Flashback # 9 – Notes from Nick

Editor’s Note: I don’t know about you, but I constantly find myself thinking, “What was Nick thinking about five years ago?” Yes, being a cat I have lots of time to think about things like that. Fortunately, I can also answer this question by looking back at a wonderful “NOTES FROM NICK” that he wrote back then:

So I’m sitting around on the porch, guitar in hand, working out the final wrinkles of “Here Comes the Sun” and I think, “Well the neighbors have probably heard enough of that, what’s next?”

And you know I couldn’t think of a single song.

I sat and thought a while and absolutely nothing came to mind.

“That’s impossible. I have to know at least twenty to thirty songs, don’t I?”

Then I had a thought. David had printed up some books for the Riverside Jam. (Thanks David, by the way). So I went inside and got the book. There had to be a hundred or so songs in there, just the chords and words printed out, but it’s a great resource.

I leafed through the book, and lo and behold there were twenty to thirty songs that I knew well. I was right. But that couldn’t be all could it?

Now I was on a mission, so off I went to the computer and wrote down all the songs in the Guitar Noise song lessons for beginners and intermediates. Hey whadda ya know, I’m up to almost fifty songs that I can play well.

There must me more! Down to the basement I went, into my studio/teaching area. Let me grab those Acoustic Guitar magazines from the past ten years. Wow, I forgot I knew “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” and “Caleb Meyer”, and “Makin’ Pies” and “Forgot that it was Sunday” and about 20 others. The total number of songs I know and can play is now seventy-seven!.

Hold on don’t I have Hal Leonard’s acoustic Beatles, the one with the excellent acoustic transcriptions? Well yes I do. We are up to eighty-eight songs. Which reminded me, didn’t I see some Beatles thing on the easy song forum?

Back to Guitar Noise and the easy song forum, uh-huh here we are. Now we are over one hundred and five tunes.

Hold on a sec, didn’t I create a bookmark of all my favorite www.olga.net tunes I know? Well yes I did.

This went on for the better part of four hours. Think, find, print, hole punch, stick in the book and think some more.

I went from not being able to think of a single song to having over two hundred tunes to play that I can play well.

You know the very cool part about it? I didn’t have to learn anything new or practice. I just had to remember the things I didn’t know I knew.

The point being, make yourself a book and keep it up to date. It’s a heck of a lot easier than what I just went through.