About Me & Absolutely Essential Guitar

Okay... you obviously realise that I don't look like that, but that really is me "underneath"!

(Maybe I just watched too many Elvis matinees when I was a kid. LOL!)

So what's the story?

Well, it's pretty simple, I guess. I'm not sure I have too much to tell you. Around about April 2007, I took an interest in learning how to make websites. So I learnt some basic stuff.

In actual fact, this interest had nothing to do with guitar! It came from a desire to put up a personal blog. The thing is, though, I didn't even know where to start. I thought I had to learn all this fancy coding stuff whereas nothing could be further from the truth (as you probably know)!

So once I worked that out, I thought, well, why don't I put something together for beginner guitarists. I had just bought a new guitar and after not having played for a while, I felt a bit rusty. Maybe this is what prompted me to think of what it was like to be a beginner. I have no idea! But for some reason I had an idea to help beginners navigate their way through the maze of choices that exist. Eh voila, ce site!

This site is not aimed at non-beginners. So if you've been playing for a while and you're comfortable with your guitar, you know all about tablature, you have a good understanding of basic chords, you know The Circle, and you've already investigated various online and bookstore options for learning how to play... this site really isn't for you.

If, on the other hand, you have no idea what I was just talking about, but you'd like to play guitar, then this site is exactly what you're looking for! And that was my whole idea behind putting the Absolutely Essential Guitar package together. I remember what it was like...

... When I was a teenager my sister got a nylon-string acoustic guitar for Christmas and soon got bored with it. So I picked it up and had a go. I'd already been fiddling around with keyboards and drums; a buddy of mine (who would later go on to be a fantastic drummer—and then give it up!) was teaching me the basics of keeping time and opening the high-hat on the first beat and stuff like that! And some random door-to-door saleman had sold my mother a simple Casio keyboard that I was twiddling with. (I taught myself "Song for Guy" by Elton John and "The Saints Go Marching In". How funny, huh?)

Now, at this time VCRs had only just been invented! (Seriously!) They'd only been a "household item" for a couple of years and were still quite expensive. So, um, instructional videos: Are you kidding? There probably were some around at the time, but it didn't even occur to me! And DVD? Huh? What's that? Not invented yet.


And at the time I'd just started this $3.50 per hour part-time job and spent about half of what I made going to what I think was a half-hour lesson once a week after school. I'd hurry on down to the local train station with my (sister's) guitar (rain, hail or shine—coz if I didn't turn up, I had to pay anyway, of course!). And then wait in the cramped hallway of the tutor's "school" for my little window of weekly magic.

It wasn't bad and my teacher, Bill, was a really super nice guy. He had photos on the wall of himself playing with Andre Segovia, which didn't really mean anything to me at the time. (Now, I think "OMG!")

We started out learning the basics: how to read music, how to pick with your fingers, how to position your left hand behind the neck and cock your right hand to pluck the strings nicely, how to do a nice classical little guitar duet, etc. But it wasn't really what I wanted. Thing is, I wasn't sure what I wanted. I'd been listening to AC-DC, Led Zeppelin, Dire Straits, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Kiss, and all that kind of gear for years, but didn't quite put the pieces together.

And then that year Guns'n'Roses's debut album, Appetite For Destruction, was released!

I immediately bought an electric guitar (a cheap little strat-copy/bedroom-amp combo for about 200 bucks) and set about learning to play all my favourite rock songs. Glam was all the rage at the time and fortunately for me, I not only liked it (still do, truth be told!), but Motley Crue and Poison songs ain't that hard! Would dearly have loved to be able to play Iron Maiden, but that's not gonna happen in this lifetime! Ha! (And, well, I wouldn't want to really wear the spandex tights!)

And so I found myself in a garage band with some high school buddies, with a 100W Laney Quadbox to lug around!


Did backing vocals and got a comment from the bassist's girlfriend one day at rehearsal (when our vocalist had laryngitis or a cold or something) that I should just sing for the band!

I really didn't think I was any good, though. Had never considered taking singing lessons. And so I just let it go. Looking back, though, it amazes me because I always had my walkman (yes, walkman!) on while I was at work and because there was never anyone around, I was constantly singing. In hindsight, it's clear that I loved it, but I guess I just didn't have the confidence to step up to the plate.

It was only about 10 years later (yep, count 'em!) I finally got up to sing something at karaoke for the very first time and a ton of people came up to me afterwards and told me how awesome it was! Now that sounds like bragging, but the point I'm trying to get across here is how totally and utterly amazed I was by that. Clearly I didn't think I was gonna suck otherwise I wouldn't have gotten up to sing in the first place, but in no way did I expect such a positive reaction!

From then on, I started paying attention to my singing voice and actually learning how to train it properly. Still not, say, American Idol material, but I'm not half bad (if I do say so myself! *wink*)

I'm still not a crazy hot guitarist, though, either, to be completely honest with you. And I never was much interested in lead guitar, even as a teenager, surprisingly. What I enjoy most is being able to crack out my guitar at a party and sing some tunes, or jump on the mic impromptu at a get-together and belt out a couple of songs (as happened recently; where one tasty lass said to me afterwards "Boy, you've got quite the set o' pipes!").

So I don't claim to be some guru muso by any stretch of the imagination. But I sure know how much music makes me feel alive and how you really can learn how to do it, too!

And that's why I put together Absolutely Essential Guitar as a kind of "first step". It's not a definitive guide, but it doesn't claim to be. It's just the basic, foundational stuff, covered in an easy-to-read ebook. And once you're done with that you'll know where to turn next to get the kind of professional and reputable expert advice that (a) I wish I could offer you, but I can't, and (b) that you'll then be ready for.

Don't make the mistake of hopping from one thing to the next to the next only to find out (as I did) years later, that you still haven't got the most basic of things down-pat and that even though you can play a few songs here and there, there's something missing.

That's why Absolutely Essential Guitar has the tag-line: "Foundation Elements Almost Every Beginner Overlooks Which forever Sabotage Their Chance Of Achieveing Greatness".

I hope that I can serve you in some way with this little ol' ebook I've put together! I look forward to hearing your success story some time in the future!

Stay cool!


"Absolutely Essential Guitar - Foundation Elements Almost Every Beginner Overlooks and Which Forever Sabotage Their Chance Of Achieving Greatness".