What’s meaningful?

By meaningful, I mean making and sharing. I mean learning – but ideally making – a song and playing it for people.

If the thought of that scares you, it should. It should scare anyone. But it shouldn’t seem impossible, like something that couldn’t possibly happen. If you can do it with a teacher, you can do it with anyone.

You should be able to close your eyes and imagine yourself with a guitar, in front  of a group of people. There you are, playing the guitar and singing. Or maybe someone else is doing the singing.

Maybe it’s a whole band.

And of course thinking this will make you feel nervous. Everybody feels this way. Professional musicians feel this way. Right up until they’re out there doing it. Doing it’s not hard. Thinking about doing it is.

The good news is that there are certain well-defined steps to getting there. It’s not easy, but people do it all the time, and they start from zero. They do it – we all do it -one step at a time.

Not just songwriting

How about making an instrumental piece? Or learning an audio programming language? Or using free software to make electronic compositions? Or using you tablet or phone make and record songs?

You can do all those things, too.

 

If you just want to play guitar, that’s great. If you want to explore other areas, also great. Whatever you do, don’t limit yourself because of some preconceived idea of who you are or what you’re able to do. Music can be the entryway to a lot of stuff you wouldn’t have thought about.