I am now 58 years old or young how ever one looks at it.i do not feel old and am told by many I do not look that old.It does not matter to me anyway.
I am a late bloomer in the music arena.I made my living as a suit and with my brains not my back so I have been lucky that way for sure.I am definitely not knocking those who have used their backs though.I feel that the important thing is to make a honest living and be able to look at your own face in the mirror and see someone you can respect.This is all just background to give someone a sense of who and what I am.
The first time I messed with music was when my family lived in the Phillipine Islands.We moved there when I was 8 years old and stayed till I was 13.I got involved with the school band and brought home a Trombone first then a Saxaphone.For some reason unknown to me,I was able to instantly play some simple songs and have them sound right.One song that comes to mind is Tea for two.I cannot remember any of the others now.I was facinated with music then as now but didn't know much of anything about it.I thought learning how to read music and music theory was boring.i didn't understand why I needed to know it either.I got no support whatsoever from anyone in my family with my music and had to play where no one could hear me.I also got interested in the drums but never did get to bang on them till high school.We moved two more times before I left home to go in the Navy in 1965 the last place being near Sacramento California.I had a good friend that showed me the first things on a guitar and got where I could play some songs like Blue Moon ,honky Tonk,and house of the rising sun.I thought I was doing them properly but didn't find out how little I really knew until about 5 years ago.This story is geting too long but I feel I need to tell it because it may help someone get to the next level of playing from where they are now.I will try to jump ahead a bit.I played alot of music for a lot of folks and thought I was pretty good and the people I played for mostly all thought so as well.Then I started making friends with some younger folks who had mostly spent their time playing music.That is when I found out how little I knew.One of these people showed me some things that till this day he does not have any idea what and how it helped me but it did.I am one of those that has to understand how something works before I can really master it.I started learning in leaps and bounds even mystifying myself.I could not believe it was me playing.i am not by any means saying I am as good as or better than anyone just comparing myself to myself and what I hear.I found that if I can get my sound to sound like someone did in a song i could learn it really quickly.I learned how to play the Bluesharp almost overnight by experimenting trying to make those sounds.I kept trying to get my guitar to sound like something I had heard a long time ago by a man called Gabor Szabo and one day I found that sound.On that day I started to see in my mind a rainbow of colors associated with the music and realized that it also had a texture.The sound I was striving for has bright colors like Red and Purple and bright orange and Yellow and it's texture is Syrupy.Since then I have figured out all kinds of stuff on the guitar.It amazes me to this day how the sound itself makes so much difference.I tried and tried to get my guitar to sound like this Black Guy I recorded by the name of Terry Harmonica Bean and never could get it.One day someone explained to me that Blues has more Mids to it than most music and again a revelation of learning has occured and is still occuring.I plan to try to put this kind of stuff in a format and in a way that will help people to learn much faster.Sorry this is so long but believe it or not I skipped a lot.Thanks for reading this if you have and thanks for your comments if you do.mississippitom