Seven meditations to help with any kind of gig, musical and beyond.
I got hooked on music as a kid. It was like I was driven by genetic predisposition—I fell hard and have been chasing the dragon ever since. Although we’ve had our ups and downs over the years, playing music means more to me now than ever, but the reasons evolve. At first, I played for the endorphin rush. Then it was part endorphins and part seeking approval or employment. Today, it’s still all that stuff, but music also keeps re-teaching me life lessons. As in music, so in life: The same rules apply.
1. “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”—Miles Davis
Music has taught me that, despite my best efforts, my fingers often go places I don’t want them to go. But those seemingly “wrong” notes often lead to much more interesting music. Just like in life, there are no mistakes. Marry the wrong person, get fired from the dream job, make bad investments, destroy your health. Every seeming misstep leads us to where we are supposed to be. It’s all how you play the notes following the outside note. Get comfortable with things not going as planned. The detours might be the most interesting part of the trip.
2. Play well with others.
Unless you’re a lifelong committed solo-act and/or hermit, you must play well with others. Which means you must be a good listener, you must be dependable, sometimes you must let others go first, and sometimes you have to comp hand-cramp chords while others have all the fun playing solos. Interaction with others, as frustrating as it might be at times, makes everything more interesting. I get the appeal of being a one-man band. Nobody to disappoint you, you’re not stuck carrying anybody else’s gear or baggage. It’s all clean and simple on paper, but without somebody to throw around ideas, you’re left building off just what you already know. Conversations tend to be more interesting than monologues. Recent studies suggest that good social relationships are the most consistent predictor of a happy life. To get the most out of life and/or music, you must play well with others.
3. Enjoy each moment.
Because I couldn’t just pick one, here are three wisdom nuggets from philosopher Alan Watts.
“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them, we may forget altogether to live them.”
“The musician whose chief concern is to make every performance better than the last may so fail to participate and delight in his own music that he will impress his audience only with the anxious rigor of his technique.”
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
4. Love what you’re doing and you’ll never work a day in your life.
A total cliché with deep truth. I genuinely love most of my work. This whole music scam is great. I intend on running with it as long as somebody has the bad judgment to hire me, but it’s not without drudgery. However, when passion drives your career, the drudgery is a lot more tolerable. Turning your passion into a career will probably mean you’ll experience some poverty, but it’s worth the tradeoff. I’d rather collect experiences than things.
5. Things take as long as they take, rushing rarely makes it better.
A quarter note at 120 BPM takes as long as it takes. Learning an instrument takes as long as it takes. A career takes as long as it takes. Sometimes, slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. If you try to rush it, the experience is undermined. If you’re stuck in traffic or playing a long, slow ballad, try to be comfortable with the pace of your experience and enjoy it for what it is. A traffic jam can be a total Zen experience.
6. You must be present to win.
There are few guarantees in this world, but one truth I can almost guarantee is that if you don’t show up, you’re not going to get the gig. Fortune favors the bold.
7. Play on.
You’re onstage in a club when a chair-smashing, pool-cue-swinging fight breaks out. What do you do? You play on. Like the house band on the Titanic, you play through whatever life throws you. Because when you’re in the zone, truly present, making music, you’re transported away from that shit show. There’s no future, no past, there is only the eternal now. Same with great sex, or night driving with the headlights off, alone through a star-studded night with “Whole Lotta Love” blasting out of your Kraco speakers, or that feeling you get when you smell rain.
There's more in Corona than a slice of lime. The California city is also the home of Fender’s Custom Shop, and PG’s John Bohlinger, with our crack video team of Chris Kies and Perry Bean, descended on the shop recently for a different kind of rundown.
The tour starts with master builder Andy Hicks, who recount his CV, including a stint in the Gretsch Custom Shop, where he built the Malcolm Young 1963 Jet Firebird G6131 limited edition. At Fender, he leads a tour through the company's metal shop, which includes a press installed by Leo Fender. Saddles, pickup bobbins, shielding, bridge plates … check. You can watch a CNC machine cut Strat pickguards, and then stop in on Josefina Campos, perhaps Fender’s most famed living pickup maker, with 31 years of experience. Campos’ pickups are destined for Master Built guitars. How do you know if you've got a Campos pickup? She signs and dates each one. At Fender’s wood mill, where both the Fender USA and Custom Shop sawing gets done, you see alder, ash, and maple blanks, plus rosewood for fretboards. Learn about the "Golden Neck,” and see how Custom Shop necks get hand shaped. In Custom Shop final assembly, everything comes together. Guitar bodies have been painted and aged. Assembled neck are bolted in. The wiring and electronic installed. “All the guys in here are experts about their own work as well as everything else,” Hicks explains. That's part of Fender Custom’s quality assurance gameplan. On this day, Team Built instruments were on the menu. Master Built guitars are the province of a single builder, from start to finish. And master builder Austin MacNutt gives us a close-up look at one of his special projects, the Jerry Garcia “Alligator” Stratocaster, in a limited run of 100. And in Hicks’ own shop, he talks about the process of creating a custom guitar, from talking to the buyer about his or her desires, to plugging it in and playing it. He also displays a very special Jaguar, made from a 50,000-year-old piece of partially petrified wood, with a blonde inlay from mastodon tusk. FYI, he currently has 50 to 75 guitars at various stages of the three-month process of custom building. Hicks also talks about creating his annual prestige model. It's a secret. You've gotta wait till next year!
John Bohlinger plays “Grandpa,” Kurt Cobain’s 1953 D-18 that resides in the Martin Guitar 1833 Shop and Museum.
Energy is in everything. Something came over me while playing historical instruments in the Martin Guitar Museum.
When I’m filming gear demo videos, I rarely know what I’m going to play. I just pick up whatever instrument I’m handed and try to feel where it wants to go. Sometimes I get no direction, but sometimes, gear is truly inspiring—like music or emotion falls right out. I find this true particularly with old guitars. You might feel some vibe attached to the instrument that affects what and how you play. I realize this sounds like a hippie/pseudo-spiritual platitude, but we’re living in amazing times. The Nobel Prize was just awarded to a trio of quantum physicists for their experiments with quantum entanglement, what Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” Mainstream science now sounds like magic, so let’s suspend our disbelief for a minute and consider that there’s more to our world than what’s on the surface.
I recently spent a day filming a factory tour of Martin Guitars in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. After we wrapped, we discovered that Martin has this amazing museum that showcases more than 170 historic instruments. We decided to meet at the museum at 7:45 a.m. the next morning to film a few choice pieces before catching our flight in not-too-near Newark, New Jersey, that afternoon.
These were not ideal conditions for a performance. Neither my brain nor my fingers work well before 10 a.m., plus I hadn’t slept well the night before. Even so, we loaded into the museum, met the curators, set up the shoot, and began rolling by 8 a.m.
The first guitar was an 1834 gut string, perhaps the oldest Martin in existence. It was beautiful but had some tuning issues and did not project very well, so playing it felt more like work than music.
Next was a prewar D-45 worth over $500k. The strings were ancient with that rusty feel, like you’ll need a tetanus shot after playing it. I’m sure it sounded great, but I was tired and thinking more about making our flight than playing guitar. Wonderful instrument but uninspired performance on my end.
Then, I played a 1953 D-18 coined “Grandpa” by Kurt Cobain. I picked up the deeply sacred D-18, and my hands went to an A minor. This sounds like hype, but honestly, I closed my eyes and connected with a deep, beautiful sadness. The feeling was palpable as soon as you picked it up. This guitar pretty much played itself, leading me to a sad version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” I don’t know if it was any good, but I know I felt something deeply. That’s why I started playing guitar in the first place. I don’t have to play well to feel moved.
I later talked to the museum director, who told me the D-18 was given to Cobain by his 1991 girlfriend Mary Lou Lord. Cobain played it on tour before and after Nirvana’s Nevermind. It was returned to her after Cobain married. Shortly after that, Mary Lou loaned the guitar to Elliott Smith, who played it until his death.
When I’m sad, I make myself play guitar to feel better, because it usually works. This 70-year-old guitar spent a lot of time literally pressed up against the hearts and chests of two artists who were so tormented by their emotions that they ended their lives. That’s heavy. You can’t explain those feelings that make the hair stand up on your arm, or when you feel like crying for no reason … but hitting that A minor made me feel it.
We had to split for the airport, so Chris Kies and Perry Bean started packing up. As they did, I saw this cute little 1880 Martin 000 that belonged to Joan Baez. In the photo next to it, Joan looks like my mom in the ’60s. I asked the curator if I could play it, and Chris grabbed his phone to do a quick Insta video. I swear there was a happy vibe coming off this tiny guitar. It felt like watching my mom dance—like a warm hug I needed after Cobain’s D-18.
In Chinese culture, there is a superstition that antiques may hold evil spirits, and chi (energy) transfer can bring this negativity into your home. Feng shui is all about objects carrying good or bad chi. Here’s how I see it: All matter is made of atoms. Atoms contain energy. Ergo, everything contains energy, or, more aptly, everything is energy. Ever walk into a room and feel powerful emotion: joy, sadness, fear, tranquility? That’s energy. We all have felt energy coming from people, places, and things. But that’s what I love about old guitars: Their atoms spent the first few hundred years as a tree in the forest connected to nature. Then, they’re turned into an instrument that makes people happy or consoles them when they are sad. That’s the kind of chi I want around me.
The Saddest Martin Ever? A 1953 D-18 Owned by Kurt Cobain & Elliott Smith
Watch John Bohlinger summon the ghosts of two songwriting powerhouses as we learn about a special piece of acoustic history.
John Bohlinger’s Franklin 12-string pedal steel was built by Paul Franklin’s father 30 years ago.
When it comes to forming patterns, no computer algorithm can outperform the human mind. Sometimes we must change directions to have a breakthrough.
Every now and then, a misguided guitar player asks me something like: “What should I do to become a better guitar player?” For the record, I’m probably not the one to ask. I suspect I don’t really know what I’m doing in guitar or life, but I love to play music, and I’ve noticed some improvement in my playing over the years, so here goes. A surefire way to get past a plateau and become a better player is to stop playing guitar … then dive deep into a different instrument.
You probably remember the agony of making an F chord, and later a barre chord, thinking your fingers just could not do it. Eventually you get it, then jump over the next hurdle, be it learning the pentatonic box, etc., until eventually, you notice that what you’re playing sounds like music. We make improvements quickly on the journey from beginner to intermediate, and before you know it, you can jam with others and pick up enough licks and tricks where you sound like a guitar player. But eventually we hit a plateau where we quit advancing and that’s where most of us stop. I suspect we plateau because humans love patterns, and once you’re in a pattern, it’s hard to see beyond it.
Humans can’t help but look for patterns. Our neocortex (the outermost layer of the brain found only in mammals) gives us our ability to recognize patterns, and we do it well. Although computer algorithms can spot patterns, no algorithm can outperform the human mind. Our body feeds our pattern addiction by giving us a fun hit of dopamine when we recognize one.
How do you break the pattern of patterns? You have to shift from thinking about patterns to melodies. This has made me a lot freer in my note choices on guitar, and it’s made me a bit more forgiving with myself.
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains: “Over centuries of evolution, humans’ pattern recognition skills determined natural selection. Hunters skilled at spotting prey and predator and telling poisonous plants from healthy ones offered them a better chance of survival than those blind to the patterns. It enabled the survivors to pass on those pattern-friendly genes to future generations.”
Learning guitar is learning chord, scale, and riff patterns. For most of us, the guitar neck becomes a series of patterns rather than an opportunity for melodies. The more you play, the more diverse your bag of patterns becomes, so you have more to shoehorn into any situation. Ultimately, they’re still patterns. How do you break the pattern of patterns? You have to shift from thinking about patterns to melodies. When you attempt to play an instrument where you know no patterns, all you can do is search for melodies.
I’ve loved pedal steel since I first noticed it on Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” but it’s such a complex, baffling, and expensive instrument that I never considered jumping in. As I aged and watched working guitarists get younger, I noticed that steel players remained mostly old crusty dudes. When I realized steel could extend my career, I was motivated to buy one. I’m glad I did, as this is one of the few times I made a prediction that was dead on. Pedal steel has opened a ton of gig opportunities, but it’s also expanded my concept of music and done more to improve my guitar playing than another 10,000 hours of just guitar.
When you dive deep into another instrument, you’ll find yourself approaching it more naively, like a kid, not looking for patterns but rather discovering what music will fall out of the instrument. There will be lots of surprises where you don’t know what note you’re going to get. Look at it like Bob Ross—those weird notes are just happy little trees. Those happy accidents have led me to playing much more interesting parts than if it went as I planned. This has made me a lot freer in my note choices on guitar, and I’m a bit more forgiving with myself.
When you start exploring technique on a new instrument, you can’t help but reevaluate how you play guitar. For instance, muting or blocking is wildly important on pedal steel, because if you don’t mute, you’ll have a constant discord of a b7, major 7 ringing over everything. It’s a cacophony. So, when I got back on a 6-string, I noticed where my slop was ringing and how some palm muting, like on pedal steel, makes my notes clearer. I’ve always muted, but now I’m listening closer, realizing when I need to apply more or less. Similarly, playing pedal steel with my fingers (fingerpicks) has made me less dependent on a flatpick when I play guitar. Although I’ve always used hybrid picking on guitar, I now use my fingers more and do more blocking with my fingers on guitar. It sounds smoother, cleaner, and seems to flow better.
Life doesn’t have to be the same old thing. Try something totally new and see how it makes you see everything in a new light.
Due to some recent health problems, I’m doing everything I can to push back my expiration date. I think it’s helping me become a better guitar player, too.
A friend of mine owned an NBA team and an NFL team. Once, I overheard him talking on the phone about trading a player. When asked what goes into that, he told me that although actuaries cannot accurately predict your life span, there are hard numbers that show a highly accurate decline of muscle with age. This inevitable muscle loss leads to injuries and a general decline in performance. The numbers make it clear that there’s an expiration date on every professional athlete, even factoring in the outliers. Every time I groan as I load my amp into my car, I think about that conversation to fuel my anxiety and fatalism on the weary drive to and from the gig. If professional athletes in their late 20s are physically past their prime, how long can the average musician keep going, factoring in our proclivity toward late nights and the adjacent vices?
I don’t want to be the guy moaning, “Oh, my aching back,” but the reality is, mountains turn to dust and so do we. That’s the price of admission. I’m doing everything I can to push back my expiration date: exercise, yoga, acupuncture, constant stretching, massage, practicing physical awareness, and trying not to eat poison. Despite these precautions, my hands have new issues with numbness and stiffness, and there’s a lot of pain in my lower back, forearms, neck, and shoulders. Many paranoia-driven Google searches later, I’ve narrowed my newish ailments down to a blend of carpal tunnel, arthritis, gout, vitamin B12 deficiency, lupus, rickets, Long Covid, and/or an adverse response to my multiple Covid vaccinations.
It could be a natural part of the aging process that has recently accelerated, or it could be something else. I’m just hoping to fix it if it’s fixable.
I’m reluctant to even mention the latter. Eric Clapton told his friend, Italian architect Robin Monotti Graziadei, “My hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks. I feared I would never play again.” Graziadei shared this info on social media and Clapton was immediately labeled an old crank and became a pariah. These are strange times where an opinion shared even in private can undermine your personal and professional life. To be clear, I’m not saying the vaccine is the cause of my physical glitches. I’m saying Clapton’s issues sound very similar to mine.
Diagnosing a physical problem is the most difficult task of any healthcare professional because we’re all physiologically unique. On top of that, this is not a lab; there’s no control group in the real world. Everyone has their own lifestyle, genetics, diet, and stress that combine to affect us differently. It could be a natural part of the aging process that has recently accelerated, or it could be something else. I’m just hoping to fix it if it’s fixable.
What has helped the most is trying to be more present all the time, checking in with my body throughout the day, but particularly when I’m playing music, like the body awareness you’re supposed to be focusing on while doing yoga. I’m noticing how I’m holding too much tension, hitting too hard, trying too hard, tensing up my neck, arms, and hands when I’m playing. I’m trying to be aware of tension and letting it go. I’m attempting to do the same thing with my brain … let go of those thoughts that undermine a performance, or basic happiness. That may be a secret to life— knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of.
Maybe it’s because Basie was so in tune with the band and the music that he placed that note at the perfect place with the perfect volume, with the perfect attack and decay.
Honestly, although my hands are not at their prime, being more aware of what they’re doing probably makes me sound better. I’m more relaxed. I try to slow down and feel it, which improves my pocket. Maybe that’s the way it works. You get older, your body disintegrates but you learn enough along the journey that you can compensate. I read an interview with Les Paul, who said:
“It was a great pleasure playing with Count Basie just before he died. Talking about him, he’d just lift his left hand and take one finger and hit one note. It was the best damn note I ever heard. It’s not how many notes you play; you just have to play the right ones!”
Maybe Les felt it was the best note because of the emotional context of watching a dying friend performing. Or maybe it’s because Basie was so in tune with the band and the music that he placed that note at the perfect place with the perfect volume, with the perfect attack and decay. The Count wasn’t counting bars or reading. That old dude was going full Jedi-Yogi and connected to the universe. Les Paul recognized it because he, too, was Jedi-Yogi.
So, if someday my hands turn to blocks, I will try to hit my one note in the perfect place, with just the right feel and volume to make it sing.