Handcrafted Guitars
I haven't seriously played guitar in a while (aside from the occasional dinking around when the urge hits me), but I'm starting to get the itch to learn to play classical guitar. I played a ton by ear and chord charts when I was a teen, but never properly learned music, music theory, scales, and so on. Ever since I discovered Sam Griffin playing video game music on classical guitar, though, I've thought about it occasionally. One of my favorites by him is his rendition of Super Mario 64's Bob Omb Battlefield:
I've also sincerely grown to love Bach's Lute Suites in E Minor by Michael Poll. Obviously that's not really classical guitar, but... close enough.
In the realm of the "roots to branches" idea, in between work today I found myself looking into what it takes to build classical guitars. Luthiers are an intersting bunch, given that it's a craft that takes dedication and serious attention to detail that we don't often find in a lot of fields anymore. It's hands-on. It's slow. It's kinda boring. But how often do we think about the care and attention it takes for someone to build a single instrument so one person can make beautiful music? See this charming little video from 2012:
There's something whimsical and delightful about this, isn't there? I wonder sometimes if the chaos of the 2010s internet will actually lead to a slower, more intentional pace for some of us. Maybe it is just crazy enough that it will reignite the feeling that there are deeper, more lasting things to learn and create.
Anyway, I've been thinking some about wanting to spend at least a little of my time in the evenings learning something that just brings me a little bit of joy before I settle in on the Netflix/Disney+/HBO Max routine. That's all fine, but I also am always hungry for knowing things and growing in interesting ways, and streaming services don't provide much more than just being a safe haven for consuming content at the end of the day. They don't help me to be more of whom I want to be.
