This past week, I’ve been meticulously cataloging Timothy’s music: collections, fake books, sheet music, instructional books with varying degrees of comprehensiveness… A few surprised me: The Rodgers & Hart Songbook? Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits? A couple made me smile, like Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” and The Bumper Book of Pub Favourites. The latter ran heavily to sing-alongs like “Roll Out the Barrel” and “There’ll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover” and “Mairzy Doats”).
I open each and skim to see if Timothy marked it up, and how. Some tables of contents are covered in pencil and ink notes (“solo” “Mike and combo” “DelRae?”), with corresponding notes for performance on the score page. Some of the instructional books have notes in his own rather scrawly hand, and the older ones often boast (generally) neater pencil notes from a presumed instructor.
I rarely actually read these books beyond the contents notes. The material — written by masters from Wes Montgomery to Quincy Jones, Joe Pass to George Van Eps — is so far removed from the baby-steps playing I did, I can only shake my head in amazement at the depths of Tim’s knowledge, the prodigious care and effort he put into becoming the best damned player he could become.
But now and then, browsing the book for notes, I find an author that’s a little more playful than earnest, one who throws in asides that make me snort with recognition or delight. This, for example, is a pull-quote in the book Fretboard Logic II (subtitled Chords, Scales and Arpeggios Complete: The tonal elements of music without guesswork or rote) by Bill Edwards.
Q. How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. A lot. One to climb the ladder and the rest to sit in the audience telling each other they could have done it better.
I guess that gives you a clue it was published in the late 1980s… This is somewhat more useful:
Virgil’s Philosophy of Life:
Life is like playing electric guitar through a 100 watt stack in public, and learning the instrument as you go… So crank it up!
I don’t know who Virgil was, but his heart’s in the right place. And I can but hope that Tim gave a snort of laughter when he read it, too.