Well I'm finally sitting down with that beer (thanks to Paul and Suzanne) and figured it's about time I got started on the blog. When I mention to guitar players that I've got this site and try to explain what it's about I'm nearly always met with one of two responses. The first is the technique fascist who automatically assumes that I'll back him or her up in the ongoing war against the "unbelievers" and then there's the unbelievers themselves who assume that I'm about to start preaching to them about "correct" technique. I appear to have landed myself, absolutely unintentionally, in this war between those who advocate that there is only one true, even valid, way to play a guitar and the rebels who will tell you to just pick it up and start making a noise. My own position is somewhere in between these two extremes.
I started learning classical guitar when I was 10 years old and quickly learned and felt comfortable with the prescribed methods. I eventually found rock'n'roll and electric guitars and of course had to learn a different way but was still very concerned with making sure my technique was correct and sought out a number of great teachers who helped out considerably. It wasn't until I returned to the acoustic guitar, this time playing fingerstyle with a larger bodied steel string that I discovered that my classical technique was holding me back. I know that many fine players encourage a strong foundation in classical technique, and in some ways it must have helped me, but in the end the difficulties that I had unlearning the habits of a lifetime were significant as was the change of attitude around technique, that I had to find the correct way to play, from a teacher, from a book, somewhere. Never happened.
Playing music is a personal thing, we are expressing something that no-one else is capable of and we develop musical approaches that no-one else will. To execute these musical ideas we'll eventually find our own approach, sometimes with the help of others but in the end contemporary players have much more license than classical musicians and it should be no surprise that we need to find new ways of making it happen physically. This is where TuneUp comes in. It's not good enough to just pick it up and play any old thing. I went to my first lesson as a 10 year old and held my guitar upside down, that may have worked for a short while, and it has for many, but I'm confident that I would have eventually found it limiting. If we're leaving it up to individual players to organise their own technique then these individuals, that's you and me, would all be better off if they knew a little about what they were doing. The classical technique works because it is efficient and it consistently helps the guitarist achieve their desired outcome, if we're going to develop a technique that will achieve our desired outcomes then we'd be a lot better off if we understood what our body had to do as it contacted the guitar.
Working through the information on this site will arm you with the knowledge to do this. More on how that happens later.
