Skip to main content

Lessons at Sixty

Guitar Center, Sunset Blvd., Hollywood
“Your taking guitar lessons at 60?”

Absolutely! It’s my way of always learning something new and having some fun in the process.

“Haven’t you ever heard the cliche, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

“Of course, but let me be completely clear,” Education is not a bag of tricks and humans are not dogs. Some resemble their  ole’ dog, anyway . . . 

For years I heard that platitude from students who would use it as excuse for not being able to successfully learn a new skill to their satisfaction or expectation. Agreed, learning a new skill is challenging. Let’s be honest, it’s downright hard. We tend to get entrenched in our comfortable ruts.

Think back a minute. Remember what it was like to learn to ride a bicycle? It was exhilarating! Well, maybe not at first. Did you have training wheels? I’m sorry. What happened when your Dad removed those training wheels. I’ll bet you fell - over and over again. But with a determination that refused to quit, you learned to ride. It was simply a matter of practice, or as some would say learning the tricks.

 You see, to remain young and active, life is about learning and teaching new skills. In today’s educational lingo it’s called “skill development”.

 I’m enjoying learning to play the guitar. Admittedly it’s a formidable way to practice skill development. It's a craft I’ve always dreamed of doing but were afraid to try. Everything I’d read kept encouraging me; dare to dream to re-invent yourself go back to what you loved as a child. It’s never too late to learn something new. So, I did. Every morning I began practicing guitar. At first basic chords, G, D, C, and E, man was that tough. And rather boring. I struggled to play some Buddy Holly tunes. Simple enough, three cords and a few straightforward licks. Not so. It took me eight months to develop the strength, flexibility, and coordination to play a G chord with consistent results.

 Try it sometime.

 Then the breakthrough came. I overcame my stubborn nature and enrolled in guitar lessons. Yes at 58 years old I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start playing.

 Face the facts, there comes a time when the teacher becomes the student. One who studies: an attentive and systematic observer. A person formally engaged in learning a new skill. The key word here is engaged. This means dedication to daily practice. Directed instruction from an observer who can correct for inconsistencies in technique. And a fresh perspective on what works. That’s what my guitar tutor provides.

I’ll admit he exceeded my expectations from the first lesson. He did not say, “Here is the fretboard, here are the notes memorize them, then we will get started.” Not at all.

My first lesson was a question and observation session. “What chords do you know. Play them for me.” Then an amazing thing happened. He asked, “What do you want to play?”

“Blues guitar, maybe some Jazz,” I responded.

“Ok, let’s get started.” He took out a blank sheet with eight sets of six lines. This represented the guitars fret board and in handwritten symbols gave me the tablature notation to play Basic Blues in “A”.

He played it to demonstrate the rhythm and fingering. Then he asked me to give it a try. I could not believe my ears. Was I really playing a blues riff? It was magical.

“Good, practice this. Next week we will begin to build on this foundation,” he said.

Granted it’s still early in my guitar learning curve. I can almost play something that resembles music. Thank goodness my coach doesn’t treat me like a dog and his systematic approach to guitar is not a bag of tricks. Give me a few more months before I debut on stage with my Fender Telecaster.

No tricks - just consistent, persistent practice.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

The Gopher Problem and the High Powered Solution

Vacationing in Maine this week, just a short drive down the coast from Freeport, it is hard not to think about the outsized impact one frustrated outdoorsman had on the gear we all use today. Bad equipment can ruin a perfectly good day on the water or the trail, but it takes a special kind of vision to turn cold feet into a century-old empire. This is the story of the company we now know as L.L.Bean, but more importantly, it is a masterclass in integrity, learning from failure, and standing behind your work. In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean faced a persistent problem: returning from expeditions in the Maine woods with cold, wet feet. Instead of complaining, he got creative. He had a local shoemaker stitch waterproof rubber soles onto the flexible leather uppers of a hunting boot. He called it the Maine Hunting Shoe and mailed a flyer promising perfect satisfaction. Then reality arrived. Ninety of his first 100 pairs failed when the rubber separated from the leather. Not an effective product...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Becoming Real

Some things get better with wear: old shoes, old friendships, and old books. Especially old books. A new volume arrives with crisp corners and a spine that hasn’t yet learned to bend. An old one has been somewhere. It has traveled through time in the hands of people who may no longer be around to tell us what they found inside. The copy of The Velveteen Rabbit (first published in 1922) on my desk is one of those books. My friend Don Hanley gave it to me. This late-1950s Doubleday edition features William Nicholson’s original illustrations and cream paper boards softened by age. Worn corners, a split spine, and colored tabs mark passages worth revisiting. Don didn’t hand me a keepsake. He gave me homework. When we talked about the book recently, he pointed me straight to the nursery conversation between a young rabbit and an old Skin Horse. The rabbit had noticed the mechanical toys around him—the ones with internal gears, bright paint, and stick-out handles that seem terribly impressiv...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Dog, a Beer . . . and the Ghost of 1912

Whenever you step into an American cathedral of our National Pastime built before modern ergonomics, municipal zoning, or crowd-flow dynamics, an unspoken understanding forms, creating a welcoming, timeless atmosphere. You trade legroom, sensible corridors, and personal space for the privilege of communing with ghosts. Last week, Lori and I made our pilgrimage to Fenway Park to watch our Chicago Cubs take on the Boston Red Sox (a taut 0–2 contest that felt spiritually tied to their 1918 World Series meeting). Staying just across the Charles River at the Courtyard Marriott in Cambridge gave us one immeasurable tactical advantage: we walked. While the automotive gridlock around Kenmore Square took on the character of the Siege of Yorktown—horns echoing across the asphalt like musket fire—we simply strolled across the Boston University Bridge, enjoying the river breeze and feeling smugly superior to everyone trapped behind a steering wheel. Fenway, built in the spring of 1912, holds rough...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paris – the End of Silence

✈️  In this special episode: Paris – the End of Silence Sometimes, connection arrives in the most unexpected form—not through grand gestures, but through a quiet voice carried by technology. In a Paris apartment, I finally understood my family’s words . . . and felt my mother’s presence in every sentence. Since I was a little boy, France has been both a beautiful and frustrating paradox in my life. Every six to nine years, my mother, Mauricette, would take my brothers and me back to La Rochelle to visit our French family. The moment we arrived, the air would fill with a sound I loved but couldn’t share in—the rapid-fire, musical rhythm of French. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would warmly sweep me into hugs and kisses, their words flowing like a lovely melody I couldn’t quite catch. I’d smile brightly, trying to communicate with my eyes and hands. But as soon as we stepped off the plane, my mother and her sister-in-law, Joséan, started talking animatedly. They were gone, chatting h...
2 comments
Read more