Category: Blog
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Graduation Blues and Kinesthetic Guitar.
School is out. According to California State University, Fullerton, I have earned a Bachelors of Music degree in Commercial Music with a concentration in Jazz Guitar. Next year I will most likely start a Master’s program, but I’m still working out what I want to do with that. I have a couple of interesting options……
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Pedalboard Rebuild
This week I decided that since I was on spring break from school and didn’t have a gig until Friday night I would tear down my larger pedalboard, fix some problems, add some new stuff and rework how I get sounds on stage. I’ve been putting this off for a while just because it’s kind…
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My Senior Recital.
I realized this morning that it has been about five months since I’ve written a blog post or a lesson. In my final year of school (I’m working on a Bachelors of Music Degree in Jazz Performance) I’ve just been overwhelmed with school work, gigs, teaching, family and life in general and have had to…
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Music and Fitness.
If you look back at my pictures on social media, you’ll see that my weight tends to fluctuate from one end of the spectrum to the other. The featured picture for this blog shows me at weights ranging from 225 back in 1999 to 285 a couple of years ago with stops at 265 and…
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Forests and Trees.
can’t see the forest for the trees An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at thesituation as a whole: “The congressman became so involved in the wording of his bill that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees; he did not realize that the bill could never pass.” If there is one overriding theme to this phase of my life (the one where I am returning to music school after two and a half decades) is that I spend too much time “in the weeds” (to mix metaphors a bit), searching for…
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Pedal Mania – Pt.2
Last week we took a look at my main gigging board, which a friend of mine has dubbed “Pedalstar Galactica”. This week I want to go through my two smaller pedal boards, which give me some flexibility for small gigs ad rehearsals. If you want to support the blog you can click on the names…
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Pedalstar Galactica.
Like most guitarists, I like toys. Like most working guitarists, I can’t afford everything I want but in the area of effects pedals, spending $100-$150 every so often won’t break the bank and allows me to have some flexibility with the gear that I work with. I have three distinct pedal boards, and I figured…
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Back to School.
It’s Wednesday morning and I’m finally writing my Tuesday blog. That must mean I’m back in school… Seriously though, it’s been quite a week and I’m only three days into it. I have to admit that I’m doing some great stuff this year and my blog will probably end up being full of how I’m…
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Sitting on both sides of the music stand.
I have been teaching guitar for 29 years next month and I’ve been playing for 34 years. Every time I think about that fact I feel really bad for the students that I taught for the first few years but that is another story. The opportunity that started as a way to make a few bucks…
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“Always Learning”
At age 48, with one music degree and more than three decades of experience under my belt, I’m back in school working on a Jazz Performance degree. When I first started this endeavor two years ago I was asked by friends, family, and students quite a few questions along the lines of “I know you…