Michael K.,

Do whatever works for you. If some of these suggestions come as news and you want to try them, then try them.

Rick F.,

Rigidity is the issue. There is no one way and if you try just one way, you will limit your results.

So just how did those "old guys" learn to play. Well, the "story" on Robert Johnson is he could be talking to you while the juke box was playing and then two hours later he could play that song for you. DON"T TRY THAT PATH!!!

Some of these old blues guys followed their blind mentors around for years. None of them chose to become blind, but certainly part of how they learned was aural osmosis (hearing the same thing over and over) [that's the CD of those days], part of it had to be from watching it over and over again [that's the video of those days], and maybe some of it was sort of written down in some crude (or refined, but now unknown) tablature [the tab of those days].

Michael K.,

I have been playing guitar for 35 years or there abouts. I have learned my material just about any way there is to learn it. Living in a rural area there weren't too many places to go watch others play and when I could I might only pick up a hint or two. So I have bought books, I have bought videos, I have taken lessons, and I have learned off records (some may ask "what the hell is a record?"). There has been some good and some bad in all fo that learning. From my years working with adolescents, I learned that people with less knowledge and skill than you possess may still have something they can teach you (and hence I learned the intro to Stairway to Heaven, thank you).

My thoughts on personal style.

Learning what others do gives you more tools to do what you want to do. Not all of us are Richie Haven's and can develop out style seemingly from whole cloth. Yet you should remember Richie was really working with his limitations at the start.

Creativity can be stitching up an arrangement completely original or it can be quilting an arrangement from various pieces you obtained elsewhere.

My limitations are very often the source of my creativity. I can't do it the way someone else does it, so I find my own way.

If we had an aural record of the old bluesmen, we could probably piece together an intertwined tree of knowledge constructed from various "licks" and "turnarounds" that might include an originator of each particular "lick" or "turnaround". Many of the bluesmen (even that genius Robert Johnson) have licks on their records whose origin clearly comes from some previous recording, sometimes lifted as a solid chunk from one man's song and into another man's song.

So, Michael K., don't get caught up in a debate over how to learn. Just know that you never have to do it just like Mississippi John Hurt and in fact you should not do it just like Mississippi John Hurt. Color outside the lines, ALWAYS. Eventually you will make new lines.

I think all of us who have been playing for a few years have had Magpie's experience. Thought we were doing it just like the originator, but without a reference we have turned it into "our version>"

Just play whenever you can and hopefully when you play you won't ever have to think of it as "practice." It should be "just having fun."

I better step down off that soap box. If my head swells any bigger I'll probably collapse under its weight.

Roger in Baltimore