Welcome to a new Monday post with 3 random thoughts on all things guitar, music, and life, including a tale of a Christmas accordion, the importance of protecting your precious fingers, and more.
Here we go…
#1 – Christmas accordion
Yesterday, me and my sister took the kids to see Santa at Haden Hill house.
This is a Victorian building that is a local landmark.
The lovely folks who work there decorated the place for a Victorian-style Christmas.
We saw an entertaining Santa (one of the best I’ve seen in years).
…And in the foyer, there was a brilliant musician playing a whole range of Christmas carols on his accordion.
Naturally, I was curious, and we got chatting.
He had a big wad of printouts for the notation for how to play all those songs.
He was taking requests, so I asked him for the “First Noel”, which he didn’t play on his accordion… but he played on a clarinet.
His playing was super impressive.
I’ve never seen him before, but it just goes to show how many great musicians are all around us.
…And there isn’t much better than Christmas carols, in my opinion. (If you got my Christmas Crackers course recently, I hope you’re enjoying that).
#2 – The Arts
I read an article today about how many musicians struggle financially.
I always find that a real shame…
Especially when some small-minded people in the comments were saying things such as “they should get a real job” and that sort of thing.
I know I’m lucky I get to live a good life for me and Archie doing what I love, but I once struggled financially when starting out as a musician many years ago.
So that sort of negativity from others is sad to see.
I mean, without musicians and the arts, what a sad world it would be.
I find nothing more exciting than to see a busker or a street musician entertaining others and bringing joy to the world… and me and Arch always throw some money in their hat.
Maybe I’m biased being a musician, but you’ll know what I mean here.
Just imagine the world without our favourite musicians performing or…
Songwriters no longer creating wonderful songs or…
Actors quitting and artists no longer creating all sorts of inspiring visual wonders.
All to go work in the “corporate world”.
What if every single musician and person working in the arts quit to get a “real” job?
Yeah, I can picture Paul Simon starting out in a new career as an insurance sales rep, haha.
My word, the world would be a far more mundane place if every musician or artist did this.
The arts as a whole open up new ways of thinking for people, they challenge people, entertain people, and make people’s lives better.
Anyway, that’s my little rant to those folks who like to blast others for pursuing what they love.
#3 – Finger care
Yesterday, we had a little birthday celebration for Archie’s birthday.
My dad, sister, nieces, nephews, and Emma (whom I’ve been dating for 6 months) came ’round.
I was putting in some pizzas in the oven.
…And I made the dumb error of burning my hand on the oven.
Nothing major, and there’s just a small mark…
But it’s a reminder to be careful.
Those hands and fingers of ours are precious.
I’m not half as bad anymore, but I used to be quite clumsy when I was a teenager and would often do things like this…
Sometimes cut a finger, break off too much of a nail or sprain my wrist (which I did when building a snowman around the time I started playing guitar).
All these things can happen from time to time but are mostly avoidable.
Yet these incidents all got in the way of me playing guitar.
I talked about this sort of thing and how to warm up in the winter months in yesterday’s episode of the Acoustic Asylum podcast.
The pizza was great, but it’s a good reminder to take care of those precious fingers.
If you want more help with managing your fingers, improving your dexterity, and being an all-around better guitarist, then you may want to check out my eBook bundle below…
It features 7 eBooks which will help you improve the “7 stumbling blocks of guitar playing”.
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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, and you have a great Monday.
Dan Thorpe
Guitar Domination
P.S. This post was originally taken from Dan Thorpe’s private email list. To get blog posts like this sent to you which are full of great tips to make fingerpicking, strumming, and learning guitar more enjoyable (especially if you are over 40) join Dan’s list. It’s 100% free, HERE.
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