I have played and studied piano since age 4, gigged professionally as a keyboard player for 18 years, and consider myself a very accomplished player proficient in all styles.

I have been playing guitar a sum total of about 3 years. Sure you can get ''a sound'' out of the guitar without a lot of effort as you can with any instrument....but compared to piano (and as it relates to fingerstyle playing) I must say that I find guitar inherently more difficult than piano to really master and I tend to be a quick study with instruments and their nuances.

I.M.H.O. the guitar is a very unforgiving instrument. The level of precision required in both hands (with respect to fingerpicking and advanced fingerpicking) to achieve a clean and pleasing sound - at least to my ears - requires 10 or 20 times the amount of practise I ever spent with piano.

When I was studying piano, and went to learn a new tune or arrangment whether classical or jazz or ragtime - whatever, it never took me more than a week to 2 weeks to have it down cold (talking 3-4 hours a day of practise.) The keys on a piano are wide (and forgiving).

The fretting required on a guitar is like a pinpoint on that little sweet spot at the end of your finger. Miss it by an angstrom and you have a buzz or a muted sound. You have to nail things with you fretting hand at just the right angle and just the right amount of arch with those fingers. (I'm sure it's the same for fiddle players as well, or any other stringed instrument.)

How many of us (intermediate to even advanced or professional guitar players) have tunes or arrangements we've been working on for literally months, perhaps years, that we've not yet mastered or have them sounding the way we want them to? Lots I'll bet.

I've been working on an arrangement of ''Dallas Rag'' part Dave Laibman, part David Bromberg for more than a year, and I still cannot play the tune from beginning to end without a glitch, buzz or mistake...but it's a labour of love with me and one day I will play it perfectly. All in all it seems that feel is more important than technical precision anyway.....but I aspire to have both, even if it takes me the rest of my life. I love playing the guitar that much and perhaps it's because I have to work so much harder to get a sound pleasing to my ears with the guitar, as opposed to piano, that I get such a tremendous sense of accomplishment and gratification - that eludes me with piano....although I still love to tickle the ivories as well.

Duck Baker says in one of his video lessons: ''The guitar is not your friend.'' What I think he means is, the way we sometimes have to contort our fingers and tendons into totally un-natural positions (sometimes quite painful,) in order to make certain chord sturctures, which enhance the sound of a given arrangement.

I think deep down most serious guitar players are also masochists. (grin) We like a little pain with our pleasure.