Andy Chase

Well, perhaps that's laying it on a bit thick, at age 27. But I took my guitar out of the closet for the first time in nearly a year on Sunday, and actually twiddled around with it some more on Monday and again tonight.

So much I don't know about music theory and guitar playing, and music theory as it applies to guitar playing! I took lessons for about two years in 8th and 9th grade, and played in a band that took third place in a college-wide Battle of The Bands, but I never really scratched the surface... Thermous was never known for musical acuity.

I took trumpet lessons in fifth grade, but I wasn't really into it, and with the foreknowledge that I would be getting braces within the next year or two I dropped it. The trumpet lessons included sight-reading sheet music, which I guess I did OK with... but sight-reading has never really clicked with me.

My guitar teacher was great - he came to my house every week, and now that I think about it I don't remember who referred us to him. Hmmmm.

Chris was a rock guitarist who wasn't too proficient at reading traditional music either; everything I learned from him was written down in tablature, which is a lot easier to decode at a glance while playing... but he knew his scales and chords, and I'm thankful to him for getting at least the basics burned into my brain early on.

A good deal of lesson time was spent watching him listen to a song I had picked out during the previous week, reverse-engineer the guitar parts, and write them down for me. Again, probably not typcial of most music lessons, but to an adolescent male guitar newbie there's nothing more motivating than learning how to play just about all the tracks on Ace Frehley's solo album.

I was pretty good about practicing, but I never got obsessive enough with guitar that that was all I did with my spare time. I don't know if it was out of frustration of not having a real outlet for trying my skills out (my best friend Greg was also learning guitar at the time, and we would jam, but it wasn't a band.) We did actually hook up with a drummer, which was marginally better... but even back then I remember being frustrated at wanting to play my favorite tunes, which at the time would have consisted largely of classic KISS and Led Zeppelin. The closest any of us ever came to songwriting was the obligatory garage-band 1-4-5 blues variation.

I think it was in 10th grade that I got a bug up my ass to learn how to play piano and really read music. I think I took about six months' worth of lessons, and never really took to it; you can't really rock out on a piano/keyboard unless you're Jon Lord, Pat Raymaker, or Wesley Willis (Aside: Well, I do declare! That Wesley Willis page is one of the first sites I ever visited on the World Wide Web, and definitely the first place I ever saw Shockwave in action waaaaay back in 1996. It appears largely unchanged. Whip the Donkey's Ass!)

After moving to New Hampshire in 1990 I didn't do much with my guitar for another four years, when Thermous was formed.

I really miss playing in a band, and that sense of longing has been growing stronger over the last couple of years along with my urge to buy a Theremin from Bob Moog and take up the Banjo. I don't know where this is all heading, but the other day I got my guitar out and, while refreshing myself on those scales and chords, resolved to start playing at least 30 minutes every day. For now I'm trying to focus on playing technically well... clean picking, keeping my damn fingers off the higher strings when forming weird chords, all that stuff.

I blame PBS for showing 'Guitar with Frederick Noad' on Saturday mornings; I watched most of a lesson a few weeks ago and marvelled that I ever considered myself to be "pretty good". Even the simplest of classical guitar excercises blow away that fancy double-pickin' I learned how to do on Stairway to Heaven. And the pace you're expected to follow that sheet music at! Oy! I felt somehow embarassed at letting what little talent I had atrophy, and decided to take advantage of the fine musical instrument that's been gathering dust for most of the last five years.

I should probably hold off on the banjo until we're not living in an apartment building anymore.