Guitar Hero

I’ve been playing an acoustic guitar for a little over two years. It’s served my needs, which was largely as a tool for writing songs, but different instruments give you different musical ideas, and I’ve been thinking I’d like to try plugging in. My problem is that I’m not a great guitarist. I’m barely good enough to play most of the songs I write, and sometimes not even that. There’s a fantastic guitar store near me, but if you want to test out a new instrument, you have to sit smack in the middle place next to a wall of amps and have at it. Every single time I’ve gone there to buy a tuner or some new picks, there’s a young guy hunched over a Fender shredding, as guitarists like to say. I’m not a shredder. I’m a strummer, and probably always will be.

Last year I went with the idea of getting an electric for my birthday. I talked to a nice guy who showed me a few instruments and amps, but our conversation was had over the bluesy noodlings of yet another would-be soloist, bending his notes and flying up and down a pentatonic scale. I wanted to try one, but I chickened out. I drove home feeling strangely like a failure, and I told my wife it just wasn’t time.

I blame my childhood. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when guitar heroes were much more a thing than they are today, and I came to see electric guitars in particular as a venue for measuring one’s virtuosic talent, comparing musicians the way I graded professional athletes. It was all so competitive even when I was just a fan. Once I started playing and struggled just to get a decent-sounding F chord, I quickly understood the magnitude of the challenge. I wanted to be good at this, but man that was going to take a lot of practice, perhaps more than I had time left in my life.

No matter; practice I did. Of course, I got better, as one does when you do something every day, even if for only a half-hour. My F chords started sounding less muddy, and my rhythm got steadier. My birthday rolled around again, my 60th this time. Back I went to the guitar store. On that day there were not one but two soloists, one of them, in his obligatory knit cap and waist-length hair, doing some crazy, pick-less speed playing. Hearing him, I thought, “I hate that shit.”

To be clear – he was skilled. I couldn’t even attempt what he was doing, and I had no doubt his band is better for what he brought to it. But his playing was not my cup of tea, and this time I found a used Stratocaster, sat on a stool, plugged in, and started strumming. God, I loved how that F sounded. I strummed and strummed, and even though my amp was turned down low, I could no longer hear the soloists. You have to block them out, you have to block everybody out, if you want to hear your song.

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Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
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