For any artist the ultimate aspiration is to find one’s voice, one’s own unique style and sensibility that sets them apart from the others and makes their art worth listening to, looking at or reading. I think this voice, this inclination is there from the very beginning. As soon as a child is able to get his hands into something that he can draw or paint with, or an instrument that he or she can make a racket with, they usually go for it with a natural gusto. A child will naturally start to paint anything that comes to his mind and often come up with something amazing. Or perhaps he’ll pick out a familiar melody or make up a tune on an instrument he has never played before. No one has told him that he can’t paint his thoughts or that she can’t play colors. Often the guitarist who has come up against a wall and feels he or she is at a stalemate in his playing feels like some one has built a wall around him and told him “you can’t paint thoughts...you can’t play colors.” You feel trapped within the wall of what you’ve already learned and you don’t know how to break free. It’s time to learn to be a child again.

     I believe that each person is born with their own natural rhythm and harmonic sense. Just like a person’s gait. Some people naturally walk faster than others. Some people take small steps. Other people step wide. Some people just take things slow and easy. Others operate at a frantic pace. Often when a person starts playing guitar certain rhythms will come natural and easier than others. Each individual is also drawn to certain sounds and tones. Certain harmonic intervals will please one person and not another. These musical tastes can evolve and be acquired just like a persons palette. You may not have  loved coffee when you first tried it but over time you may come to appreciate its qualities. The same with certain spicy foods that may have shocked your taste buds but over time you've come to love and appreciate. This is the same with different musical styles and cultures. You will never run out of new experiences.

     Often times the guitarist who has become bogged down by technique and can’t rev up his creative juices to compose, or can’t seem to find the freedom to improvise, needs to unlearn a little and revert to some childlike qualities again. First of all find the desire to learn and try something, anything new and different again. With a child the key is often just to get them to start. Dip the brush in the paint and put it to the paper and let it go. Mix the colors any way you want. Paint the sky purple and the grass blue if you want to. Just pick up the instrument and make a sound. Who knows it might be something no one has heard before!

      When you apply yourself to learning something new let yourself get excited about it. Remember how exciting it was when you first learned to read as a child? Or when you played on your first sports team? Or learned to play your first chord on the guitar? Let that same excitement come when you tackle writing charts, or learning the Nashville number system, or finally learning the pentatonic scales in all five positions. Sometimes if you’ve only played acoustic or electric, switching to the other will stimulate a lot of musical ideas and open up new possibilities. Learning to play with another musician or in a band situation or learning to play solo finger style guitar are other avenues to explore. You can get a lot of mileage out of some fingerboard theory. The modes and scales, chord substitutions and ear training are areas most guitarists could benefit from.

     Every time I stretch myself and start learning something new I can never wait until I master it before I start trying to use it. Often times in my impatient eagerness and ineptness I stumble onto something original or cool by default. So sometimes a lack of knowledge can be a blessing to creativity, but never let that be an excuse not to learn. Don’t worry, every time you come to a full knowledge of one aspect of the guitar and you feel enlightened for a moment, there will be something that you don’t know or understand coming right behind it chomping at your heels.

    When you learn to play what comes natural and passionately to you, it will evoke the same emotion and passion in others. Let those natural rhythms and harmonies within you free to dance through your fingers onto the fretboard and lead you to the music you love. The music within. Combine the natural talents and inclinations you possess with the technique and skill you’ve learned and developed in lessons and through listening to and watching others and you will be a force on the fretboard to be reckoned with! Free the guitarist within!