daddy's boy

I've been playing a lot with my seven-year-old son Bryan lately--he
wanted one thing for Christmas, an electric guitar, and he got it.
This has offered me a rare glimpse into what I already intuitively
knew.

I've long felt that the more you learn the farther you get from other
things, and they're things you can't get back either. Namely innocence
and the liberation and abandon that are part and parcel.

Bryan's playing is amazing. He plays everyday and the sound is
alarmingly confident and completely lacking in anything resembling
timidity--I had him leave a live playing message on my friend's
answering machine, and he thought it was his friend Bret, a strange
but accomplished guitar veteran. Bryan listens to very little music,
and he has no fear or even recognition of doing it right or doing it
wrong. I have all I can do to keep up! It's fresh in a way that can't
last, how strange.

So far, I've kept my distance... I'll show him this or that, but only
occasionally and only when we're not playing music--his music. He
knows what he's doing and it shows! It may not always be what his pops
would do if he had is druthers, but it's also almost always something
his pops couldn't do if wanted to--if only he knew! Truth is, it would
be a shame to "teach" him now because he's in the zone, but I do
occasionally worry that he'll acquire a lot of bad (habits technique
wise. Oh well, I'm doing what I feel is right.

We're going to 'rehearse'--i.e., get him on a big amp and see if he
can handle the volume increase that comes with playing with a drummer,
and see if he can get the hang of singing into a microphone--next
week, and we hope to gig soon. It's wild. Kind of like those old SST
guitar bands but a lot more nuts; more rhythmically spastic like
Drumbo era Beefheart. None of those guitarists were ever as free and
fresh as he is either, and only a few were ever any more interesting.
(Okay, I'm his dad, and maybe I can't be held accountable for that
last statement, but we'll see! BTW, I play fretless bass and he's been
playing my fretless Kramer since he broke a string on his guitar a
couple of weeks ago, so I guess we'll be a microtonal punk band--see
this post was on topic after all!)

Should be fun, and interesting too... we'll see. As it is, it's
enough.

take care,

--Dan Stearns

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:
> I've been playing a lot with my seven-year-old son Bryan lately--he
> wanted one thing for Christmas, an electric guitar, and he got it.
> This has offered me a rare glimpse into what I already intuitively
> knew.

Dan-
Thanks for sharing this! As a daddy myself, I can relate to a lot of
your feelings here, although my girls are only 3-1/2 and 22 months
and not quite at an age to be real musically expressive. I've been
VERY gently encouraging them to play with a few instruments, and it's
a joy to watch and listen to. (Although sometimes painful when all
they want to do is randomly pound...) I wish I had a recorder going
when I recently showed Lydia how to sing into a microphone with a
digital delay. She talked, giggled, screamed into the mic and stared
in thrilled amazement every time it looped back around.

I'm edging closer to completing a simple "golden meantone pentatonic"
tubulong as a gift for Lydia. (It was originally supposed to be a
Christmas present, but there's only just so much time in a day to
work on it...) We'll see how much interest she takes in playing it
once it is ready. I know, too, sometimes these things sit dormant
for years before the interest suddenly awakens...

I will try to resist the temptation to post an mp3 of Lydia singing
"The Itsy Bitsy Spider". Well, it certainly is microtonal! Maybe we
need another spinoff list, tuning_parenting...
kp