My friends circle on Discord has come up with something nifty as an alternative to the dreaded New Year’s Resolution that never seems to stick. Instead of declaring I will quit a bad habit or I will learn a new craft or I will lose weight or what have you, the idea is to come up with something you already like (or love!) to do but don’t always give yourself a chance to do it for one reason or another. Do it once a week for fifty-two weeks simply for enjoyment!

I got to thinking about it and I thought: I have four guitars collecting dust because I don’t pick them up all that often. I’d even bought new strings for the two six-strings (one acoustic, one electric) about six months ago but never got around to putting them on! So I figured, why not? Once a week I’ll pick up the guitar and either learn a new song, or write a new one! I do enjoy doing both, I’ve just not given myself the time over the last few years.

Sure, I’ve mentioned how annoyed I am with myself guitar-wise because when I do pick them up I end up playing the same handful of songs, and that gets boring really quickly. My dad used to do that on his piano and he enjoyed it, but I also really enjoy the creativity of learning or writing a new song and I haven’t done that in a LONG time. I want to do more than just play the same songs, I want new sounds to surface, just like when I write my novels!

So for the first two weekends, I allowed myself a related option: let’s start by putting on those new sets of strings. The acoustic was relatively easy, but restringing the Gretsch electric (see above, and pardon the dirtiness of the frets) was a bit of a chore, given that they’re held on there via the Bigsby bridge (aka the built-in vibrato bar) and a lot of tension, but it got done and it sounds great!

And just to make sure it was in tune, I taught myself the basic chord progression to REM’s “Radio Free Europe”, inspired by having just finished reading Peter Ames Carlin’s biography The Name of This Band Is REM. Learning that Peter Buck is self-taught and figured out his style by playing along with records — exactly how I did it — gave me the inspiration to keep going with this.

The aim here is not to be professional, or even release anything on Bandcamp or whatever (although I won’t rule it out if it sounds halfway decent), but just to revisit what I loved best about playing with The Flying Bohemians and jeb!: the pure enjoyment of musical creativity. Anything more than that will be a bonus.