Steve Cheseborough

Me on Oregon Art Beat
Originally published 1/24/2008

Well, it’s exciting to be featured on a TV program anytime but it’s totally thrilling when the program turns out so well:

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/67-Steve-Cheseborough
Check it out! My thanks and praise to Shawn Hutchinson and his crew for boiling down my life and work to a fine eight-minute piece.

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I had heard (from Upright brewer/owner Alex Ganum) that there had once been a jazz club on the site of his brewery, where I play on Sunday afternoons. Alex was tickled to find out about the club, because he is a huge jazz fan. In fact the name of his brewery, Upright, is a tribute to the upright bass, an instrument Alex loves, especially as played by Charlie Mingus. You may have noticed the bass clef on Upright tap handles and bottles. And you might also have tasted Monk & Mingus, which Alex brews annually for the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival.

Of course I also was delighted to find out that there had been live jazz in the building (now called the Leftbank Building, 240 N Broadway), since I carry on the tradition by playing live blues in the basement every Sunday. And I am even more delighted now that I’ve found out more details, from reading Jumptown: the Golden Years of Portland Jazz 1942-1957 by Robert Dietsche.

The club in the building was called the Dude Ranch, and here is how Dietsche describes it: “There never was and there never will be anything quite like the Dude Ranch. It was the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theater, Las Vegas, the Wild West rolled into one. It was the shooting star in the history of Portland jazz…”
Apparently the building started as a hazelnut ice cream factory (!) in 1908, then became a speakeasy in the ’20s. It was the Dude Ranch 1945-46. Among the shows was Norman Granz’ traveling Jazz at the Philharmonic, featuring Thelonious Monk (and Roy Eldridge, Helen Humes, Meade Lux Lewis, Coleman Hawkins et al, playing together in various combinations). So Monk, one of the two jazzmen commemorated in Upright’s Monk & Mingus, actually did play in the building!
Besides being the hottest club, it also is significant now for being the ONLY remnant, sadly, of that scene. Everything else was bulldozed for the freeways, Rose Garden, hospital etc.

So…come celebrate Portland history while sipping fabulous beers and hearing old-style blues, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Sundays at Upright Brewing, in the basement of the Leftbank Building, 240 N. Broadway.

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Portland Waterfront Blues Festival, coming up July 4-8, is one of the world’s biggest blues festivals. It also is the biggest annual event in Portland — an interesting idea, for any city’s big party to be a blues festival, and especially a Pacific Northwest city without a blues tradition of its own.

First let me tell you about my own involvement in this year’s fest. I will NOT be stage-managing or emceeing the Workshop Stage this year. I had fun doing it last year. It was great to see a lot of friends and fans, and make new ones, there. And I enjoyed introducing and interacting with all the great acts that performed there. But unfortunately I will not be doing that job again this year.

I WILL perform at the fest. My slot is 3:45-4:30 p.m. July 5, on the FedEx Crossroads Stage (that is the stage that used to be the Workshop Stage — it is being renamed, relocated and restaffed). My program is called “Myth and Reality of the Crossroads” to christen the new stage. I’ll talk about what Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson did or didn’t do at the Crossroads, where the Crossroads might actually be, what it means, etc., and sing relevant songs…or as much music and chatter as I can pack in in 45 minutes! Come on by.

Here are some other acts I recommend you check out this year:

• Toots and the Maytals — the great Jamaican soul and reggae singer graces our festival.
• Arthur Moore Harmonica Hoedown — Local harpist/teacher Moore invites anyone with a harp to come up and play a solo!
• Goodfoot Allstars’ Tribute to James Brown — I haven’t heard this act, but it’s hard to go wrong with good musicians playing the Brown soundbook. JB was not just a great singer and entertainer — he was a great songwriter as well.
• James Cotton Harmonica Workshop — This is not a how-to workshop, but the veteran harpman (who has worked with Muddy and Wolf)  talking about his life and music and showing us how it’s done. He also blows with Elvin Bishop later that night (July 6).
• Zydeco — Stop by the Front Porch Stage to check out topnotch zydeco acts playing over several days. Includes dance demonstrations and lessons, and plenty of room to dance.
• Lloyd Jones Big Band — Jones sounds great whether solo or with any kind of group. Here’s a chance to hear what he can do with his own big band.
• Bobby Rush — This ageless chittlin-circuit performer has so much fun joking about his sexual prowess, admiring his lovely and flexible dancers of various sizes, doing some acrobatics of his own, and singing with a crackerjack blues-soul-rock band backing, that you will have a great time too. He performs with the band and dancers on the Miller Stage on July 7, then probably solo (he plays guitar and harmonica) on the Crossroads Stage on July 8. Both shows should be terrific, and very different from each other.
• Otis Taylor and Don Vappie — The banjo came over from West Africa with the slaves, then became the quintessential white country instrument in America. In recent years it has been reclaimed by black players of blues, pre-blues and old-time, including Taylor, who sometimes plugs in and  veers into rock. His pairing with New Orleans jazz banjoist Don Vappie on the Crossroads Stage on July 7 should be acoustic and interesting. They also play together earlier that day on the First Tech Stage, joined by Portland banjo virtuoso Tony Furtado.
• Cedric Burnside — This wunderkind is a grandson of the great North Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside. And he is not just trading on the name. Playing as a young teenager with his granddad, Cedric quickly distinguished himself as a killer drummer, and became sought after by various acts in and out of the blues. Cedric went into singing and songwriting, while still drumming, in a duo with Lightnin’ Malcolm. He has since taken up the guitar. He plays three times at this festival, and it could be something different each time.

OK, folks, that’s my advice. Make sure to bring $10 and two cans of food per day (the festival benefits Oregon Food Bank) and extra money for beer, food and Empty Bowls (handmade bowls that further benefit the food bank). See you out there!

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OK, this post has nothing to do with the blues.

I traveled to Las Vegas recently to compete in a big poker tournament. After failing to cash in the tournament, I was feeling — OK, blue — and started getting annoyed by a lot of things about Vegas. But as the sting of losing wore off I started realizing there are many wonderful things about that city, too. So here is my list of what’s good and bad about Vegas, and why.

1. Bad — The car-centrism. Yes, I live in Portland, the least car-centric U.S. city. But come on, Vegas is absurdly at the extreme opposite pole. And it shouldn’t be! Its main activities — gambling, shopping, sightseeing, eating and drinking — are all pedestrian-oriented. There are throngs of people walking around. But the city sure doesn’t make it easy.
2. Good — The buses. Yes, Vegas does have public transportation. And the buses are great! Double deckers, so you can sit up top and see the sights. Air conditioned. With video and audio to help you find your destination. With helpful drivers in case the video and audio isn’t enough. And bike racks. The prices are reasonable enough (consider the two-hour and 24-hour ticket options before paying for a single trip) and here’s a tip: all the other lines are cheaper than the Deuce, which runs on the Strip and therefore caters mostly to tourists. So buy your 24-hour ticket on another line –it still works on the Deuce.
3. OK/Bad — The monorail. Well, it is fun and futuristic to ride, and it gets you places faster than the bus. Faster than walking or driving too. But the trouble is, they set it up to only go among  Strip hotels. To be truly useful to passengers, they should have extended it to go downtown and to the airport. But, probably to benefit the cabbies, they didn’t. Another problem is that it is expensive to ride, and you can’t transfer from monorail to bus without buying another ticket. And the monorail stations are few and far between, and located way at the back of the casinos. So there often is a long walk involved. But if you are staying at a hotel that has a monorail stop, and you plan to travel around to other hotels that also have (or are near) stops, then consider getting a multi-day pass.
4. Bad/OK — The gambling. Well, bad if you spend hours sitting in front of a slot machine. Bad if you play most of the games expecting to win. OK if you budget a certain amount of money for gambling as entertainment, have a great time while gambling, and then quit, thoroughly savoring the win or shrugging off the loss. You can be a consistent winner at blackjack, but only if you learn and practice a card-counting system and avoid detection by the authorities — which takes more time and effort than you probably are willing to make. But there is another game that you might win at…
5. Good — Poker. Unlike every other casino game, in poker you are NOT playing against the house. The house charges a fee to run the game, but you are playing against other regular players. And some of those players are going to win. Not every Vegas casino has a poker room (it is not a big profit-maker for the casino, which is another clue that this is what you should be playing). But there are many choices of games and stakes, tournaments and cash games, the ever-popular Texas Hold ‘Em and other variants. If you are a decent poker player back home, don’t be afraid to try it in Vegas. Yes, you might run into some local hustlers who can outplay you. But you also might run into clueless tourists who only play once a year and have plenty of money to throw around.
6. Bad — The sleaze. Sure, every city has strip clubs, prostitution, drag shows, etc. But it is so much more upfront in Vegas, the self-described Sin City. Mobile billboards and handbill pushers offer girls for hire. Even the regular shows in casinos, for mainstream audiences, often feature nudity, transvestitism, simulated sex etc., and proclaim it in ads you have to look at while riding the elevator. I’m not a prude, but would prefer they keep all this stuff a little more under wraps.
7. Good — Public art, architecture and spectacle. A Henry Moore sculpture. Lion and dolphin habitats. Old neon signs. New neon signs. Dancing fountains. Amazing buildings. You get to see all this kind of stuff, free of charge, as you walk around.
8. Bad — Scarcity of water. You almost never see a drinking fountain! And the casino bathrooms have only warm-water taps! This is in a desert. I consider this inhumane, almost criminal. So make sure to carry a water bottle, and refill it in your room and any other time you do find a fountain or cold tap. Buy water whenever you need to, even if you never do that at home. Make sure to stay hydrated, especially if you are doing a lot of walking or drinking alcohol.
9. Good — Free drinks. They are stingy with the water, but not with the booze. While playing any casino game, including slots or poker, just ask a cocktail waitress to bring you whatever you want. Yes, you can ask for water. But the trouble is, the standard $1 tip makes it a high price for water, albeit a great price for beer, wine or liquor.
10. Bad — Deliberate inconvenience. The casinos are set up so that you have long, confusing walks to get to the bathrooms, restaurants, exits etc. They want you to spend maximum time on the casino floor, where you might be tempted to gamble some more. OK, that is understandable. But it seems like they have further developed that premise to where they try to screw their own customers any way they can. The Rio, for example, where I recently stayed, would not let me use a luggage cart to bring in my own luggage. I had to let a bellhop do that, and tip him. The Rio also has a fitness center, which you might assume would be free for guests to use. No. There is an additional $22/day charge to use it. There is a similar charge for guests to use wi-fi. And there are ATMs charges! Casinos charge you to use ATMs, so that you can withdraw money to gamble at their tables and machines. And I don’t think the Rio, part of the Caesars group of hotels, is any different from other hotels in that group or out of that group, in this regard.
11. Good — People-watching. The sunny weather, pervasive sleaze, fun atmosphere, sight of the skimpily dressed cocktail waitresses, all  must combine somehow to bring out the inner showgirl in many women who visit Vegas. Women of all ages, shapes and sizes, many of whom I’m sure don’t dress that way back home, sure strut their stuff while they’re here.
12. Bad — The shows. At least the few I’ve seen. Corny and not worth the ticket price unless you get them free or discounted.
13. Good — The live music. The musicians in those shows are generally great. So are the musicians playing free in the hotel lounges and bars — jazz, rock, R&B, whatever, all terrific. I also have heard some terrific acts busking on the sidewalks. I guess Vegas attracts good musicians.
14. Good — The Asian restaurants. I’m talking about the ones outside the casinos. There are wonderful little inexpensive Asian restaurants of every stripe, many in strip malls that contain four or five different ones, all vying for your attention. Many of these strip malls are very close to the Strip or downtown. So even if you don’t have a rental car, just get in a cab or bus and go out to eat.
15. Good — The service. Sure, you can get bad service in Vegas. Please don’t write me with your horror stories, I believe you. But I also believe that in general, the level of service is much higher than in most cities, because you are usually dealing with professional servers, shopclerks, bellhops, dealers etc. in Vegas, in contrast with other cities where such jobs are usually filled by college students or artists who don’t want you to get the idea they actually care enough to do a good job.
16. Good — Buffets.  I know, a sophisticate like me or you wouldn’t normally go near a buffet. But the ones at the casinos include plenty of delicious and healthy stuff, like salads and seafood, that might be hard to find in the other casino restaurants. And you can get discounted or free meals by using….
17. Good — Comps. The casinos actually pay you for gambling! Even for playing poker, which is the only game you should be playing (see above). Less for poker, but it still might add up to a free or half-price buffet after a session. Most casinos have players’ cards, make sure to enroll in their systems and hand the card to the dealer as soon as you sit down. Then when you go to the restaurant use the credit on the card (or get more credit on it for paying of a meal, or a gift-shop purchase). Others, like the Golden Nugget, will just hand you a food voucher after you’ve been playing for awhile.
18. Good — Main Street Station. I don’t have any financial interest in promoting this little gem. But I can’t understand why it is never crowded. It is an old-fashioned downtown casino with a spectactular chandeliered ceiling, old-style architecture and ambiance, a piece of the Berlin Wall in the men’s bathroom, and above all, a great in-house brewery that impresses even Portland-resident me! Great beer prices, too. And if you’re hungry, ask for the saimin soup, which for some reason is not on the menu but is good and a good deal. If only this place had a poker room I’d never leave.

OK, I think that’s enough about Vegas. See, the goods outnumber the bads, in this casual account. So consider going, and let me know how it goes. Have fun and good luck!

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Go ahead and yawn. Do it a few times.  Feels good, eh?

People often try to hold back or cover up their yawns as they would with belches. Don’t be shy about yawning! It is good for you (maybe belches are too but we’ll leave that for another discussion).

Recent medical research shows that yawning is a natural antidepressant that reduces the reuptake of serotonin. And it also seems to help transition the brain from one state to another, e.g., waking to sleeping or vice versa.

But I am recommending here as a warmup for musical activity, especially singing. And as a general relaxation technique.

I did not discover this idea on my own — I give full credit to Kim Scanlon, a wonderful singer and singing teacher whom I met at a music workshop a few years ago. I spent way too little time with her, but I did spend enough to learn a little about yawning, which I use regularly. I am not an expert on yawning, but since I don’t see any websites or books on the subject by Kim or anyone else, I will explain how I use it and recommend you experiment with it and let me know how it goes.

The first thing is just to do it, to yawn, fully and repeatedly, without trying to hold back or cover your mouth or apologize for it. If you are new at this, try it in private at first. But eventually you will find that it is fine to yawn when people are watching. Unless you are in the front row at a lecture, or someone is pouring out her heart to you tete-a-tete, no one will be offended by your yawns. It might even get the watchers yawning (as we all know, seeing a yawn often leads to yawning), which, as you will know well by then, is very good for them! So spread those yawns around.

Yawn, and then yawn again. And again. At first you might have to make yourself yawn, but after the first couple you’ll be in the groove and the yawns will be natural and flowing. You may stretch your arms up and out if you like. Or just focus on your face and throat. All the myriad muscles in those areas will get stretched and relaxed. Keep yawning. Yawn for three to five minutes straight, or longer if you like. To avoid boredom, try different styles of yawn: eyes closed or open. Lips closed. Mouth closed. Yawn while smiling. Yawn with tongue curled up and then curled down. Yawn on one side only, and then on the other side. Pucker your lips and yawn. Curl your lips in and yawn again. Make up your own yawns. Have a yawning session with your friends, family or bandmates, and show one other different yawns to try.

How are you feeling? Guess what — those face, cheek, jaw, throat and tongue muscles you’ve stretched and relaxed are just what you use in singing. Your eyes may have teared, giving them a nice wash (without sadness). Your breathing has slowed down and your mind is calm — what a great preparation for singing and playing, for performing, for a competition of any sort, for public speaking, for any stressful situation.

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After reading my last post about the importance of listening (and avoiding visual stimulation that distracts you from listening), one student apologized for having asked for the lyrics to a song. True, reading lyrics is a nonmusical activity. That’s why I stopped handing out lyrics before playing the recording of a song we’re about to work on in class — reading the lyrics is different from listening to a song, and you can’t really do both at the same time.

However, if you are going to learn to sing and play a song, you do need to learn the lyrics. And I do think having them in written or printed form is an essential step (before memorizing them, which I recommend doing well before performing the song).

So — how does one get the lyrics? Your first impulse is probably to do what you do when you are seeking most other forms of information these days: go online and google.  There are several major problems with this approach, however. First, the obscure blues songs we tend to work on in class might not have been transcribed and posted online. Second, even if you do find a transcription, it is likely to be grossly incorrect. And trying a different website probably won’t help, since websites tend to just lift from each other. The same error will appear all over the internet.

Note my use of the word “transcription” there. The lyrics do not exist in some pristine form that the songwriter typed out and filed away in a vault, and then were transferred to the internet for your convenience. No. The lyrics exist ONLY on the recording. If you find a rendering of the lyrics online, or in my collection, or in a book or sheet music, it is just that — a rendering, a transcription that some listener did by sitting down and writing what he heard or thought he heard. And in the case of 1920s blues recordings, with their hiss, scratches, archaic slang, regional accents, weird voices and muddy mono mixes, what the listener thought he heard is often very far from what the singer actually said! Why trust some stranger’s ears more than your own? You are experienced at listening to these old records and getting more experienced every day. Dig in! Even if you find a somewhat close-sounding transcription online, or if you get one from me or elsewhere, just use that as a starting point. Listen closely to the recording, stopping and starting often, and make corrections to the lyrics until you have a written document that matches what you hear. This process of repeated, hard listening will help you learn not only the lyrics, but how to sing them. And how to play the instrumental part. It will start to sink in and you might even have fun doing it.

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A lot of my music students seem obsessed with seeing. They want to SEE if they are in tune, by checking an electronic tuner, rather than listening. They want to SEE the CD cover or lyrics to the new song we are working on, rather than listening to the recording as it plays. Perhaps worst of all, they want to see their own hands. They stare almost continuously at their left hands, trying to SEE if they are playing the same notes they think they SEE in their occasional glances at the teacher. Sometimes this results in almost humorous exchanges when someone asks “Am I playing this right?” His hands look like they are doing the same thing as the teacher’s, so he must be playing it right, right? Even though the sounds is he is making sound nothing like what the teacher is making.

Music is sound. Playing music involves the ears, and it involves the muscles (of the hands and arms for a stringed instrument, the diaphragm and vocal apparatus for singing). It does not involve the eyes. Oh, sure, the eyes might help you find where you set your harmonica, help you read the notes you wrote about last week’s lesson, etc. But do they help you play? No. Not at all. Blind people have no disadvantage as musicians. (They might have an advantage, but they certainly have no disadvantage.) Actually if your eyes help you during a lesson they are to see what the teacher is doing. So quit gluing them to your own left hand!

Vision is our primary sense for getting through the world. We freak out, quite reasonably, if the headlights go out while we’re driving at night; or if the lights go out in the house, or even if we can’t find our glasses, when we get up for a glass of water in the night. We like a nice bright unblinking light coming from our computer screen, and overhead when we sit down to read. So when we play music, especially when learning new material that you are not yet comfortable with, it might seem reassuring to have a light on and the eyes open wide, for safety.

But let’s think about another category of activities, the ones we close our eyes, dim the lights or turn them off for: Sleeping. Meditating. Making love. Eating a nice meal (some trendy restaurants even feature dining in total darkness). Getting a massage. In all these cases we want to turn off or at least turn down our vision, and get in touch with another sense or with our inner selves.

So let’s put playing music in that category, if you haven’t already. Try practicing in the dark or wearing a blindfold. Really. Listen hard to to every note you make. Practice something simple, and play it for a long time, and listen, trying to improve the sound. Keep that same quality when you play something more difficult, and when the lights are on. Great musicians listen harder and deeper than you. But you can improve by working on that. And relax and enjoy it! Notice that all those dim-lights activities above are relaxing and sensual, not intellectual. Guess what? So is music.

So when I frown about your watching music videos online, or visiting music-related websites, it’s not just that the quality of information online is often bad. Mainly it’s that those activities are vision-centric. Watching a screen pulls you out of the auditory world, which is where music lies. So listen to a recording instead. And when you sit down to tune, leave the electronic tuner alone. (They aren’t so accurate anyway, and it is so hard to overrule them when the damn light is showing you it’s right, even when your ears tell you differently.) Take your time, so what if it takes longer to tune. You will be forging the links between your ears and your instrument, your ears and your fingers, your fingers and the sound, the sound and your head. You might even come to enjoy tuning — it just feels great to hear those slightly-off vibrations, and guide them until they ring true. And once you get to enjoy tuning — boy, will you love playing!

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T-Model Ford is a terrific bluesman with a warm and engaging personality. Check out his performances whenever you get  the chance, or pick up his recordings. But he also is notable as late bloomer supreme. Ford took up music at age 58, after his wife bought him a guitar as a gift. Just learning to play well at that age would be an accomplishment. Hell, just learning to play well at any age is an accomplishment. But Ford not only learned to play very well — he became a distinctive and successful entertainer, a solo act and bandleader who developed an international following in his 70s and is still touring and recording in his 80s.

So what are you waiting  for? If you already play a little, you’ve even got a head start on T-Model Ford!

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This will be a rather quick trip, but I will be in Oxford, Miss., March 2-3, playing and speaking at “Music of the South: A Southern Studies Homecoming.” This event features professional musicians who are alumni of the Southern Studies program at the University of Mississippi. Yes, I am in that category. And so are Tim Lee, Jay Lang, Jimmy Phillips, Caroline Herring, Adam Gussow (well, he’s a professor in the program), Jake Fussell and probably more. There will be concerts and music-related panel discussions. Come on down!

I’ll stop in Helena, Ark., to appear on the historic and wonderful King Biscuit Time radio show, hosted by the irrepressible “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, at 12:15 p.m. on March 1. If you have any suggestions for a house concert or other appearance while I’m in the area, please speak up now! Thanks. Cheers, SC

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As you may have heard, blues artist David Honeyboy Edwards died recently at age 96, a few months after he finally retired from touring.
I am happy that there was so much news coverage of his passing. But the reports described him as “the last of the Delta bluesmen,” “the last of the first generation of Delta bluesmen” and “the last musician to have played with Robert Johnson.” I don’t really agree with those descriptions.
Was he the last Delta bluesman? When Big Bill Broonzy died in 1958, he was memorialized as “the last of the blues singers.” Certainly there has been some wonderful blues since then. Some might believe Broonzy (or Honeyboy, or someone else) is the last great blues singer, but that is an aesthetic debate we won’t go into here.There are still people in the Delta, and from the Delta, playing the blues.
Was he the last living person to have played with Robert Johnson? Probably not. There are probably several musicians who did not continue with music as a public career who played with Johnson, and some of them might still be alive. Honeyboy was close to Johnson, and was with him at his final performance. But I prefer to remember Honeyboy for his own accomplishments over his long and fruitful life, not for his connection to the short-lived Johnson.
Was he the last of the first generation? Not really. Honeyboy was born in 1914, which I’d say is a generation behind such pioneering figures as Mamie Smith (born 1883), Ma Rainey (1886), Jim Jackson (1886), Sara Martin (1884), Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893) and many others.
Honeyboy is very significant as a great musician and performer; a great rememberer and storyteller (his autobiography, The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing, is #1 on my list of recommended blues books); and for outliving most of his contemporaries and still touring and performing into extreme old age, making him a living spokesman from an earlier age for the last few decades of his life. Along with Robert Junior Lockwood, Henry Townsend and Pinetop Perkins, he was a survivor of the earliest days of the blues, someone who knew many of the first generation of blues artists, someone who grew up in sharecropping and did everything, knew everybody connected to the blues. All four of those men died in the past few years (Pinetop earlier this year). There undoubtedly still are people around of that age who are not professional musicians who remember sharecropping and the early days of the blues. But probably not anyone else is left who a vital part of the scene. Those four are gone, and Honeyboy was the last of them. It feels like the closing of an era, the death of the eldest member of my tribe, the blues tribe. But hopefully the tribe will go on and continue to make music!

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I got my teeth cleaned the other day. And the hygienist praised me for taking such good care of my teeth between cleanings — except for one thing: she noticed a little bit of plaque on the right side of my mouth, where I hadn’t done quite as good a job of brushing as I had on the left.
“You must be right-handed,” she observed. I am. She explained that it is easier to brush the opposite side — i.e., right-handers do a better job on the left side of their mouth, while left-handers brush better on the right. (This probably only applies to us Luddites who still use manual toothbrushes, not to electric toothbrushing.)
I said I would start switching hands, and using my left hand to brush my right teeth. The hygienist laughed and said that other patients try that, but quickly give up, and come back saying the brush just “goes all over the place” or that it “feels funny.” I laughed and said that if people can learn to play musical instruments, of course they could learn to brush their teeth with the unfamiliar hand, and predicted that it would take me a week to master it.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it could help your teeth. But mainly I want to make a point about practicing, and how unfamiliar motions always “feel funny” and don’t work (the two reasons the patients cited for giving up) at first. But with just a few minutes a day of practice they quickly become second nature. I have been doing the left-hand-to-right-side toothbrushing for just two days now and I’m already pretty good at it.
So when you are presented with a new chord, or a new fingering for an old chord, or, God forbid, a new right-hand technique — of course it won’t work at first, and of course it feels funny. So what? Try it again, and again, and before you know it you have learned something new, you have added to your repertoire of techniques, you have improved as a musician. And probably added some new pathways to your brain that will stave off Alzheimer’s, too.
Another lesson here is that practicing music can help you understand practicing in other areas of life. Unless you play professionally, practicing that new lick doesn’t bring any obvious tangible benefits. And even if you are a pro, you don’t get paid extra for each new lick you learn (although one can hope that all those licks add up and make people more eager to hear you and pay you, but on the other hand listening to some super-popular acts does not bear out that theory). It mainly brings the joy of listening for yourself and anyone who happens to hear you, and the satisfaction of mastering a new little skill.
But I think it is because I practice music, and understand it is possible and fairly easy to learn new manual skills, that I knew right away that I could learn to opposite-hand brush. So keep that practicing concept in mind in everything you do, and who knows, you might learn some new techniques that will help you at work, in love, maybe even save your teeth.

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