This man is not on cocaine. This man is high on life. This is a natural biochemical problem.

I just put on a leather jacket, rocked a headband and kicked the shit out of my twelve-string. HUNT MUSIC. BEATITUDE OF ATTITUDE. Still sounded better than the muff pedal farting at 4:40.

Dicknuts: folks should learn ANYTHING except the guitar. Learn the oboe before you learn the guitar. Learn the glass fucking harmonica before you learn the guitar. Like Waits said, "fingers are like dogs, they go where they know." Learning the guitar trains your dumb monkey brain to happily chunder out obscenely long chord arrangements and chase the tone with your vocals. I swear to God, I was once told that the Beatles were shit because they "only used 3 chords."

If the instruments you learn have that big an effect on what you write, you're not in command of your art.

Every instrument's the same.

It's the chocolate cherries that count.

Chocolate cherries really do bring the funk, I'll admit it.

THAT SAID, playing an instrument is habit forming. Unless you're an automaton you'll technically approach an oud differently than you'll approach a set of pan-pipes, and you'll develop different habits playing to your technical strengths in both. Get an instrument like the guitar and you'll get caught up in composing around chord shapes because, fuck, that's the way we play the guitar nowadays. The saxophone, piano, flute? Not so much.

You've made me hungry for cherries now. Shit.

When you're writing for that instrument, sure.

If you're so densely theoretical, why compose on an instrument at all?

I can play anything you don't have to blow into. I like pizza.

What dicknuts said.


Who deliberately uses theory when their writing?

Buncha chumps is who.

Make all kids learn piano when they're 8 or 10 so by the time they're 14 or 15 they can read music and can learn to play a cool instrument like guitar properly. Guitar is a bad instrument to start with because all you learn is guitar chords.

What Syd said and what I said: DON'T learn guitar first. Learn fucking anything else first because you're bound to pick up shitty habits AND there's a huge amount of material out there to facilitate guitar playing with ZERO theory behind it.

But I think we're ALL missing the bigger point here. A dude called Dicknuts on pizza box - Old Zircon screaming BUNCHA CHUMPS at folks - Syd, being Syd - the Token Chick Bassist (me) - THIS IS A BAND GUYS.

The Chocolate Covered Cherries. Fuck yeah.

I've been in enough bands and know enough people in bands that I can contribute to a dysfunctional band dynamic as well as anyone.

FOR SERIOUS, THOUGH, GUYS, if you want to play electric guitar you should probably take some drum lessons.

I do actually agree about starting on a different instrument (unless you're playing classical guitar), not because of the guitar itself encouraging lay writing but because of its cultural context doing that. I'm really glad I took some flute and piano (plus my grade shcool had mandatory chorus for everyone until 3rd grade or something) and learned to read and write notation a bit before I picked up a guitar in middle school and discovered Black Sabbath and The Butthole Surfers.

I'm equally glad I never got too hung up on sight reading for the guitar. Every other instrument I play, but not guitar.

I play piano, pedal steel and a small amount of regular guitar. I find the differences interesting.

Piano: Notes are laid out in one dimension. None are duplicated. No sliding.

Guitar: Two dimensions (down the neck, across the strings). More than one place to get a note or chord inversion. Moving between these points, or from one inversion to another, is less intuitive because you might get some of the notes in a different place.

Pedal steel: Three dimensions (the above plus "changers" connected to pedals and levers). So there's even more ways to get a note. However, since you are playing with a bar, you might avoid most of them because they put you in a chord you don't want to be in.

In all three instruments you have these "islands" of knowledge...scales, chords, licks, melodies, etc. Your job as a musician is to bridge them. Yeah, chords are a crutch, but Western music has been chord-based for hundreds of years. That didn't start with rock. The trick is not to avoid starting there, it's to play so much that you go beyond it.

can i be you guys groupie/roadie?

pastorofmuppets, well said.

mashedtater, you might want to get one of these:
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=63853

Fuck, I am learning guitar. And I know nothing else. Oh well, might as well keep at those blues lessons.

Love the advice from the Nuge'. Gotta get me some night vision.

Wow. I spent half of yesterday drinking and half of yesterday posting; going through my own archives is like a weird blotchy adventure. Anyway.

pastorofmuppets: Well said. You're completely correct about composition - a virtuoso guitarist is the kin of a virtuoso pianist or virtuoso violinist, instrument regardless. That said, I still stand by my original point: don't learn the guitar first. Type "tabs" into Google and have a look at all the interesting ways young guitarists can circumvent good ear training.

I may be a bitch about this because, BACK YONDER in mine childehoode, I had one of those nasty teachers clucking his tongue whenever I didn't meet the metronome, who scrubbed off the white-out marks I put on my fiddle's fingerboard and, even if I later shrugged those lessons off, the basics I learned there helped me for the rest of my life.

I mean, I know guitarists now that have been playing for 10 years and still can't sight read / know any theory. All I was saying was that we live in a culture where you can play the guitar, and even play it really well, without learning anything about the foundations of music. That's all.

Old Zircon: you card, you. Just for that you can be the Cherry's guitar/drummer. As in, you get to wear the bass drum on your back. And I get to hit you with a big stick.

Seriously though guy, you make sense. I agree with you.

mashedtater: YOU LIKE MUSIC? GET IN THE VAN. WE'RE GIGGING WHERE? HEY GIRLY, CAN YOU CARRY A SNARE UP A FLIGHT OF STAIRS? HEY GIRLY, LEMME TUNE YOUR E-STRING. FUCK I FUCKED THAT UP.

I'm a bass player too so I'll have to make a solo album :(

You guys make music sound like you're getting ready to play D&D.

Oh wow, what was I doing up there?

He used to be Michael Jackson before the transporter accident.

so who did michael jackson become?

and who became michael jackson?

We're through the looking glass here, people.

Just like in Star Trek. Michael Jackson got split in two to form Michael Jackson, the good white youth, and 'The Nuge", an old black asshole.

I'm pretty sure this is from the end of a real lesson-on-tape. This is his schtick, so it's supposed to be funny (I think) but also I'm pretty sure all of those products are real and it's not supposed to be funny in the way it is.

My boss when I worked at a record store used to have a neighbor who was in her early 20s (this would be early to mid 90s if I remember the story right) and had at least a dozen Ted Nugent stage rants that she would recide word for word whenever she felt the need to.