I have 1000 hours to go before I viably suck (maybe more, maybe less)

C major scale, we meet again (!) --  but this time, with fingerings.

This morning, I cancelled everything and all because I didn't put in my measly 20-30 minutes of practice on my acoustic guitar yesterday. I'd practice more, but at the moment my fingers are still tender...very tender. For example, I work my exercises to warm up and the fingers already zing. Then, I try to master my C major scale, remember some few odd chords and give another try to a song I am incapable of playing just yet. I can sing the song. I know it almost like the back of my hand. However, I'm pre-remedial (or so it feels) when it comes to strumming the right chords. So, I suppose we can say, I'm considering it a goal.

It's a step in the right direction. The ultimate goal is to be able to accompany myself on an instrument that is portable and can also help me to connect musically with others. It's a way for me to start remembering my music theory, to have a tool to create more textures with, to have a tool to be able to write songs with, and also to be able to stand alone without being so bare (most of us can only listen to so much a cappella singer solos).

It's a good goal, I think, and long overdue. All of those instances where I tried, picked up the instrument for maybe a span of semester, passed, and then forgot to keep up with what I had started because I wasn't sure what my next step was or because I got too busy with something else. . . .

A friend reminded me yesterday how important practice is with his usual tone. "Just remember, 1000 hours of practice and you suck; 5000 hours of practice and you're okay; 10,000 hours of practice and you are good [and I suspect masterful]." I tried to break that down into days over a bus ride. You know, if I could manage just two hours a day, for example, what would that look like? How long before I viably sucked? Looking at it that way, I felt a bit daunted. Who wouldn't?

I was reminded of an old saxophone playing boyfriend who had this burning wish to emulate John Coltrane's woodshedding regimen. He wanted to eke out of the day 8 hours (which still falls short of Coltrane's obsessive discipline) in which he honed his skills on his horn. He'd feel guilty every time he didn't make it, which was mostly every time. The necessity for work or even my asking him to please play into the clothes in the closet so I could write, and whatever else interrupted; family and friends' gatherings, the attention hungry cats, taking care of the everyday boring business of life, and on and on. . . .

Missing 20-30 minutes seems inexcusable when remembering that. It seems silly. So. . .I'm getting back to it, taking breaks when I need to, not worrying about how many hours I've put in (since who knows if I'll ever reach mastery) but instead focusing on practicing and recognizing when there are improvements. I've almost got the C major scale smoothly under my fingers. The exercises are getting less and less difficult and perhaps soon, I can play them faster. The practice is comforting, as is the zing in the tips of my fingers. It's a reminder that I showed up to the task today and it's a reminder that I must to return to it.

I am beginning to re-engage with my ‪music‬, with ‪‎singing‬, with my ‪‎voice‬.

I haven't made any music formally since August. Honestly, aside from breaking out into a medley of songs I have sung in the past at bus stops, I haven't even been singing much at all. Sometimes, I wonder if I'll remember how my voice feels in my body again. This is plain and utter torture from which I have been needing to depart. Not knowing where to begin, I decided to start with my old tatty fake book that I bought about 20 years ago from a fake book dealer.

Back then, you had to buy the book from a dealer. There was no Amazon and you couldn't get it from a music store. You had to know a guy, or a guy who knew a guy. It had something to do with copyrights. The book's transcriptions weren't licensed (no royalties were dished out to the artists whose songs appeared in the book). It might still be illegal. Wikipedia certainly thinks so. Reading down the comments on some of the Amazon links to the fake books (that's what we always called them -- on Amazon, look for 'Real Book'), it looks like due to copyright law, you might never really get an original Fake Book like I have. I mean, you might get something pretty similar, which is probably good enough. 

In any case, I had been singing with a vocal jazz ensemble in Oregon at the time and our conductor, Dave Barduhn, knew a guy. The cost might have been 35 bucks, maybe 40. I don't even remember, now. It was a stretch for me to come up with the funds but I felt that it really was something I needed to do. I wasn't sure when the dealer was going to come around again. 

I had also committed myself at that time to jazz. I wanted to do what all the jazzers did, especially the horn players I had been hanging out with since the summer before my senior year in high school. I felt obligated to learn the songs, arpeggiate all the chords on staff paper, breathe in as many versions of each of the songs as I could and then make them my own.

The dealer wrote out the receipt and gave me the Real Vocal Book. I remember holding it as if it would break. It felt like some sort of initiation to me even if the transaction seemed super quick.

As I walked away, the dealer shouted after me, "Learn every single one of 'em. Memorize every tune."

I always meant to do that but then life. . . . 

It wasn't until maybe a week ago, I saw the book out of the corner of my eye from the bookshelf. Dogeared, weather worn, some of the pages just barely hanging on, some others marked for performances, and even others with notes on the pages of what to remember, or what I'd been forgetting. I remembered that fake book dealer and I remembered how dear to me music is. I connected that with a need to sing and a need to just start and have some kind of focus of my own that had nothing to do with anyone else's projects or what I thought I should be doing to chase singing for the sake of singing (I'll probably write on that more at some point). The book would give me that. I could trudge through at my own pace, learn the songs, their histories, the originating and key artists and so on. I could also add to what I know and see where I have been.

And so, that's what I'm doing. One song at a time, I'm just getting them into me, singing them a little or a lot and as slow or as quickly as I need to. I'm starting with my tattered book, not even skipping pages, not even thinking of my favorite songs to sing or listen to.