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Musicianship 
(3 May 2014;  For my son Steven, an ACCOMPLISHED guitarist)

Real musicianship can truly drive you nuts—
There really are no “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts”.
Practice, study, memorize, then more practice--
Is this just an obsession or complete madness?

Learning chord inversions, arpeggios, and scales
Is like reaching Heaven by crossing through seven Hells.
It wouldn’t be bad if there were only a dozen majors,
But there’s also those other dozen minors.

What’s worse, it seems we’re never finished
Because there’s also augmented and diminished,
The major/minor/augmented/dominant sevenths.
And symmetrical double-flatted diminished sevenths,

And if this harmonic mess is not enough,
All those dissonant Jazz chords get really tough…
Such as the sustained seconds and fourths,
The sevenths add nines, sixths, blah-blah-blah, elevenths.

And if learning all this isn’t already extraordinary,
There’s music theory and music vocabulary.
Instead of just saying “get louder”, you have to “crescendo”,
Or for “fast” or “slow” you say “allegro” or “lento”.

Then there are names like Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, 
Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.
(All being modes derived from scale C-major,
Plus each major scale also has a relative minor)

Multiple pattern exercises on guitar fretboards
Are even worse than finger drills on piano keyboards.
Worse, the string tuning on a six-string acoustic guitar
Is not quite the same as on a 4/5/6/7-string bass guitar.

It’s hard to get up on stage and routinely play
That same song, for the umpteenth time, in an inspiring way.
No wonder musicians seem to all suffer manic-depression,
From trying to play a full sets with unique expression.

All the advances in music equipment and technology
Bless and curse musicians like two-edged swords, you see,
Because all this work they do to sound like a maestro or genius
Can be counterfeited on a computer by a musical ignoramus.

But computer geeks won’t ever find that special place,
That fugue-like subtle sacred state of grace,
Which for brief moments is like deep meditation.
No, that’s the forbidden domain of the real musician.

To suggest that musicians all are just “gifted” naturally,
Is the absolute superlative worst insulting irony.
Truly, real musicianship can drive you nuts—
No, there really are no “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts”.
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