About the author

I started playing guitar when I was 15 or so and did it solely as a means of impressing other people. Unfortunately, I got good enough at it to impress non-musicians, and even some real musicians. All success was borne of a sense of insecurity. I could bluff my way through a solo, lay on some flash, life was good.

This went on into my late teens and early twenties when I just piled on the tension to hit moderate speeds for some flashy licks. But it was all musically empty, and, perhaps thankfully, I couldn’t get over the technical impossibilities I’d set up for myself. In my mid-twenties I stopped playing altogether. I started playing piano again (had played a bit as a kid), but again hit a technical wall early on, and that too fizzled out, despite my slightly-better intentions with that instrument.

A few years later, perhaps in my thirties, I picked up piano again. I finally realized how tension-ridden I was – literally sitting at the piano made my shoulders and neck sore, and my spine and arms were a riot of knots. I stumbled into some relaxation/technique gurus – Barbara Lister-Sink, Dorothy Taubman, Seymour Fink, Seymour Bernstein, György Sándor – and found some great ideas that made me start to rework my entire approach. I finally made some progress – not great, but a good start. I also found a bunch of practice techniques from them and various websites, notably pianostreet.com.

Having never really ditched my as-yet-unrealized inner shredder (alas), I started with up guitar again, trying to break through the technical barriers I’d so carefully built. I was also interested in playing different things such as Gypsy Jazz (Django) and fingerstyle (Tommy Emmanuel). I was still stuck with the same problems I’d had in my teens, until a light popped on and I started applying the piano relaxation techniques to guitar.

I’m still working on … everything … but have made more progress in a few short months with these ideas than I had over several years of work earlier. And since this information feels like it needs to get out to a wider audience, this book seemed like a natural thing to do.