This Is Guitar

Images from Craig Smith's "The Art Of Guitar"

The Guitar and I

I began playing the guitar at about the age of five, preceding this with playing the ukulele from around two years of age. My grandfather and mother both played guitar... so this was an easy introduction to the instrument and it's sound. Who would of ever thought that this would become a lifelong activity... let alone an actual. In those days, even as today... playing music was at most a hobby, or a sideline one might have. However, it didn't turn out that way at all as you have probably noticed.

Around seven or eight I started taking actual guitar lessons, at a music studio roughly forty miles away from my home. My mother would drive me every Saturday to the lessons... which were "real" guitar/music education instructions. I went through seven or more consecutive books of a standard guitar system by Mel Bay, which was about the only such series of guitar methods available at the time. It wasn't easy... it was a complete music on guitar study and music developmental program that you had to follow exactly every step of the wry to progress from one level to the next. However, it was impressive and trained me in the true Art Of Guitar.

As years passed I continued to study guitar at extended and higher levels and play music always as just about the only thing I did aside from school, eating and sleeping. At around fifteen I was already active in the local music scene playing at school dances and even performing on television regularly. All this seemed just natural, and at the time neither I or my parents ever imagined this to be anything more than just adolescent play and activity... things were about to change though as I became more noticeable and recognized in not on the local front, but gradually to a larger, wider audience of music listeners. I had really gotten myself into something much deeper than expected... and it kept on going.

Soon it became aware to myself that I was always to play music on the guitar... and not seek any other type of job or work outside of the music business. This included not just playing guitar, and singing... which incidentally I did always at the time, but forgot to mention above... but also included continuous further study on the instrument, writing songs and other music... as well as professional recording music of my own and the ongoing promotion of my own music career.

During these years... I became aware of aspects pertaining to my instrument the guitar, that were not just about the playing and performance of music as most people view guitar or it's players in the popular world. In the study of music and the guitar's historic legacy... an extensive one to say the least... I became more cognoscente of a very deep and historic past of this instrument. The more I read and worked in this direction it became known that this is not just one of, group of instruments called the string family... but the origin of that entire family of such string instruments. Unbelievable as it might seem... but true never the less... this is the Real Story... about "The Art Of Guitar"

More on this to come... Craig

Music Is Energy In Action

Music is like clouds... music is like water in the sea... or a river, it's always moving. In this way music is like life itself... animated always... until like life, it ends. This symbolism of music could be more significant than we might think, perhaps it may be that when the music stops... so will all life on earth cease to exist.

By it's very nature of movement... energy in action... music is the supreme "Non Concretized Form" in the universe. In fact, within music lies the universe in miniature... continuously changing... evolving into a new shape every moment, a New Sound Sculpture made from nothing but vibrations floating through the air.