Saturday 12 June 2010

"Och it'll do ... Och no it WON'T do!"

When I was at school we had a physics teacher called Jock.  Once upon a time I knew his real name but he went by "Jock" to all the pupils, and all his colleagues.  He was, of course, Scottish.  Among the many things he was famous for, along with being especially susceptible to red herrings in class, along with calling all pupils "Jimmy", and along with an absolute manic insistence on ties being tied properly, was his rather unique approach to assemblies.  The one that stuck in the head was his exhortation, whenever we were tempted to say "Och it'll do" to reply to ourselves "Och no it WON'T do!".  This rather unique approach to "If a job's worth doing it's worth doing well" was rather successful in its mission.  The two phrases became catch-phrases for several years, along with the very bad fake Scottish accents they had to be said in.  I still remember it now and I would guarantee that a good proportion of my classmates would also.

Yesterday I finished the bifurcation of guitar parts with what I described as "noodling" on the electric guitar.  Now noodling is all very well in it's place, but to be honest I was making do with sub-standard noodling.  This troubled me.  I resolved that "Och no it WON'T do".

Unfortunately my guitar playing ability is not as great as my ambition.  Later in the project I will be attempting to create blistering guitar solos, but for now I was content to create a new, different tune to the same chords.  That is something I can do, and the result is far more satisfying in my mind.  I cannot do it flashily and fast, but at least I can do what I can do, and I can make sure I do it well.

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