into a cut-rate skin mag - "gee, I never realized that seeing pedophile-inspired photos of Britney Spears could help me understand cutting-edge rock music so well!"), Pat turned back the clock and began listening to the inspiration for all his favorite music (Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin), and began to mine the depths of the blues catalog. He bought dozens of blues technique videos and books, and trained himself in the time-honored traditions of the Mississippi Delta.

When he told me he and his wife, Olga, were coming up to visit, one of the first things he said was that he was bringing one of his electric guitars along, and that he'd be teaching me about playing the blues.

Now, you've got to understand, the one and only time Pat tried to teach me anything about music was when I had been playing for about four months ("Okay, make a 'C' chord. Yeah, a 'C' chord. 'C.' No, not a 'G,' a 'C'!") For those of you who play guitar, you probably remember those early days of trying to hook your fingers into the bizarre and unnatural shapes that open chords require. (Since I've been playing, that one episode of "Friends" where Phoebe tries to teach Joey how to play guitar by giving him chord shapes called "old lady's hand" and "the claw" is much, much funnier). So, needless to say, I had a difficult time, while he, trying as gently as he could, gave me direction after direction that I either couldn't do or would take about fifteen seconds to get into position for. It doesn't make for being able to play a duet, to say the least.

So, all the frustration of that early guitar lesson came flooding back to me, as I envisioned this guy with serious axe skills trying to teach a wannabe like me how to play something as monumental as the blues.


But, you know what? A funny thing happened.

It just so happened that I was right at the right spot, either by default or design, to be able to understand what he was teaching me. Quickly. It made sense. And the concepts built upon each other. Okay, barre chords. I get it! Blues progression - I, IV, V is the key. Blue notes. Blues in A. Blues in C. Blues in G. Play any note in that key, and it will sound right. Slide guitar - are you kidding? Really? Me? Hey, this is cool!

See the pictures that follow. A door opened up for me on Tuesday, and I've been presented with a whole new vista, a whole new range of ideas and concepts I thought were beyond my grasp.

Thanks, Pat.