First and foremost, I am an artist. Everything I do is about expressing myself; that never changes. What differs from moment to moment, however, is the vehicle I chose to do it with. Because guitar is not the only tool I have in my bag. I draw, I write, I sing, I paint, etc.
My guitar adventure started the day I saw Elvis in a movie on TV; sometime in early eighties. He seemed so cool with an acoustic guitar I wanted one. It was too expensive so I had to pretend that my mandolin was a guitar for a while. Then came The Beatles. I learned a lot of their songs while getting the hang of all the basic chords at the same time. In mid eighties, my taste knew no boundaries; I was into almost everything that came my way: Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Eric Clapton, John McLaughlin, Ray Charles as well as Breakdancing.
Towards late eighties I turned into a rocker and started listening to Hard Rock and Heavy Metal without putting aside my parents’ jazz and soul cassettes, mind you.
I’ve always liked all sorts of music. Categorizing it has never made much sense to me anyway. It could be good for selling your material but I’ve never sold any records, so I wouldn’t know.
Professionally, I just played and sang in bars and cafés, that’s all. Long, looong time ago. I was also in a wedding band for a few months but that doesn’t count, right?
I’ve always been into jazz but in the last ten years, it’s grown into a passion. I must say I’m more into old Bebop and Cool Jazz periods but almost anything about jazz expression amazes me. The dedication and the discipline it requires, the spontaneity that keeps you on your toes and the freshness of each performance is out of this world.
I didn’t have the patience and the time to make music professionally but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t studied music theory, guitar mechanics and practiced guitar as much as I could. As I mentioned at my home page, after over 30 years, I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface. But there are many little bits in my hat that I wished someone had shown me when I was just a beginner as well as more advanced ideas that could help any guitar player at any level. I intend to share them here and in my videos.
If you find some of them too easy, just skip them and check out another one of my posts that might be beneficial. No problem.