I've Totally Lost it

[Mr. Jelly]

Yea, I've totally lost it. I've been retired three years now and I've been having a good time. Years ago, I quit flat picking and dedicated myself to finger picking country rags, blues and traditional jazz sounding things. It was a labor of love to go as far as I could learning the technic. I amassed a good amount of material in that vein. I started doing a short set every week at an open mic. Then a month or so ago I just didn't feel like doing that any longer. Other things were going on also. I didn't feel like doing that material and wanted to flat pick again. Boom, I started getting back into flat picking and selling a couple of guitars to get guitars geared more to that sort of thing. Now for whatever reason I have a D-18VS 12 fret on the way and I feel whole. I've always had a foot in each styler of music. Now I am regearing my material and mining for more for my weekly sets.

[mr. beaumont]

I dunno...I just don't see the styles as THAT different. It's not like you're selling your Les Paul and Marshall stack to pursue Brazilian Choros. And I'm sure you could adapt some of those old tunes to flatpicking too, with some work. I don't think you've "lost it" at all...tastes change.

[catndahats]

Jelly, it's how you tell the story!

You have not lost it----you've found it.

Sometimes you travel around the world, only to return home and discover the answer was right in your back yard all along.

And a 12fret D is almost always the solution.
Cheers!

[Silly Moustache]

It sounds to me like you've found it, not lost it!

Enjoy!

[raysachs]

Yeah, I agree, you figured out what you really enjoy. That's a win.

I had a similar thing happen over the past few years. Over the 40+ years that I'd been into guitar (in fairness, about 10 on, 30 mostly off until five + years ago, then way ON again), I'd never developed the patience or discipline to learn to play with my fingers. I've always loved blues fingerpicking / finger style but never learned to do any of it. And then about three years ago or so, I decided I was gonna really DO it this time, found a teacher on TrueFire who taught in a way that really worked for me, and buckled down. And I never got really good at it, but I finally learned to do it semi-decently. I had a handful of pieces I could more or less play. Five or six seemed to be my limit - once I got to that point, when I'd learn a new one, an old one would drop off the back and be forgotten.

I was really pleased that I could finally do this thing I'd wanted to be able to do for so long. BUT, after a while I realized I didn't really ENJOY it as much as a lot of other stuff I do with a guitar. I enjoyed being able to do it, but the learning process was just so much rote muscle memory - I didn't feel creative as much as I felt like a trained monkey. Each new piece wasn't quite like starting from scratch, but it was kind of close to that. I still have a half dozen little pieces I can play, but I rarely do - I try to play them just often enough that I don't forget them all. But I have absolutely zero appetite to learn more pieces - I just don't enjoy the process. Each time is kind of like starting from scratch.

With everything else I do with a guitar, whether it's learning to play and sing new songs, or whether it's learning to change up my rhythm techniques, or just playing lead guitar (acoustic and electric), I always feel like I have the tools to do it and I can just start bringing something of myself to the process. I learn and improve and CREATE simultaneously. It's always fun, which has always been the whole point for me. Learning a new finger style piece is just practice and practice and practice to reach a basic level of competence, KEEP practicing to maintain the muscle memory, and after a TON of practice, maybe be able to bring a tiny bit of creative interpretation to the piece. It's just too much work and not enough PLAY for me.

I haven't totally lost it yet, but I can see that I might. I'm just not motivated to do it, so I do it less and less. So, to put it mildly, I can relate...

-Ray

[M19]

Originally Posted by catndahats

J

Sometimes you travel around the world, only to return home and discover the answer was right in your back yard all along.

With or without the ruby slippers...

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by M19

With or without the ruby slippers...

THAT'S IT!!!! I want my ruby slippers! Here I come Amazon. And no, there will not be any pictures.

[J Patrick]

…I’ve bounced back and forth between genres styles guitars and musical interests in general for as long as I’ve been playing….and I’m semi ancient…..whats that catchy bumper sticker???….not all those who wander are lost?….

[catndahats]

Definitely with!
But make mine ruby hiking boots

Originally Posted by M19

With or without the ruby slippers...

[tinnitus]

I've been playing with a flat pick since 1968-ish. Various decent garage bands here and there, basically gigging for gas money and bar tabs. So, really, just for the pure fun of it. Hearing loss and loud screaming tinnitus 24/7 finally compelled me to put away the tube amps, electric planks and pedal boards, but I still play rock, blues, twang, etc., on acoustics strung with lights.

Newbs I know ask me to teach them stuff. I proceed carefully there because I'm self-taught and fairly bristling with some admittedly awful habits. I've learned to work around my limitations, but I'm hesitant to pass them on to others. One major shortcoming is my abject inability to play anything without a pick in my hand. So I urge friends to get real lessons (and maybe reinforce those by passing along the basics they learned to me). We play, but I make sure they also explore various fingerpicking tutorials from the interweb. If they practice diverse patterns/songs that way, right from the start, they won't end up sorta lopsided like me 20-50 years from now.

I've always tried to practice what I preach in any endeavor, but I find it extremely frustrating to set down the pick and use my thumb/fingers. It feels like switching my knife and fork or trying to throw a ball southpaw. Clumsy and amateurish at best. But all is not lost!

Looking for tutorials online, I realized that I'm not the one who invented the term "hybrid picking." Lots of excellent players use a pick AND the middle and ring fingers (and even the pinky) for 'Dust in the Wind/Classical Gas" type stuff, very convincingly, in fact. This emboldens me to stubbornly expand on my decades-old "pinch" techniques and continue to play fairly well without that frustrating feeling of having to "start all over" as I close in on 70.

YMMV

[ewalling]

I may be able to empathize a bit. A challenge I've had over the years is that I hear someone do something I really like on the guitar and I want to do it, too. My fundamental preferred style was originally fingerpicking ragtime and blues tunes plus some Celtic, but since I started playing again in 2007, I've listened to people play jazz standards, Latin jazz, Chet Atkins, dropped tunings, Renaissance, and classical. I've been inspired and learnt pieces in those styles too. In so doing, I feel I've become a bit of a 'Jack-of-all-trades but master of none.'

It doesn't bother me, but there it is. For me, it's a bit of a personality trait: I'm a copier. Back in my teens when I played cricket seriously, I would watch great players less as a passive spectator and more to copy what they were doing when I played myself. It translated to the guitar. Listening to Lightnin' Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy gave me the reaction not simply of, 'That's great,' but of, 'That's great. I've got to learn how to do that.'

Maybe you're of a similar ilk (or maybe not). Have you heard some flatpicking recently which has inspired you?

[tinnitus]

Originally Posted by ewalling

I may be able to empathize a bit. A challenge I've had over the years is that I hear someone do something I really like on the guitar and I want to do it, too. My fundamental preferred style was originally fingerpicking ragtime and blues tunes plus some Celtic, but since I started playing again in 2007, I've listened to people play jazz standards, Latin jazz, Chet Atkins, dropped tunings, Renaissance, and classical. I've been inspired and learnt pieces in those styles too. In so doing, I feel I've become a bit of a 'Jack-of-all-trades but master of none.'

It doesn't bother me, but there it is. For me, it's a bit of a personality trait: I'm a copier. Back in my teens when I played cricket seriously, I would watch great players less as a passive spectator and more to copy what they were doing when I played myself. It translated to the guitar. Listening to Lightnin' Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy gave me the reaction not simply of, 'That's great,' but of, 'That's great. I've got to learn how to do that.'

Maybe you're of a similar ilk (or maybe not). Have you heard some flatpicking recently which has inspired you?

Well said. I'm an unapologetic copier too.

A dyed in the wool hard rocker in early decades, I avoided anything with even a hint of "pop" to it. Then I realized somewhere after 40 that joining any functioning cover band meant I had to learn their established setlists, and I had to diversify a LOT. Playing a broader array of tunes/styles (whether I really liked them all, or not) made me a far more versatile guitarist.

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by ewalling

Maybe you're of a similar ilk (or maybe not). Have you heard some flatpicking recently which has inspired you?

Over the years I have done the blues / rockabilly band things along with a pseudo jazz gig. Along with this and that and on and on. This is a good question though. What I learned by focusing on fingerpicking opened up some technic and knowledge things about flat picking that has alluded me. I think the main thing was the use of partial chords up the neck. There is a sound difference between cross picking and finger picking, to my ear, but they also are similar sounding.