The Fretless Path

I was introduced to making music at an early age. I couldn't have been older than five when my dad started me on the piano, and somehow I managed an award two years later in an entry level category at the SMYF competition in Southern California near my home right before I gave up the piano at seven years old "because I don't like it" and my dad offered me a cello. Initially I remember being more happy with the cello than I had been with the piano, perhaps because both my brother and father played the piano (my father being a piano teacher actually). But not long into it I began disliking and protesting the amount of practicing I was supposed to do. I just wanted to be a normal kid and go collect baseball cards and stuff like that.


But once I could "perform", I always enjoyed it immensely. I hated the practicing it took to get to that performance, but I loved the singular, brief moment of sitting down and becoming emotionally involved in a piece of music from start to finish. Often this was how I "practiced". I would just pretend to be performing the piece and play it as well as I could, doing it again and again. I would imagine an audience but really I just disappeared into the moment. This worked relatively well and natural talent took care of the rest considering I got away without practicing all that much. I read books, drew pictures and day dreamed instead, and once I was in high school and attending Crossroads, a private school in Santa Monica away from home, I practiced even less. Throughout my struggles with the motivation to practice and learn difficult classical music, my love of the moment of performance carried me through.


I believe the underlying root of my struggle to practice was that I'd never personally decided that I wanted to be a cellist. I had been told I was good, a "child prodigy" and very talented. I had been pushed into it and just sort of followed along because it was what my brother was doing too. The difference came when my brother decided on his own that he wanted to be a pianist and that changed the nature of his passion. Now he was practicing for himself, while I continued to play only because I was supposed to.


By my 11th grade year I'd pretty much decided that I should be able to make my own decisions regarding the direction of my life. I'd do my pretend-a-performance practicing routine but the magic had aged and was fading. I thought more and more about being a writer, moving to the mountains and being a ski bum. I guess they never should've let me read Thoreau or Kerouac, or Muir, that was their first mistake. Or really, their first mistake was teaching me to ski when I was three. And for that my dad has no one to blame but himself. Thanks Dad.


So I quit cello that year. Much to everyone's dismay, angering my parents tremendously, alienating me from my musician friends in the school orchestra, but allowing me the freedom to take my first job outside of music, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Eastern California. Working at a backcountry lodge that summer would be the beginning of nearly eight years of wild living where I hardly touched my cello, only sort of ceremoniously bringing it out of the closet to dust off the fingerboard with my stiff and sloppy performances once or twice a year. One thing I slowly began to notice as time went on was that when I did bring it out, I felt a personal urge to practice and get the old pieces back up to par again before putting it away. Sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn't but often I caught myself sitting down to my cello for the first time in any given year and playing for hours without even noticing the time passing.



After years of pursuing nothing more than skiing, climbing, and backpacking, I got involved in a relationship with a girl who played guitar. She was also a snowboarder and surfer and we lived together in a cabin on the backside of Mammoth Mountain for a couple of winters. So not only did I learn to surf, but my fingers began gracing a fretboard for the first time. Initially I just sort of banged away at it with no real desire to undertake the learning process. I knew that it would be easier for me than for most because of my cello training but I was hesitant. I'd rejected music so powerfully for a life in the mountains that I think I was scared to open myself up to the effort of it again. It wasn't until our first (of three) break-ups that I went at the guitar with any sort of passion. I'd learned a few chords, and now all of a sudden I wanted to learn all the chords and start writing songs. With a sort of manic energy it immediately took over my life.


My first guitar was a "backpacker guitar" because I wanted a guitar that I could take with me anywhere and everywhere, and I began writing my own songs since I wasn't capable enough to learn anyone else's. Some of the earliest songs have been happily forgotten, but some I still play with as much passion today as the day I first wrote them. They capture a feeling or an image or a time that I'll never need to capture again because I got it right the first time.


As I played the guitar more and more, I wondered about the cello. I had never been able to "jam" despite my high level of playing ability, and now I could "jam" on the guitar and sing songs which was all I wanted to do. I'd found that my personal love of performance, my interest in writing, a desire to entertain friends around a campfire and a desire to speak out on social and political issues made the guitar my ideal instrument. I seriously wanted to sell my cello so that I could invest in better guitar equipment.
This feeling persisted until about two years ago when I first sat down and attempted to jam with some bluegrass musicians that are friends of mine. What happened with the bluegrass startled me. The guitar had opened me up to a different way of approaching music—to just playing by ear, not worrying about the sharps or flats, and not caring so much about mistakes. And now I was suddenly set free of the fretboard and relishing the freedom of a fretless fingerboard. Not only that but I loved how well I knew my cello compared to my guitar. It was like picking it up for the very first time and yet already knowing how to play it completely. Sure my intonation was a little off and my technique was slow, but I was hooked again. And this time it was for me. I felt the desire to become a serious musician, I'd already been feeling it with my guitar playing and songwriting, and now I had this whole other instrument that could allow me to do even more.


These days I can't even call it "practicing" because I play either my guitar or cello or banjo so much, either with friends or by myself that it's just a part of life, it's not practicing. I take breaks only when my fingers literally hurt too much to play anymore. If I added up the hours some weeks it would come close to a full time job. But I don't even notice the time passing, and I guess that's been the most powerful lesson of it all. You have to do it for yourself. No one else can ever make you a good musician, you have to want it, and love it, and feel it deep in your heart—it has to be as much a part of your life as eating and breathing.


So I continue to be a dirtbag ski bum, backpacker, desert rat, surfer and occasional climber, but now you'll also catch me performing in a couple of different bands at the local bars—taking trips up and down the fretboard of my guitar, or long glides up and down the fingerboard of my cello for free pitchers of beer and your generous gratuities. It feels sort of like a circular path coming to a close, but really it continues straight ahead—only now I make my own soundtrack.