Try Try Again

While I sing all the time, as in, either constantly in my head or out loud, I don't really play the guitar that much.  Maybe a couple of hours a week, if that.

Why is this a problem?

The problem is I want to hold my own in a band or a duo or whatever group of people I play with and realistically, to do that you have to play an instrument as well as sing.

So the idea is to be a bad-ass guitar player.  But to be the kind of bad-ass guitar player I would want to be, and that Andrew seems to want me to be, it would take as much obsession with guitar playing as I have with singing.

From our first performance as a duo.

I keep telling Andrew that I want to record a cd.  He keeps saying I need to work on my guitar.  Finally, a month ago, the discussion/argument came to a head when I realized that when we talk about making a cd as good as we can possibly make it, we mean different things.  

He means that we should work on my instrument (his is off-the-charts fine already) and our singing until it's professional quality and at its peak.  

Whereas I'm coming from more of a developing writers angle, which is that part of becoming professional is learning, producing, creating, exposing, and putting your stuff out there knowing that it will be better later.

It makes sense to me that we constantly develop as artists and that we shouldn't be embarrassed to publish/perform while we're still developing.  Because that's how you develop.  It's natural that your first effort will not be your best (at least that's the goal), but that through your first effort, you learn more about yourself and your process.

More often than not, it's an artists fearlessness that I admire most.  Because it's always scary.  At least I always find it scary to put myself out there.  And I believe in the fear, I believe that it should be scary, otherwise, the chances are what you're doing isn't really exposing as much as you should be.