Here’s to a new year and the start of my guitar travel log. The journey started over 18 years ago. I had a really great start. But still I reached a plateau after a few years - once you’re no longer a beginner there are so many options to explore. It’s so easy to try too many things too quickly and loose focus and direction. And that happened to me. Treading water, no (perceived) progress. Paired with a busy job and the end result is guitars back in their coffins.
But something really important was missing. It took me a while to figure out what exactly, and to remember what made me want to learn to play guitar in the first place and where/when/why I got lost. In 2021 I was finally ready to pick up the guitars again.
I now have adopted a random walk approach for my guitar journey. I no longer use practise routines or note down how much time I have spent on this or that. Instead I work through a long list of songs that I really, really, really want to be able to play one day. The list is a Hydra, for every song I tick off at least two new ones come on. But I don’t take it too strictly anyway, it’s just a backlog to pull from. And every now and then there is a queue-jumper that has to be learned right away…but that’s fine, because it’s all about playing things that make me want to pick up the guitar in the evening even if I am tired. Technique-wise I work on whatever the song needs. I’ve ditched the structured approach and replaced with targeted exercises. Over time the mosaic fills out just the same.
But I also like to give the random walk some direction. So at the start of every year I write down some objectives or targets where I want to be in a year’s time and then I review at the end where I have come out. I find a year a suitable period for me - it’s long enough to offer some flexibility with how much time is spent on what. Or swap out goals. And it is also long enough that there will be progress to notice. So less stress more fun.
I think of this log as postcards from my journey. When I find something new I am excited about I’ll put it here. Like last year when I figured out that one of the queue-jumping songs was Dorian and why that made me like the song so much. But that’s last year.
For 2025 I have laid it all out as follows. I have a few focus areas I want to spend time exploring and I might not even get round to all of them. Some have even been there last year and were rolled over when the year ran out. The same can happen at the end of this year. But that’s ok.
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Norman Blake: study his style and learn some of his songs and solos. He is more musical and less mechanical than most other bluegrass players. And he played guitar on one of my favourite Steve Earle albums, several songs of which are on the really-really-really want to be able to play song list. And it will help me improve my flat picking further.
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Gillian Welsh & Dave Rawlings: now this is tricky because their music does not translate well from two guitars to just one. But I have had a couple of their earlier songs on my repertoire list from way back before my hiatus, but played with very simple guitar accompaniments. They can do with an upgrade, if nothing else.
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Acoustic Blues: this is an area I have been struggling with for a while. Something I wanted to be able to do since forever but I have not really found a good way to approach it that works for me. I have some ideas for this year that I will try, going by key rather than song, and learn where on the guitar things happen in the key of A and then in the key of E.
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JJCale deep dive: about time. His music is so cool. But why?
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Explore Open D and Open E: I have not explored any alternate tunings yet, and was generally indifferent about it but I noticed that there are now at least 5 songs on my list that are in either Open D or Open E so maybe it’s time to give this a try.
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Rodney Crowell deep dive: he is such a great song writer and producer. One of his more recent albums really struck a chord with me and I want to learn some of the songs or just look closer at what he is doing to learn some tricks.
These are the focus areas. I won’t spend all my guitar time on the focus areas because 1) too many queue-jumpers cry out for immediate attention regularly 2) I always work on at least one finger-picked song, they take longer to learn and 3) I hope to contine with Open Mics this year, and they require crowd-pleasing songs on the set lists, which also need to be practised