The Ghost of Blues Past

In which I am haunted by the ghost of Blues past

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Following advice from GPT-5.6, I raised a question at my guitar lesson with Stewart this afternoon which had long lain dormant in my mind.

“Stewart,” I said, “do you happen to teach lead guitar or bass guitar?”

“I teach both,” he replied. “Lead guitar is really my main interest. It’s what I play when I perform with the band.”

This was my opportunity to remind Stewart that, although fingerstyle is a more complete accomplishment on the guitar, far more agreeable to an audience than strumming, and a self-contained performance you can give anywhere you can carry the instrument, my true love is playing lead guitar in a blues-rock band. After a fifty-year lay-off, I would greatly appreciate a few lessons to get me back on track, even if I never play in a band again.

We had a brief discussion about electric guitars, once I had confessed that I did not currently own one. We both agreed that a Fender Stratocaster was the obvious choice; Stewart plays one himself and I played one in my university band.

“Send me some links to Strats and home amplifiers, and I’ll give you my opinion,” he said.

“So how does it work?” I asked. “Do you have a drum-and-bass machine to simulate the band, and do we wear headphones?”

Stewart shook his head in disdain at anything so anaemic.

Just play through the amp, he suggested, and work hard at it until the neighbours learn to enjoy it - it’s the only way to be rock and roll.

He does, in fact, provide MP3 backing tracks for his lead-guitar lessons.

So Stewart is keen to teach me lead guitar. Bass guitar will be postponed until 2028. I think we shall mix and match the lessons, since I am certainly not losing sight of my primary goal of mastering blues fingerstyle.

We should begin in the autumn.

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My Experience of Guitar Lessons

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I’d like to think I look forward to my weekly guitar lessons. I mentally class them, however, as akin to a visit to the dentist. Why is that?

I carry a legacy of self-taught guitar from my teens: I know the common chords; I can play lead riffs up and down the fretboard on the blues scale. Fingerstyle blues doesn't leverage much of this: the action congregates at the top of the fretboard near the nut, where the frets are spaced wide apart, where reaching scale notes - melody notes - demands contortions of the wrist, the thumb, and overspread fingers.

I have found that I do not have good motor control across all my fingers and that moving them independently on and off the strings is a new challenge for my motor cortex.

The right hand is no longer wielding a pick; instead the thumb is meant to lay down an independent alternating bass while the other fingers pick out melody and harmony above it. There are a great many moving parts here.

Fingerstyle is said to be deceptively difficult. Not much of what I previously knew carries across beyond the chord shapes.

So my ordeal by fire proceeds as follows. I am asked to play my homework assignment - for example, a scale in E with alternating bass, or a blues in A with melody lines. I have practised assiduously for a week, but Rome was not built in a day, and neither is a clean chord change under scrutiny.

There are mistakes - sometimes at high density. A piece may be signed off by my tutor (relief!) and then I am asked to work - really work! - bar by bar on the piece I have just mangled, under his judging, observant eye.

I know myself to be a perfectionist. I concentrate and sweat, and there’s a dampness in the eyes (not quite tears of frustration and humiliation). I stumble through the piece.

“And again.”

My travails are not over. There will be a new piece to address in the coming week. I am shown it, and then invited to “have a go”. Yes, quite. 

My instructor has become weary of my muttered mantra: “I haven’t seen this before - it will be much better next week.”

I am not good at reading music, at matching notes to fretboard positions and fingerings. And the tablature beneath the stave is simply one more damned thing to process in real time. Half an hour passes both quickly and slowly.

I leave with a curious sense of euphoria, reflecting that for the next six days I may practise upstairs at home, over and over again, without anyone watching over me. 

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I think I do need a guitar tutor

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I’m seeing one potential guitar tutor for a trial lesson on Monday and another on Wednesday, which means there is - inevitably - at least one mildly-difficult phone call in my near future.

My underlying problem: playing the guitar is saturated with intangibles. Hand and wrist angles. Finger placement on the fretboard. Optimal chord shapes. Moving the left hand up and down the fretboard while the right hand tries to just get on with it.

None of this is easy to infer from books or videos: no feedback.

Being self-taught in my youth has left me functional but clumsy. Everything feels improvised, provisional, unstable. I’ve found myself explaining to prospective tutors that this awkwardness is precisely why I’m knocking on their door. What I need is not so much inspiration as correction - and, just as importantly, a contextually-structured plan of advance that gives shape to practice and motivates me.

I’m open to the idea that classical guitar might be the best road to technique. I like classical music well enough, and if disciplined right-hand work and clean left-hand mechanics are the price of admission, that's the plus. My real motivation remains modern blues: more informal, more visceral.

Perhaps the longer way round is the way to get there?

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