Aretha Franklin says her bit at the Berklee 2006 commencement after a very inspiring speech by Melissa Ethridge. Both received honorary doctorates that year.

I have to say it’s been a tumultuous, exciting, devastating, joyous, and in general an incredible 5 years, a period which I would say has been marked by incredible personal and musical growth. They say the real learning happens after college, and boy they ain’t kidding.

I didn’t pursue music whole-heartedly after college. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The funny thing is that at the time I was upset to learn that it might take 5-10 years to accomplish virtually anything in any career. On top of this, there was student loan debt and the incredible pressure of feeling like I had to decide right away what I planned on doing for the rest of my life. This was hard to stomach.

Berklee Commencement 2006. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen more people unsure of their futures in one place before.

Fear has a funny way of clouding our judgement and impairing our decision making. So despite my newly acquired (and very expensive) training I spent little time on music outside of private teaching and occasional gigs as they came my way. After stints in sales and sales management and co-running a small business, I finally snapped out of my funk and realized that my career goals have changed very little since I was a teenager – that deep inside, I really wanted to get advanced degrees in music and teach, compose, perform, produce, and so on. Always have, and damn the musician bug, I probably always will.

If there’s something to be learned, it’s this: all was not lost, and the skills I gained in other fields have helped me tremendously in my music career. Those initial experiences provided me with valuable insight and experience in areas such as effective communication, how to contact “leads” and close “sales” (prospective gigs), as well as some ideas on inspiring and motivating others through study and practice of the subject (I highly suggest reading 100 Ways to Motivate Others by Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson). I learned how to run a business, and there is no bigger truth in the music industry than “you are your own business!”

So have I set the world on fire? Worked on the music for a Hollywood film? Written a McDonalds jingle that will pay me $50,000 this year? Won a Grammy? No. Not yet anyway. However, my career is in full swing: I’m almost done with a master’s degree, have a busy private teaching studio with a multitude of talent, perform with some incredible musicians, and am developing a large and varied body of compositions. For this I am incredibly grateful, as I’ve learned that the journey is to be relished at least as much as the destination. So if it takes me another 5-10 years to take my career to the next level, I welcome it!

To the recent swarm of music school graduates, all I can say to you is just GO FOR IT. Don’t allow your judgement to be clouded by fear or distractions. And if you are still wanting to become a professional musician, don’t become downtrodden by temporary distractions or diversions of your energy and focus. Take everything along the way as a learning experience and figure out how to apply it to your own music careers.

However, the common buffoon is not entirely to blame. Classical guitarists themselves have (largely) done a wonderful job of doing everything in their power to resist originality, personality, and the process of championing their craft to the general public. This is in stark contrast to jazz and contemporary musicians, who are required to create original material, develop a unique persona, and shove it in every face they can simply to exist.

One of my personal goals is to expand a classical guitar repertoire that, while containing many gems, has too much stale and redundant material that fails to engage listeners. While a lot of it makes delightful background music, there isn’t nearly enough that is exciting, engaging, interesting, and appealing to today’s listeners. Most great classical guitar music was penned in the 18th and 19th centuries, and not a whole hell of a lot has happened since. Of course there are some exceptions: Andrew York, Ralph Towner, Roland Dyens, and many others have created some incredible music while pushing the boundaries of what can be considered classical guitar music. Others like my colleague Larry Cooperman have made a career out of being on the cutting edge of avant-garde art music for the guitar. Larry has a lot of wonderful insights on all this stuff I’m blabbing on at his website, for exampe his review of Prester John’s CD here.

A portrait of Segovia by Manuel Diez Rollan

Part of the problem is the Segovia tradition. It’s awfully hard to say anything negative about the man who proliferated classical guitar music and refined the technique upon which every classical guitarist’s foundation is laid. Still, Andres Segovia was a purist, a musical snob, and one who refused to perform anything that sounded too modern, too dissonant, or too different from his vision of what guitar music should be. This mindset has trickled down to many guitarists, who themselves stick to the same old rep instead of pushing their boundaries. I wonder what the world would be like if doctors were trained this way. Forget cutting edge research, we’d still have a bunch of folks prescribing the use of leeches.

If there is any positive to take from this, it’s that there is ample room for innovation. Some ideas – the use of jazz harmony, improvisation, electric/steel-string instruments, and effects, to name a few – have long been standard fare in the guitar world outside of the CG bubble, yet are in their infancy in the classical guitar realm. It’s time that more guitarists embrace the 21st century and utilize all that is at their disposal to further their art. Doing so would be good for the art and artists, and even better for the everyday buffoon who could surely benefit from a touch of accessible, interesting contemporary art music in his or her life.

The Los Angeles Electric 8, playing classical music as an electric guitar octet

Which brings me to my main point. Part of my fantabulous website designed for me by Kristian Habenicht of Kreeyativ is a handy-dandy blog page. I used this feature sparingly in 2010. Looking back at my year’s blog posts, I realized that there was nothing there that I wanted to continue sharing. The new year brings a clean slate so I cleaned house, so to speak.

I’ve made a conscious decision to use my blog to share my musical life with as many people who care (or don’t) as possible. You might also catch me writing about happenings around the web, and perhaps the occasional rant/rave/delightfully cogent note regarding the NHL and the San Jose Sharks. Music and hockey . . . those are two things that most everyone could use more of in their lives. Hopefully I’ve figured out how to rig this bad boy to show up on my website as well as on Facebook Notes, so feel free to comment on either forum.

Finally, I hope to make some changes to my website in the coming weeks. I’m working on creating more audio and video clips as well as photos. Quite frankly I also want to cut out some of the uber-cheeseball photos – like the one on my blog page as of the time of this writing – as well. This holds true despite the undeniable fact that I look great in a mock turtleneck. Better than the average joe, by my estimation.

All the while, I will appreciate you humoring me with your readership. Thanks and Happy New Year!