Have you ever longed to be a guitar player?
Can you imagine yourself with your guitar in front of an audience with them hanging on your every note and thrilling to your wonderful guitar playing?
Do you daydream about communicating through your guitar with creative people like yourself through delicate notes or pulsating chords with no need for words?
If your answer to any of the above is ‘right on‘ but you reckoned it would always stay an unfulfilled dream, your next step could be waiting for you in your local pubic bar and all you need to do is buy a drink.
This is how I got started:
Like many people I received some instrument tuition at school. But it was all rather haphazard and the main idea was to pass exams. The emphasis was on reading music and theory.
When the time came to go to University, my instrument and I parted company.There were other things to do.
Only years later a chance arose that changed my life, brought me friends that synced perfectly with me and helped me develop my instrument playing to public performance level.
The ad in the local press said:
‘Musicians sought for session playing, simple tunes, all welcome.’
The session was in the back of a small rural pub in the heart of the West Country, England, UK.
They told no lie, the music was reasonably easy and the other players had whistles, banjos, recorders and melodeons. Written music was available for those that needed it but the tunes consisted of an eight bar phrase played twice followed by another eight bar phrase played twice, so they were easy to learn and reading the notes wasn’t really necessary.
Only keys of D and G were used (just a couple of sharps max) so there was little complicated fingerings to learn. It was all about getting playing as fast as possible and bashing out the music.
When we’d learned one tune, we went onto another. It was simple, fun, friendly, efficient and the pub owner was cheerful as long as we bought a drink from the bar as we went in.
The organiser of the group was just pleased to pass his experience on for free. Soon the regulars of the bar were sticking their heads around the corner to see what was going down and soon a few started joining in banging away on an old drum.
It was great! Of course, I made mistakes at first but it wasn’t really important because the rest of the musicians were cheerfully bashing on and the bar audience probably never even noticed.
Eventually, I found out that this group was not a one off and that there were other musicians who were meeting in bars to play simple music and these sessions happened all over the world.
I also began to call it by it’s proper name ‘folk music’.
Now much later, I am the musician who is encouraging others to meet in bars and play simple tunes as I learned how to so many years ago.
Session playing is fun and, once you have got into the swing of it, a marvellous way to progress your playing which will come on by leaps and bounds.
See you soon at the sessions 
Rob
P.S. If you are ever near the small West Country harbour town of Appledore, check out their sessions.
