While I was at the CHEC conference last week, I picked up a book about scales for guitar. It looked simple enough: a long narrow book with lots of graphics and a few words meant to teach guitar scales to someone who knows nothing. Like me.
Every since I picked up the guitar a few years ago, I've been fascinated with the way stringed instruments work. By putting pressure on a string at a given fret (a place along the fretboard behind the string), the player makes that string more or less shorter--changing the string's length just enough to change the string's pitch to the note wanted. Since there are so many different strings with so many different pitch starting places, and there are so many different places to press on those strings and make them different pitches, the combinations seem endless. Mind-boggling. Crazy. Unreal. They were too much for a new player to grasp mentally. After a couple of years piddling they are still a lot.
But I think this book I bought is going to help me. Already I have started to grasp how a person can handle so much potential music. I'm getting some tools into my mind and fingers witch should allow me to take this plethora of possibilities and chose the right notes to make music.
It is going to take practice. It is going to take many small moments and small bites of knowledge. But I'm excited! I'm expanding my mind. The more I know, the more I can enjoy music. And the more I enjoy it, the more I have to share with others!
Being able to share with others is the true joy in music.
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