other than playing and leading and such at the church, i make a meager living playing music during the week. i play at a bar/restaurant in brighton, mi every thursday, friday and saturday. it's called lu & carl's, they're online at www.luandcarls.net. i also play at a place in south lyon, mi every monday night. it's called the south lyon hotel. (it's not a hotel though, just a bar/restaurant. it used to be a hotel back when people had valet parking for their horses and buggies....).
one of the most common questions people ask me when i'm out playing is where i work. i smile, and politely explain that i play music for a living. they're a bit skeptical until i mention how it's a great way to pay all of my bills and make my wife and kids happy. hearing that i actually pay my bills by playing music is hilariously astonishing for most people.
anyway, the point of this is that i play and sing a lot. a whole lot. not including what i do at church, i'm playing at least four nights a week, for 3-4 hours per gig. a couple of weeks a month i've got five nights a week. my voice gets tired. my fingertips are pretty much permanently jacked (if i don't bite the calluses off of them every day i can't even feel the strings on my guitar....).
i've gotten to know my instrument pretty well, by default if nothing else. if you take a person who has no intuition musically and make them play an instrument so much, they're gonna get pretty good at it.
i've gotten together with a few people from the church to help them improve their playing. and with every single person so far, the biggest thing stopping them from getting better is a lack of practice. they all have different levels of talent and ability, but most of them don't have the time to invest in their instrument that they would like.
i wish there was a way to enable people on the worship team to have more time to practice. i'm pretty sure they would all love that too. as a worship leader, part of what you get to experience is learning how to successfully integrate people onto the team regardless of their ability.
this obviously has some limitations. you can't really have a guitar player on the team if they can't even play an Em chord. but you have to learn how to teach a person to play enough chords to play along, and encourage them to keep progressing. we all gots to keep improving, no matter where we are.
so, my message for most people that wanna get better playing the guitar is to....play the guitar. even if you've only got time to run through a song or two a day, that 10 minutes is better than no minutes.
rock!
