10 Years of Guitar

I started taking guitar lessons in July of 2016. After ten years of hard work and devotion to the instrument, here is what I have learned:

• The sooner you work on timing, the better.

Guitar is a melodic and rhythmic instrument. Playing cool solos or riffs is not so much about the notes, but in the way notes are phrased in time. Playing with a metronome can be daunting at first, but when you lock in to the click or backing beat, you start to flow with it.

• Chords.

I believe that it is more worthwhile to study up on chords than it is to study up on scales. Beginner cowboy chords are always the first step, but barre chords, major 7 chords, minor 7 chords, dominant 7 chords, augment chords and diminished chords are essential. Chord knowledge makes it easier to learn songs and jam with other people. It also makes your playing more genre fluid.

• The pentatonic scale reigns supreme.

I’ve studied my fair share of exotic scales, but the pentatonic scale is an infinite treasure trove of soloing possibilities. With five notes, you can craft an unlimited amount of melodies. I suggest working on the five positions of the pentatonic scale, improvising with those shapes in time with a metronome/backing beat. Exploring modes of the major scale is a great next step, but comfortability with the pentatonic scale is a must for soloing.

• Guitar maintenance is a wonderful thing.

Taking your guitar into your local shop for a set up, re-stringing your guitar after months of consistent play, or properly humidifying your guitar will make the experience more enjoyable. Over time, you may develop preferences such as how high or low you like your action, what type of strings you prefer, and learn helpful luthier skills that will save you money and help keep your guitar in good condition.

• Don’t give up.

Above all else, you have to keep at it. Learning anything is better than learning nothing, setting with the guitar for 10 minutes a day is better than sitting with it for an hour, missing a couple days, and then returning back to it. Growth comes from consistency. Learn songs that you like and don’t worry so about what other guitar players are learning. It’s great to jam and learn from fellow guitarists, that’s kind of the point, but by following your interests, you’ll be more inspirited to keep picking it up.

One final thing I’ll mention, and this sentiment could be helpful to all musicians, not just guitarist s. Your favorite musician has to be you. You have to convince yourself that every note you play is the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. Meditation and positive affirmations can help with this, but this is the nitty gritty of what makes musicians stand out.

Eventually, after practicing and refining your skills as a guitarist, the instrument becomes an extension of yourself. It’s a second mouth to speak your mind, a connection to your subconscious, and at times, your closest companion. I am forever grateful to my 13 year old self for asking my parents to start taking guitar lessons. Of all the musical pursuits and projects that I have been apart of, I am first and foremost a guitarist.

Losing Your Best Friend

Losing your best friend feels like losing yourself. I lost my best friend this past year, and what I realized is that my associations determine who I am, in a way. By dissociating from my closest friend, I cut myself off from the person who knew me best. Here’s what it cost me:

• My willingness to open up to other people.

When I lost my best friend, I didn’t think of how deeply it would affect my relationships with other people. I cut myself off from the person who I could honestly and authentically open up to. When I lost that person, I lost a safe space to talk, share thoughts and feelings, and be confidently and unapologetically myself.

• I’m more introverted than ever.

Avoiding people feels like the right thing to do. I feel like I can’t trust anyone and be honest and open in the same way that I was with my best friend. I’d rather stay in and be with myself than to try and start something new. I feel like I’ve lost my sense of outward extroversion, because I don’t have my best friend to talk to everyday.

• The fear of digging up old bones.

I could get in contact with my former best friend, but what would it cost? I feel like I disrespected and hurt my former best friend so deeply that it feels right to leave it all behind me and maintain zero contact. Fights occurred, nasty words were exchanged, and trust was betrayed. Betraying my former best friend’s trust and isolating myself from them feels like I committed treason. What was once a perfectly intact wine glass has now fallen to the ground and shattered into a thousand little pieces. If I were to glue it all back together, it would look like a glass that got broken and was glued back together, not a new wine glass.

I can’t change the past. I can’t change that my former best friend and I are now torn apart. I may never see or speak to them again. There is so much that could be shared between the two of us that will never be shared. Our relationship changed from “best friends for life” to “I can’t and refuse to talk to you ever again.”

Isolation and loneliness, sadness and grief, working through it and starting from scratch, changing it up and returning to what was always familiar. Losing my best friend created a detour on the path to finding out who I am and what my purpose is.   

What I realized is that, despite our now severed relationship, I still want the best for them. I still want them to succeed in life and find joy in what they do. I hope they find a new best friend who provides that safe space we once shared, and who loves them unconditionally. I would not be the person I am today without them, and the time we spent together will live in my memory forever.

-CB

Sometimes 

you need to go somewhere new to know what you’re not.

-CB

An Investigation Into Modern Day Necromancy

Dearly intrigued, I have been growing increasingly more aware of a certain “magical” wave that has been growing in popularity. Let’s start with Etsy witches:

In searching for Etsy witches on Google, I managed to find a page featuring individuals selling psychic readings, spells, and manifestations from $5-$20 a pop. As intriguing as it would be to boost my aura by purchasing a spell from this well-meaning witches, I won’t. I won’t because I myself believe in God, and he wouldn’t be too happy with me for engaging in any sort of unholy necromancy.

Religious beliefs aside, as a curious and perhaps naive person, I have delved into the topic of witchcraft due to my close proximity to Salem Massachusetts, infamous for the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, the rise in popularity of Etsy witches, and because of what music has been doing to me as of late. There’s magic in the air, I can smell it.

The Salem witch trials is one of colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria. Roughly 200 people were accused of witchcraft from February of 1692 to May of 1693. It is reported that 30 of those accused were convicted of witchcraft, and 19 were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). Back in those days, you could be charged witch necromancy for arguing publicly with your husband, patriarchy be damned.

Ultimately, the witches got the last laugh. The final woman witch to be exonerated from the Salem witch trail period was Elizabeth Johnson Jr. She was cleared of necromancy 329 years after her conviction, with charges being attributed to her having a mental disability and never marrying. Her exoneration marks a pivotal moment for witches everywhere. As of July 31st, 2022, all people accused of witchcraft related to the Salem witch trails have been cleared of any wrongdoing . It was all just a bunch of hocus pocus.

What’s with the Etsy witches? I became interested in this topic after reading that brides are paying $14 for good weather spells, to ensure that their $100,000 wedding doesn’t get rained out. The success of wedding witches has inspired businesses like Blessings from New Orleans and Crystal Conjure Magic to sell good weather spells, in an attempt to cash in on a clearly booming market. Though good weather spells from Etsy witches come with disclaimers such as “Remember - rain itself is a blessing,” here lies another example of witches getting the last laugh.

Is witchcraft real? No I don’t think so. I think it’s a bunch of patriarchal mumbo jumbo made up by dudes who don’t respect women. I cannot deny the existence of witchcraft playing a role in everyday life, though it is a reminder that all Americans are protected by the first amendment.

For me, the closest thing I have to witchcraft is music. It allows me to enter into daydreams, partake in powers greater than my own, and connect with the soul of the world. Music has taught me to embrace and love something that I cannot see. Whether it be the notes running through me and out of my guitar, or in receiving ideas or creative transmissions. As a creative, I surrender myself to the unknown and embrace the song that comes to me naturally. I play the music, and the music plays me. I feel connected to life and its inherent beauty through music, and it’s a feeling I may never fully understand. What I do know is that as long as I remain open to receiving transmissions from God, the divine, or muses that represent life’s basic goodness, I am one with the world and with those who inspire me through music.

In conclusion, I’d avoid necromancy for the sake of avoiding bad juju all together. To quote Draco Malfoy from the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, “You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort.”

-CB

All Night: 3 Days Later

As the writer and creator of All Night, it was my expectation and impression that the album was written to make people dance. That being said, the dance floor as I see it today reminds me of Moses and The Red Sea. Sexes stand separately and with themselves on opposite sides, and down the middle is barren ground where the dance floor used to be.

Am I Moses? Yes, yes I am. I’m Moses in the sense that I’m in the middle of both sides, alone and dancing on the barren ground for all to see. I get to entertain both sides as they watch in earnest, but the sides don’t coagulate like they used too.

Scared rabbits, maybe. Are we all suffering a heartbreak we can’t recover from? Is it fear that stops us from dancing together? A lack of trust, perhaps? Is the dance floor not the vibe anymore?

Three days after the release of my dance floor club album, All Night, scenes like this are disheartening and alarming. However, All Night, as I’ve realized through time and patience, is as much a dance album as it is a spiritually cleansing ordeal. Music has a habit of growing in meaning as time passes.

The album is an inquiry into toxicity. For me, as I listen to my album top to bottom, narcissism, flightiness, and standoffishness are toxic traits I meditate over as I listen, and feel cleansed by the final track, “Dancing On The Subway Train.”

I saved that song for last because I think defeating toxicity means embracing “our love.” Isolated love is like a plant without water, it dies alone of dehydration. Our love is like a fire that all the water in the world could never extinguish.

I argue that the dance floor is dehydrated due to isolated love, not self love. Self love is a basic human need whereas isolated love is morally vain and ultimately worthless.

Dance floors are inherently designed to break barriers and for people to let loose with each other, rendering all notions of isolated love obsolete. Yet ironically, today’s dance floor is an effortless depiction of separation. We share the space by accepting the presence of other patrons and nothing more.

My solution is a campfire, a guitar, voices singing together, stories being shared, moments of carefree solemnity, and open dialogue. It’s easier to share our love and humanity over the calm spectacle of a campfire compared to an overstimulating dance floor, where the music is too loud for conversation or thought.

Three days later after releasing a club album to a dying dance floor, All Night will either be the antidote or another nail in the coffin. Time will tell.

-CB

All Night

It happened several nights. I was up all night lamenting the follies of my previous conquests and endeavors. No I was not clever, just a silly boy.

To put it simply, I was up all night reconstructing my identity. It was a time of peril, anguish, sadness, isolation, grief, resentment, and love.

I had to find love in the end. Learning to love myself again was what saved me.

I found God again. I was up all night praying to God in heaven, hoping that He’ll let me in after death doth drapes its cape upon me.

I was craving the club like a wild bear starving for its next meal, hungry for anything. So I made a club album for club patrons, in hopes of keeping the dance floor alive, well, and happening.

I’m happy to be giving back to the club scene, to my fans, and to anyone who needs a beat to get them moving again.

I’ll see you at the club. Let’s go dancing sometime.

-CB

Club Binge

We Who Wrestle With Feminism: Written By A Man. (Reader discretion is advised)

As a boy, feminism began with listening to my mother. I will always see her as someone greater than me, and my respect for her as an individual and as a woman is something I value.

My father was a self-proclaimed feminist, as I think many human beings are, man or woman. Yet my father, would at times treat my mother as if she was naive. He would mansplain, drill in his opinion until it was set in stone. There were, at times, no room for other opinions except my father’s. Asshole.

What I’m getting at is many people claim to be feminists, but ultimately still view women as lessor individuals. Men and women alike.

But not me, oh no! I am of the mind that women deserve equal rights and opportunities that a man has. I believe in this simply because I see women as humans first. A common sensical take, right?

Wrong! I have a dick! And it does the talking sometimes, right?

Wrong don’t assume my gender! I’m a man though, in case you didn’t read the title.

Bear with me. Feminism, as I see it, needs to be flourishing. It’s not about me, a man. In my observations of the present day, women are largely outperforming and outpacing men in school, the job market, and in life in general. Is it time for the women to have a go at the world, and I a man stay at home with the kids?

Possibly. Historically, men have lead the charge. Women only received the right to vote in 1920, just barely over a century ago, and we have yet to see a woman president in the Oval Office.

The current president, Donald Trump, succeeded in getting elected president by beating a woman, twice!

Are the women conjuring and communing with each other so that it is their world and I am just a boy at their whim and disposal? Maybe.

As a progressive thinker, I am the perfect man to be writing this article, but it has nothing to do with me. I need to remember that.

I’ll be blunt here, feminism means looking at a woman as a human, and not a sexual conquest. For men, it’s about using your brain, and not the appendage between your legs to think.

So uh, what now fellas? So if the ladies is running the show now, what do we do? Does this mean I get to stay home, clean the house, be a bum, while girl boss wifey does the breadwinning? Is that the future? Are the opportunities and/or jobs harder to get as a straight white man simply because I am a straight white man, and I’ve had my turn already?

That’s the life I got born into? Will I get denied positions because I’m a straight, slightly bi-curious, white man?

This begs the question, what is my role now? What is my place now? It feels like the world has had enough of straight white dude, and now I, a young white man of 23, has to face the music for the sins of my straight white ancestors.

It feels like that. Let me be clear, I do believe that women deserve equal opportunities that men do. It’s only fair. But now, I struggle to find my place in this world, and no one cares.

I shouldn’t be bashful towards the times, but golly. What’s wrong with just being a quirky straight white dude? Am I not eclectic enough? Do I not understand the times I am living in? Am I aware that historically, societies have been built by men being at the center of power and control, while women were subjected to a more powerless lives?

It’s complicated. What is ultimately my hope for feminism is that it becomes more generally accepted as a standard. If a woman is more qualified than another woman, that woman who is more qualified should get that job. Simple.

We have to work together, ultimately. Men and women, alike. Sexual harassment has got to go, and getting toyed with and trampled has got to go, likewise.

We have to work together. Let’s accept an equal playing field. Try it. I never assumed that I was better than any woman because I’m a man. That’s not how mom raised me.

-CB

A Lament of My Imprisonment (metaphorically speaking)

For the ladies.

Girls, I can’t get enough of you. You make me do things I know are right, and then make me do things I know I shouldn’t.

I don’t know why I love you so much. But deep down I know that question isn’t worth pondering at all.

It’s just the truth.

I need you, in totality and solidarity. I need you for one night, and then maybe another after that, until I finally get to be with you forever.

I'm overwhelmed by you and for you. I'm a conman getting played at his own game, but it was never my game to begin with. 
 

I want to love everything, but I know I can’t. Ultimately, I know that one day it will just be me and you. That would be more than enough. 

Until I find you, catch me if you can. You may find me frolicking behind a shrubbery, dancing through the hilltops, or face down in a puddle of water, occasionally coming up for air and then back down again.

To romance, and to not caring as much, but also caring too much, but not enough to get commited, yet. 

-CB

What’s wrong with us? An Opinion.

These days, it is difficult for young people to be present, and open to talking/meeting people in public spaces. I know this because I feel it too.

What social media has done to our generation has fueled our social anxiety. The real word always seems less than what we want, because nowadays, we are used to getting our vision of how the world “should be” broadcasted to us on a daily basis; through algorithms that have learned what each of us individually like.

What concerns me most of all is that our way of meeting and socializing with each other, usually if not most of the time, begins with social media, dating apps, texting, or other uses of digital communication. Usually not the other way around.

What I foresee, is an age where Gen Z grows out of the shell of social anxiety, and old romance can be made a new. What do I mean by that…

Instead of dating apps, let’s just meet at a bar by happenstance. Let’s talk and give each other compliments. Let’s remember that this is how things used to be, before most of us were born.

I propose more daring social endeavors. Endeavors wherein, we talk to one another without fear, judgment, or anxiety.

Everyone, in my humble opinion, has anxiety in 2026. Most of my friends see therapists, or prefer to avoid socializing all together. There is a lot about the world we live in right now, that may be causing all of us to be anxious and nervous about how things will turn out.

To answer the question, “What is wrong with us?” The answer lies in asking yourself, “what’s wrong with me?”

Everyone is unique, and has their own unique skill set, strengths, and weaknesses. Instead of one upping one another over pedantic reasons, whether it be related to gender, politics, religion, or any number of sensitive topics. We seek out our differences so that we ourselves feel good about being different/better than someone else. And of course, there’s always the “playing the victim game.”

Playing the victim in any instance, is a means of seeking attention and validation, whether it be warranted or completely fabricated. If you’re constantly playing the victim, I’m sorry, I don’t have time for you.

Instead of playing the victim game, stop. Embrace the positives and give back positive vibes. Ultimately, if you give anxious vibes, the vibes will be anxious. If you give off confident vibes, the vibes will be confident. You dig? Anxiety is the enemy. Seeking validation and attention for the aesthetic and not for authentically connecting with someone, is the enemy.

Let’s stop putting each other down all the time. Let’s work as a community, build bridges, and make authentic attempts to embrace the real people who are around us all the time.

-CB