Saw Tommy Emmanuel last night

Nice venue at Chapman College, in Orange. Took a guitar playing friend along because my wife isn't into Tommy and just guitar.

The opening act was an older couple who knew and hung around Chet Atkins. She sang and he played a pretty good guitar. My friend was impressed with him.

Tommy came on and started with a song the began slow and then just really accelerated to blazing fast. That got the crown going. He played a number of tunes I hadn't heard before and a good mix of what I would call his standards. I still like when he plays the slow ballads that are just nice tunes almost more than his impressive showman ones. He did plenty of both. He did Chet's song about his Dad, since Chet told him, a week before he died, to keep playing it. News Flash, Tommy became a US Citizen this year and is happy about it.

I was surprised at the average age of the patrons. I would peg it at 50 and above. I figured it would range wider.

Worth the price of admission, for sure. He does put on a show.

Hard for my mind to comprehend how guitarist can be so good. I think there is "natural talent" but the long hours and consistant desire to get better is a driving force that keeps them on top.

JohnW63 said:

Nice venue at Chapman College, in Orange....

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My alma mater! Seems like yesterday.... times 15,000.

Hey, I attended Chapman College classes aboard the USS Ranger in '74.

Tommy is amazing.

Stuball48 said:

Hard for my mind to comprehend how guitarist can be so good. I think there is "natural talent" but the long hours and consistant desire to get better is a driving force that keeps them on top.

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I remember watching a video of Eric Johnson playing Cliffs of Dover, because he ended up with my old Deluxe Reverb, and I didn't understand this at the time, but I think I do now.

There's only two possible explanations.

Sell your soul to the devil at the four corners.

Motor skills and muscle memory.

Learning a fingerpicking pattern is just learning a motor skill (and at this age, I'd just like to keep the ones I already have...), learn it at exceedingly low speeds, without a single distraction.

Once it takes, you'd be surprised how fast you can cook along until it falls apart, but your top speed will improve over time, as long as your arm/hand still work like they should.

I've had a wicked tennis elbow for the last two months, can't even hold a jug of water without pain. Could it have been way excessive guitar playing?

It's better now. Hell, I even played with a pick the other night.

And this crazy thing, the more you play, the better you get )

And this crazy thing, the more you play, the better you get )

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And Tommy has been playing since he was under 10, I think and doing it for 8 hours a day since. I think he takes a concert day off.

Even still he IS fast. On electric, his brother Phil was faster than Tommy. He has his string height VERY low. On some tunes, we could hear a string or two fretting out. I don't know if the non guitar players would have noticed.

Here is the Musco center web page. Check out the inside shots.
https://www.muscocenter.org/Online/...F14-4328232FBC1A,lC07FMqsaklOF5bmCr2+DFJXA0M=

Guildedagain said:

I remember watching a video of Eric Johnson playing Cliffs of Dover, because he ended up with my old Deluxe Reverb, and I didn't understand this at the time, but I think I do now.

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Thank you for the reminder.
Gonna have to pull out my cassette of Ah Via Musicom this weekend.