Not. It is sweet, and goes with a little pignose so well I don't even want to plug it into the Boogie.

But I digress. I was at the music store stocking up, and I got some picks for the reso case. Lately I've been playing acoustics with all fingers a la Woody Mann, and electrics with traditional flatpick. But the reso is different, so I got a cool thumbpick (the "pick" part has the shape and thickness of a heavy flatpick, about half as thick as the usual plastic thumbpick) and some dunlop-ish plastic fingerpicks. I resolved to take Bob's advice and try them for two weeks.

Well, it didn't take two weeks. I just bent the fingerpicks to shape with bare hands (I'm wondering why the complicated hot-water ritual - I guess you get finer control over shape with the hot water, but just bending it by hand seemed to work for me) and started playing.

I still need much time to get control of the technique, but I can see the speed and volume advantages for certain kinds of picking right away.

So here's the dilemma: If I go full-time with the plastic fingerpicks, will I lose the calluses and the bare-finger dexterity? And what about the Martin Simpsonish stuff with the frailing?

On a more general note, is it possible to have your fingers, so to speak, in too many musical pies? I've taken classes with Bob and Woody and Martin and John and Orville and I'm into country blues and city blues and rock and jazz and African music and calypso and ska and reggae. Yet I haven't mastered any of it. Do I need to focus on one thing?

I am a mandolin playing guitarist that had most of my "professional success" as a bass player. All of these instruments required different styles of right hand: fingers only for bass, pick only for mando and fingerpicks and flatpicks for guitar.

I stopped fingerstyle guitar 20 some years ago to just try to use the flatpick, and I stopped using open tunings around the same time. I regret both decisions.

I took up mandolin fairly late in the game, and bass even later. I am marginally proficient on both instruments, but probably have made much more money with these instruments than the guitar. Of course, I'm talking tens and tens of dollars here.

Playing different styles of music keeps me from becoming stale, I think. Your variety of styles is greater than mine: bluegrass; blues; folk; rock and country all have a common denominator, I think.

My guess is that if you're feeling scattered, you probably are. If you feel like you have enough time to do it all, or at least to make progress in each area, then continue to run down those varieties of paths.

Glad you're enjoying the guitar. Nice to have left it in good hands.

[This message has been edited in memory of Frederich Noad(edited January 08, 2002).]

Upright Bass, electric Bass, lap steel, non-pedal steel, fingerpicking national (w/picks), fingerpicking wood (no picks), Charango (usually no picks), Ukelele (no picks), electric guitar (flatpick + fingers)...

Never enough time! (esp. since marriage/kids)

Diversification keep me fresh, but it also guarantees I'm not getting better very fast.

I usually try to get into a band playing the style/instrument that I really want to learn. Then progress is exponential, and I find that later, after I stop playing with them, I retain the knowledge (muscle memory). Then it just becomes periodic "maintenance" playing.

I forgot to add in the variety of instruments I play: from the little charango (and ronroco, if I ever get my hands on one) to a Style O to the resolectric to a wood-body baritone to acoustic and electric basses to reg'lar acoustics to various conventional electrics.

I think I've made about $37 lifetime playing music. That may change in the future, but right now money is not the issue.

Not directly, anyway; I don't feel like I have enough time to devote to the various modes of musical expression I enjoy. It makes me want to quit my job and do music full time.

I'd be interested to hear from some of the amateurs and the professionals who read here on what their experience has been.

yeah, progress is exponential. I played electric bass in a cover band for two years. I felt like I could do anything on bass within those limits (none of that funky stuff, please; we're white bread). Now I pick up the bass and feel generally clumsy. Though it does come back after an hour or so.

I do feel my slide playing has suffered.

Different kinds of music: Gotta. No choice.

Different instruments: One gets precedence. That’s guitar. I’m best with a flatpick, so 80% of my time goes to that, but practice time is flip-flopped… 80% to fingerstyle and slide. Mandolin is fun, but I’m only using it on occasion. Rarely practice, play for fun mostly, add it to a few gigs and recordings. Not many calls for bass gigs, last one was September. Never practice, mostly record.

Of course, there still isn’t enough time and I not progressing like I’d like to. Oh well.

One phenomenom from IGS and all my other musical input sources (two different guitar instructors now, videos, books, etc) is that I enjoy, and want to learn so much stuff that I'll never get very good at any of it in my lifetime. I also need to have a life, maintain my marriage, run a business, constantly work on my house, and engage in a few other compelling hobbies and interests. I'm not too bad at some of my musical efforts, and I've resigned myself to just being a hack at a lot of it, and a happy one at that. Now I'm more comfortable. Pease don't interpret this to mean I'm lazy or not good at much. Frankly, I think I'm somewhat accomplished at quite a few of the interests I persue. (Now is a good time to start throwing tomatoes and other rotting organic matter at your monitor screen).

Ok, I have just officially recognized another condition that I KNOW a lot of us suffer from, but have never regarded as a true ailment:

IMAS

Instructional Material Acquisition Syndrome.

It is an offshoot of GAS, the contraction of, and symptoms of which we know all to well around here. I have dozens(maybe hundreds) of videos, books, CD's, mountains of downloaded and otherwise bagged TAB sheets, along with gigabytes of harddisk space devoted to digital documents and mp3's and wav files of instructional stuff. And how about thousands of dollars worth (or stacks of shelves and piles of boxes) of electronic doodads and guitar accessories).

I've had the same experience. It's still a goal for me to have the control on fingerpicking an electric that I do on acoustic. It's not as easy as it looks. Electric guitars are so damn efficient at producing sound that it's way easy to produce too much of the undesirable kinds of sounds. Hoo, boy.

>I'm not too bad at some of my musical >efforts

For me, there are several musical goals:

1) Learng to accurately play different types of music. i.e. Salsa, Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, etc

2) Learn to use different instruments within those styles.

#1 is usually a higher priority, and it dictates the playing technique in #2.

Then you add:

3) Create new styles utilizing different combinations of instruments and playing styles.

This is what IGS has opened up for me. I think Prof Brozman is an excellent example of this, and his Charango experiment shows this.