Fishing, Baby Boomers and An Exclusive Free Lesson

Welcome to this edition of Fingerstyle Monthly.

I'm a member of a not entirely exclusive club. I'm a Baby Boomer.

People have mixed feelings about people who fall into this demographic. If you're part of it, you're usually proud of it, if you think about it at all.

If you're not a Boomer, your reaction may be, "Shut up, already. Your day is done."

But, as the first of the Baby Boomers reach 65 years of age, we're in the spotlight again.

Articles are turning up in newspapers, magazines and online about what Boomers are going to do.

Will they retire? Will they continue working? If they continue working, how will they and younger co-workers react to each other?

One article went as far to say that Boomers might not be willing to share their knowledge and experience with younger workers.

I can't imagine that, but it did make me wonder if younger workers actually want to receive what the Boomers have to offer.

What good is it to offer something if the recipient doesn't want it?

Or if the recipient isn't experienced enough or informed enough to take advantage of the opportunity.

Which brings us to fishing.

My Father was an avid sports fisherman. One of the ways that he relaxed from the rigors of his professional life was to go fishing. And he was good at it.

He had spent untold numbers of hours fishing in all types of waters. Mountain streams, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Most of his fishing, though, was done in the lakes and rivers of central Louisiana, where we lived and where he had grown up.

In my youth, I was his frequent fishing companion. I would sit in the front of the skiff and he would sit in the back so that he could operate the outboard motor.

As we drifted with the current, he would sometimes tell me where to cast my lure. "You see that snag sticking up over there?", pointing to where the trunk of a dead tree stood above the water. "There's a big bass right there!"

I'd make a couple of casts where he said to. Nothing. His end of the boat would float past the snag. BAM! He's hooked a monster fish.

The point is, he'd offered the gift of catching the big fish to me. But I didn't catch it. I was too inexperienced. I hadn't fished enough to twitch the lure in the right way to catch the fish. I wasn't ready.

What does all of this have to do with fingerpicking the guitar? The moral of the story?

Simply this. Learning to do anything well takes doing it often. This prepares us to take advantage of opportunities when they're presented to us. It qualifies us to take on new challenges.

I will propose this idea to you: Learning the physical fundamentals of fingerpicking prepares you to play more complex songs in the future. Master Beginner Lessons 1-7 before you tackle Windy and Warm. You'll actually progress faster as a player if you do.

What's New?

There are several pages which let you, the visitor, ask fingerstyle guitar related questions and post answers.

By doing that, we can all take advantage of your experience and knowledge. My motto is 'Everybody knows something, but nobody knows everything'. So feel free to join the conversation! Check it out for yourself.

I've been in communiction with Jim Bruce at play-blues-guitar.eu. Jim's put together a series of acoustic blues lessons showing how to play some of the classic blues tunes.

He's been kind enough to create a lesson expressly for the visitors to learn-fingerstyle-guitar.com. I wanted to offer the lesson to subscribers to Fingerstyle Monthly first. You'll find it below.

If your browser won't display the video, you can find it here.

Jim offers a bunch of great blues guitar lessons that you might want to check out.

Thanks for joining me for this edition. Subscribe to our blog to stay up to date with what's going on at learn-fingerstyle-guitar.com.

See you next month!

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