[FrankHudson]

Lots of grins from me as many in the thread remark Plan? What, plan? But even if we are sort of meandering along, or dealing mostly with other things in life, we have (or reveal) some intent.

I started with an inexpensive, department store nylon string acoustic guitar, because I had little money and that was all I could afford. I admired classical guitar players, American acoustic blues players of the 78 rpm era, the Takoma-associated steel-string guitar players, and the British players in the Davy Graham/Bert Jansch school.

I also loved lead electric guitar players, but an amp was out the budget range. Since this was the way I started, I'll condense the rest of this to just to my "plan" with acoustic guitar.

I believed that as far as acoustic guitar players, fingerpicking style was what the real players did, and the rest were hacks or singers who made do with limited chops. Of course that was ignorant, but that's what I believed then.

I could never develop the right hand nails or calluses to do pure finger-style, so I began to use thumb and finger picks (yes, even on nylon string). After a couple of years I got a cheap 12-string, which I sometimes strung as 6 string so that it could serve double-duty. After a couple years or so more I got my first 6 string steel-string acoustic, a real stretch for my budget.

I never learned to even fake classical nylon string badly. I could get something of the flavor of the Takoma "American Primitive" thing and a bit less of the UK folk style. My blues playing was sloppy. I eventually got tired of what I felt was mechanical and non-interesting in my finger-style work, plus I found the picks increasingly awkward.

Around 30 years ago I moved to using a flat pick for everything (well, nearly everything) using a cross-picking style, which ironically got me closer to the sound of my steel-string influences.

Now in the last decade or so, I have less flexible joints and more finger-joint pains. I'm basically trying to modify what chops I have to adopt to that--more open tunings, simpler chord forms. I've also become even more composing oriented, writing pieces based on what I can hope to play vs. trying to play some one else's music or approach their techique. I've also collected a range of largely inexpensive instruments over the years to help express different sounds.

In summary: my goals/influences haven't changed, but over a few decades my methods for approaching them changed. In military war college style terms: my strategic plan remains largely the same, my tactical plans have evolved, and my logistical supply of instruments has increased.