I think 10 years is an overshoot. Of course, you ain't young no more, and it might take longer. I've been playing fretted instruments (mostly guitar) since 1964. If you discount 1964 to 1968 as adolescent idiocy (and you should), I learned one _hell of a lot_ between 68 and 72. Enough to write original stuff that still stands up. The OneBigThang I learned about playing music is that the first brick wall you hit is terrible. If you stick with it, at some point, it evaporates and you move ahead to the next brick wall. But passing that first brick wall brings more things than any other of the endless brick walls you hit after Numero Uno. I think that's because you inherit your style after somehow breaking thru the first.
BTW, I love Mando...... the jam I go to these days has 1 to 4 mando players, and I always want at least one of them to be there.
graywolf wrote (snipped, of course):
I am at the level in music that you seem to be in photography. I took two, two long years, wow, of lessons and still can not get what I want out of my mandolin. People who actually play them well tell me it will take 10 years of practice to get good at it. I may not have 10 years left, so I do not try too hard anymore. Of course I could program any music I want into MIDI and let the computer play it. Somehow I don't feel it is the same thing.
Do you see the parallels in what I am saying?
