"What Am I Doing Here?"

Inspired by a great track I remember from my youth:

Larry Verne, "Mr. Custer"

So, what am I doing here? What is the purpose of this blog? I've been kinda floundering recently, and I think a statement of purpose would be a good thing.

Gear Lust

There's two thoughts involved with Gear Lust. There's "I want to collect pretty things" and "this will make me a better player." Gear Lust drives the aptly-named Gear Acquisition Syndrome (or GAS) that plagues so many players. Just to make it clear, I think it's fine to collect gear and to appreciate gear. I think it's a fallacy to believe that, beyond a certain point, playing another guitar will make you a better guitar player. That certain point being the point where you go from a poor instrument that doesn't intonate, doesn't stay in tune and doesn't sound good to a good instrument that intonates, stays in tune and sounds decent. I would suggest that this point is relatively low, lower with electrics than with acoustics, and with the advent of CDC, is dropping lower and lower every day. You can get a great sounding, beautiful, hand-crafted instrument, but if all you do is pluck open strings and say "Wow! That tone!", nobody's gonna want to hear it.

But it's always fun to look.

Mindless Link Propagation

The Gear Lust posts are a subset of the MLP group. We all like looking at shiny new instruments. We all like seeing and hearing great bands play great songs.

Community

This is a big part of it all. I know some musicians locally, but they cover a small part of the possible gamut of music. By being online, by participating, I get to know more musicians, learn more techniques and find more about general musicianship than I could otherwise.

Giving It All Away

One of my first inspirations for this blog was Adam Gussow of Satan and Adam, who posts blues harp instruction on YouTube.



He developed a body of knowledge of blues, of harmonica, of musicianship, over years of playing and gigging, and he decided to create the video series to "give it all away", as he says above.

I do not have Adam's experience. I don't claim to. But certainly if I have something I can give away, to help the next guy along, I want to do that.

Logging Progress

Blog is short for web-log. I try to use this to keep track of how I improve and how my playing life is going. Cameron Mizell: "If I set a goal for myself and then write about it, I’m more likely to follow through."

I won't stop posting pics of interesting instruments, vids of great songs and the like. But I hope and plan to post more about what I'm doing and what I'm learning.