Never stop practicing…
For three long months, from late January to early May, I had neither the energy nor the desire to play. Every time I picked up a guitar, the corners of my fingernails became very sensitive, and the slightest touch was painful. Bonus: even sitting down, the weight of the guitar felt difficult to bear.
When I started again, this lack of energy prevented me from playing tempi (a tempo, tempi, a spaghetto, spaghetti, etc.), above 120 bpm. My right hand easily got the wrong string and I had lost coordination between my right and left hands. Long story short, it took me a while before I was able to play reasonably well again, especially when playing solos. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Loïc and Niko for inviting me to a Fingle gig at the end of July and giving me the chance to get back on stage without any pressure.
It's August 1st and I've got a lot of work to do to make sure everything will go smoothly with Cour Supreme in September, it'll be fine with a little effort and a lot of discipline.
In this area too, these few months of hindsight have brought several trends into even sharper focus:
The world that celebrates the “American Way of Life” is gradually going out of fashion, taking with it the whole car culture, the myth of almighty growth, and other illusions. Amid this slow decline, we find the increasingly aging blues, rock, and hard rock guitar scene, is curling in on itself and finding itself more or less in the same situation jazz was in when I was a kid: music for old people, listened to by old people, with more or less radical factions, preconceived ideas, even very stupid ones, confidently asserted by people who have never played anywhere other than their bedrooms.
Onto this bandwagon jump opportunists: sellers of fake “vintage” gear, second-rate YouTubers who become redundant by constantly posting on pentatonic scales and sometimes give very bad advice, influencers whose number of followers is inversely proportional to their actual knowledge of the guitar... It's no longer a landscape, it's a jungle.
The worst part is that you can't completely blame them: if people are so narrow-minded that they'll pay five, ten, or twenty times what a high-end contemporary guitar of the same model would cost them, based solely on a brand name or series name, then you can't really blame them. If you're convinced that replacing a pickguard or tuners devalues the guitar, or even makes it “worse,” and if, at the same time, you're unable to realize that they've been changed on the instrument you're being shown and end up taking a selfie on Facebook, smiling broadly alongside the person who ripped you off, who's to blame? If, on top of that, these “scammers” are as successful (in terms of likes, followers, retweets, etc.) as, if not more so than, people who are more knowledgeable, more honest, and less commercially aggressive, who is to blame?
But the logic remains unyielding: if you play in your bedroom long enough, you'll end up buying guitars to decorate your living room.
P.S. There is still a lot to say about all this, and I may do so one day, but that's beside the point today. I would like to point out that the above is in no way a plea for my own work, and that there are many very good contributors on social media, both in France and internationally. Nor do I feel threatened by any of this. I can always write in Guitare Xtreme if I feel like it, but I don't because I'm now involved with Vola Guitars, and I don't want any misunderstandings in the event of negative criticism of another similar instrument. I can write or post videos on my website, Facebook page, Instagram, and YouTube channel, but I rarely do because I'm not familiar with much of the (intangible?) material that interests people the most these days: software, plugins, MIDI, and MAO. I use them, but I'm not an expert, so rather than talk nonsense, I prefer to refrain.
