I taught myself to play guitar

I was reminded of a worthy highlight from 2014 the other day, so in minimalist fashion I'm going to throw that out here and avoid a more comprehensive year-end synopsis of events.  David Fair from the indie legend band Half Japanese on How to Play Guitar:

"I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string farther out by the tuning end, it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day. Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But the thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same. Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But thats absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide how it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. And also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls. The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish."

 I had never heard of these guys but as it happens they have been around forever (well, 1975 anyway...).  However, I had seen and been deeply affected by  Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary `The Devil and Daniel Johnston`  a few years ago., and just found out he also made a documentary on Half Japanese called `The Band That Would Be King`. Have to source that somehow.

In a more morbid vein, I found out poking around on the web that Kurt Cobain was wearing a Half Japanese T shirt when he died - Kurt says, regarding number 38 on the list `Kurt Cobain`s Top 50 Albums`` (http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/nirvana81/kurttop.htm):

Half Japanese - We Are They Who Ache With Amorous Love

Kurt says: "I like to listen to Jad Fair and Half Japanese with headphones on, walking around shopping malls - in the heart of the American culture. I just think that, if people could hear this music right now, they'd melt, they wouldn't know what to do, they'd start bouncing off the walls and hyperventilating. So I turn up the music really loud and pretend it's blasting through the speakers in the mall."

 Check this stuff out and feel all those anxieties and insecurities you cling to around gear, technique, and competitive self-importance start washing away.....