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!

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

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

If you’re traveling to a gig, you have to bring the guitar. But if you’re just flying on a vacation or business trip, should you take the guitar along? And if so, how?

First of all, yes, you should bring the guitar with you. “Oh, but it could get damaged in flight,” someone is worrying

Well, it could get damaged in a fire or stolen in a burglary if you leave it home, too, you know? Your guitar is not a precious jewel to be safely stored. It is a fine tool — yes, an “instrument” — to be used as much as possible. And when you’re away on a trip you probably have more time to practice (yes, even if it’s a business trip — turn off the TV when you’re in the hotel room, and pick up the guitar). You might be visiting relatives who want to hear you play. And if you’re camping or somewhere else out in nature, there is nothing like picking for yourself, your companion and the trees and birds.

The only way you should leave it home is if there is a guitar you can use at your destination. Check with the relatives you are visiting, and see if they have a guitar, or a nice friend who might loan you one to use while you’re there. If it’s a place you visit regularly, you might even consider leaving a cheap-but-decent guitar there for you to use whenever you’re there.

But let’s say you are traveling BYOG. So how do you do it?

The case — Go to one extreme or the other. You can get a super-heavy-duty travel case from a company like Calton or Anvil, and then check the guitar on. Nothing will happen to it, even if an elephant steps on it. But those cases are expensive and heavy and bulky. Unless you are flying a lot, or flying with more than one guitar, you probably want to go to the other extreme: the soft gig bag.

Really? Leave my regular hard-shell case at home and put my precious guitar in a gig bag? Yes. Because you are going to carry the guitar on. The gig bag slips over your shoulder, making it look less intimidating, and making it actually smaller and easier to fit into the overhead compartment.

Your preparation actually begins when you book your flight (or when you choose the seats). Unless you are flying first class (in which case you will not have a problem carrying a guitar on), choose seats that will board early, which usually means in the rear of the aircraft. You want to board while there are still some fully clear overhead compartments.

When you pack for the flight, you will plan to carry the gig bag and one other carry-on bag. This is allowed. Read the fine print on the airline’s web page about baggage, and you will see that passengers are allowed to carry an instrument and another carry-on. Print out that page and carry it with you in case you have to explain it to an employee. If you have tons of other stuff to bring on this trip, pack a big suitcase and check that on. But when you stroll confidently and smilingly past the ticket-taker at the gate (you are following the rules, so no need to look sheepish), have the gig bag  slung on your back (you can even pack some extra clothes into the bag with the guitar if you need to) and the overnight-size bag in your hand or over the other shoulder. If the gate agent says something about gate-checking the guitar, accept the tag she hands you, put it on the guitar if you want, but still carry the guitar onto the plane with you with the intention of stowing it in an overhead. If any airline employee tries to stop you from doing that, just say calmly and politely, “I believe it will fit in the overhead. Let me try. If it doesn’t fit I’ll be glad to gate-check it.”

Once you get onto the plane, breathe a quick sigh of relief. The onboard attendants don’t care about what you’ve carried on, as long as you can quickly stow it and sit down and they can get the plane on its way. Find an empty overhead. It does not have to be the one by your seat. Place your guitar into it. There is room for your other bag near the skinny end of the guitar. But to be polite, you will place your other bag underneath the seat in front of you, leaving the space near your guitar for someone else. Do keep your eye on it until the overhead door closes, to make sure no one tries to squeeze something on top of your guitar.

What if there just isn’t room in the overheads for your guitar? This can happen if you are getting on late or didn’t book the proper seats, and/or if it’s Christmas season when people are carrying on a lot more stuff.  It also can happen if you have a large guitar and a very small plane — try getting it in from different angles, sometimes an odd one will work, but sometimes it just doesn’t. If you really can’t find space for it, ask one of the attendants for help — maybe she will put it into a closet up front, or maybe she knows of one overhead that has space. But if that doesn’t work (and this is a very rare occurrence, one that has happened to me only two or three times in hundreds of flights with guitars) you will let them gate-check it. That means they tag it and hand-carry it to the dreaded luggage hold underneath the plane, with assurances to you that they will take good care of it. And in my experience they do. They hand it back to you in the Jetway as you get off, just as they do with baby strollers. If you have let the guitar out of your hands for the trip, then make sure to check it for damage as soon as you get it back, and file a claim if necessary. I have heard various stories about the results of claims, from big struggles at getting any compensation to people happy to be compensated for more than the guitar was worth. But before you worry (or drool) about those possibilities, remember that damage is highly unlikely to happen, because the vast majority of the time, you will be the only person handling your guitar.

Addendum on strings — there is a myth that you’re supposed to loosen the strings before you fly with a guitar. Don’t. That guitar is meant to have the full string tension on it. And it’s traveling in the compartment with you anyway, not in any depressurized baggage hold, so no need to do anything special to it.  Do pack extra first and third strings in case you break ‘em on the trip, especially if you’re heading out to the wilderness. And bring your capo, slide, and maybe the lyrics or notes on some tough songs you’re going to work on while you have the time. And have fun!

UPDATE: Since most airlines have started charging for check-on bags, it has become a little more difficult to carry your guitar on. The trouble is, other travelers carry on much more and bigger stuff, to avoid the check-on fees, and the overheads fill up quicker. But if you follow the advice above and board near the beginning of the line, you still should be OK. And take extra care to watch that no one throws a big heavy suitcase on top of your priceless guitar in the gig bag, since the late-boarders will be trying hard to fit their luggage in somehow!

• It must be designed specifically to improve performance
• It can be repeated a lot
• Feedback on results is continuously available
• It is highly demanding
• It isn’t much fun, or at least is “not inherently enjoyable.”

I don’t really agree with that last part. I think, however, that one has to redefine “fun” or “enjoyment” to enjoy practice. Just as a mountain climber has a different kind of fun from someone taking a stroll in the park – you have to really enjoy hard work and pushing yourself.
So what can we take from this book? In a way, it is liberating. We don’t have to wish we were born with any particular talents. If you want to be good at something, just start practicing it in a deliberate way. Do that every day, and eventually you will be good at it.
But on the other hand it is sobering: If we are middle-aged and want to start learning to play tennis, play guitar, or whatever, how can we compete with people who started decades before us and have been practicing hard all along? It probably isn’t going to happen. You probably won’t be one of the world’s best at anything you didn’t start a long time ago, and stay with. You just don’t have time.
But let’s say you are not trying to become the world’s best. You are just trying to improve. This book points at how to do it: deliberate practice done regularly.
Applying this to the way I study and teach blues guitar, I think we have our means of “feedback on results” in the old recordings we work with. If your rendition sounds closer to the record than it did yesterday, your practice is going in the right direction!
And when you come to class and get corrected by the teacher, you also are getting feedback. Try to “give yourself a lesson” when you practice at home. Don’t feel you’ve practiced just because you’ve made some sounds. Listen to yourself critically, correct yourself where you go wrong, and make yourself do it again, better. Hard work? Yes, that’s the point. Maybe do that kind of practice for 20 or 30 minutes, and then reward yourself with another 10 or 20 minutes of just doodling or playing songs you already know, if that is more fun.
Another great observation of the book is that great performers defy age. Oh, they decline at tests of speed, coordination, response time etc. as they get older, just like anyone else. But not within their domain of expertise. There, they retain their skills. Of course they have continued to practice as they get older!
So there you have it. Although he uses examples mostly from music and sports, Colvin relates a lot of these ideas to the business world – probably because there is more of a market in selling books to businesspeople than just to musicians and athletes. If you are interested in applying the “talent is overrated” concept to business, or just want to read more about it, go ahead and read the book. But if you just want to get better at playing music, then put down the book and pick up the guitar.

When you go to the Deep South of the United States to cover the places of the blues, you can’t be an “accidental tourist,” because there is a great risk of losing pieces of history. You must entrust yourself to a meticulous and extremely detailed “travel companion,” like the optimal guidebook Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues by the scholar Steve Cheseborough, who has not limited himself to the single activity of author, directing his passion also as a musician.
Therefore from paper and pen, to the harmonica, guitar, percussion and voice, with which, from three CDs including this one (the first two have been reviewed in issue 87 and the two editions of the book in issues 80 and 89), Steve seems to continue the deepening of reclaiming material from the passage of the African-American tradition. Compared with the two preceding CDs, where the versions of Son House, Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Tommy Johnson, Bo Carter etc. lacked emotional involvement because of an academic presentation and a nasal and shrill vocal tone, in this his third chapter, we recognize Steve’s effort to give more expressiveness to the singing, rendering it slower, so that also his clean accent turned out a little richer in shadings. With the guitar and the harmonica then he does not go beyond pure accompaniment, but that is not a defect, because in some cases he also makes it his own. The tracks that turn out notable in our opinion are “Hear Me Talking To You” (by Ma Rainey), “Who Broke The Latch” (by Bo Carter), the straight-ahead boogie which is helped also by the harmonica “Shake Your Hips” (by Slim Harpo), the delicate version of “Vicksburg Blues” (by Little Brother Montgomery), the ballad, again with the harmonica and a hint of yodel “Little Ole Wine Drinker Me” (by Jennings/Mills), the traditional “Shortnin’ Bread” with the use of slide, and “Last Kind Words” (by Geechie Wiley).
Since we like Steve Cheseborough and he is a sincere and passionate person, we invite to you to contact him through his site, www.stevecheseborough.com
By Silvano Brambilla
Translated from the Italian by Steve Cheseborough