the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

As I trawl around cyberspace I am often offered the chance to buy a t-shirt with the legend “I play guitar because I like it, not because I am good at it”. I also get the ukulele equivalent. I am tempted, but I doubt that I would wear one too often and they probably are not worth the money anyway, regardless of how true the sentiment is.

So far in my life I have not yet mastered playing a musical instrument. I had some piano lessons as a teenager, but no-one seemed to want to teach me how to play like Jerry Lee Lewis. A move of house saw the piano sold and I next found myself playing drums, not because I could, but because I had the van to transport the drums and one night when the drummer failed to appear I took over. My career as a stickman didn’t last too long anyway: Glaring furiously at the bass player when you reverse the beat coming off a fill doesn’t make you right.

Then my little sister and her fiancé bought me a Spanish guitar for my 21st birthday. I tried to teach myself and then turned to friends, but it doesn’t help when they take the thing off you and rip off something immediately recognisable with no apparent effort. Now I have four guitars and four ukuleles on which I make noises, some of which I can recognise, and, one one occasion, so did a fellow shopper in a Florida guitar shop when he joined in with me. It is the only time, so far, that I have played guitar in a duo.

There was a time in my driving career when I made the observation that there are a lot of people who can get a tune out of a musical instrument, but comparatively few have the genuine talent to really play one. I was making the comparison with driving, in that loads of people can operate the controls of a car adequately enough to get from A to B, but very few of them can really drive. I could, and have been a very adequate wheelman in my time in a wide variety of vehicles, but playing an instrument? No. I just do not have the feel, let alone the talent.

I play my various instruments because I love them all. I enjoy the look, smell and feel and the effort of trying to make recognisable noises helps to keep my grey matter active. Yes there is an element of “all the gear and no idea”, but I can live with that. It is probably getting a bit too late for me to get to the point of being able to play with others. Covid arrived on the day that I got a telephone number for a local ukulele group and so I did not make the call. Maybe at some point I will.

Maybe at some point I will also make that breakthrough and become sort of competent, maybe not. One thing is sure: I will not be buying one of those t-shirts.

If you are interested, my musical alter ego blog can be found here.