A new year begins. However, arbitrary a demarcation that is, it\u2019s an opportunity to look backward and forward. 2011 was overall a good year, especially in regards to my music. I achieved some significant milestones in playing with others and in performing. Those have been goals since I started taking lessons and I want to continue on that path. I\u2019ve come a long way since my first lesson. It\u2019s taken longer than I expected and been more difficult than I imagined before I started out. I still feel like something of a beginner. I\u2019ve greatly expanded my musical abilities, but there is so much I still want to learn, so much I want to be able to play. It almost goes without saying that this will be a lifelong process.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to start going to more blues jams. There are three that I know of: Harlem Avenue Lounge<\/a> (where I\u2019ve been a couple of times), Rosa\u2019s Lounge<\/a>–both on Thursday nights, and \u00a0at Buddy Guy\u2019s Legends<\/a> on Mondays. I don\u2019t feel I\u2019m quite ready to participate, but I hope to get up the courage before the year is out.<\/p>\n A more long-term (but hopefully not too long) goal is to get into some kind of blues band, where I could get more experience playing and performing and expand my repertoire. Ideally, I\u2019d like to play in a group of more experienced players, so I could learn from them and gain experience \u201cplaying out.\u201d It will probably be a year or more, before I’m up to that. Someday, I\u2019d like to put together my own blues band, but I’m definitely far from ready to do that. I still need my training wheels–as I’m often reminded in my ensemble class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new year begins. However, arbitrary a demarcation that is, it\u2019s an opportunity to look backward and forward. 2011 was overall a good year, especially in regards to my music. I achieved some significant milestones in playing with others and in performing. Those have been goals since I started taking lessons and I want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,12,111],"tags":[135,75,112,134],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}