Bridge the Gap

Three days have gone by, all filled with the same inanity found within the majority of days throughout the year. Unless you're a pirate, treasure-seeker, ninja or all three but that is too much awesome to fill a single body. The awesomenicity levels would obviously be too imbalanced in ratio to the mass of the body and the very fibres of the body would.. well I won't get into it. The science is far more gruesome than anyone should ever encounter. I had planned to try adjusting the bridge on my guitar (the piece of plastic at the bottom that holds the strings up from the body.) I may still do this, but I don't want to risk taking too much off. Oh well. I'll try anyway... (hurray for motivation!!!)
One of my favorite activities is making the minor tweaks and meticulous adjustments required on a guitar to make it function to the best of its ability. This also makes it so that the actual playing of the guitar is much more... endurable.
Not many people without musical ability understand the intricacies involved in making your instrument become the extension of your being.
This is true for all instruments. Drums, guitar (bass included), clarinet, trumpet, violin, even singing.
They all start as a sort of clay for you to either let stand in the basic shape of the object-in-reference to perform with mediocre quality, or shape into an ethereal form, sharing the inner glow of the illumination of your soul to produce a sound capable of making Teletubbies cry, babies giggle, giraffes dance, Lincoln shave and other related events.

In lieu of my writer's block, I have been working to hone my skills after going quite some time without practice or writing. I moved to Utah in July of last year but previous to this, I had spent quite a bit of time with quite a bit of time on my hands. I dedicated my efforts to learning about the recording arts (as it is as much of an art as the music itself, not to mention a science in its own right). I had set up my own small home studio in an attempt to pull a few of my songs together. In the hustle and bustle of moving to Utah and establishing a life in a state in which I had never been, I had forgotten a small detail; if I don't keep practicing, then motivation disappears along with the callouses on my fingertips. It would be about a month and a half before I even thought about picking a guitar up. I had been asked to be in my cousin's band playing the music I play now, and the shock of suddenly playing again was not the most comfortable thing I have experienced.
If one does not take proper measurements before playing, especially after taking a hiatus, then one can do some extensive damage to one's self. For anyone just beginning guitar or even anyone that would consider themselves "amatuer," I would highly recommend remembering to do warm-ups and stretches regularly. Even if you don't plan on practicing or playing a song, just pick up the guitar randomly throughout the week and just do some exercises. You can do them as little as 5-10 mins at a time. This may seem like a fruitless activity and after a while you will find that they are quite boring and not doing anything for you.
This is a great sign for two reasons:
1) You are getting bored because the exercises have become so fluid and natural to you, which means that you can apply the principles of the exercises to the songs you play as well as the songs you write. It will feel like you've always known how to play that way and to others it will look effortless.
2) Exercises are never-ending. You can always speed them up, add flourishes, and slow them down to work on accuracy, etc.

The reason I stress the exercising, stretching and warming-up is because the damage that I mentioned earlier that one can do to one's self can range from having a sore hand to even crippling your hand. Now, keep in mind that you would almost have to try to cripple your hand so you shouldn't be wary of playing guitar for fear of this. The more serious injuries usually occur in fast playing, but if you can play that fast, then you would know what you're doing which means you would be stretching and warming up before you seriously get into it ;)

Here are some links to good warm-ups:
Jazz Guitar (good technique builders that apply to all genres)
Guitar Lesson World (several different areas for excersize. It has pictures!!!)
Cyberfret.com (I personally love this place. I've linked directly to the technique section, but I would suggest browsing around. It has just about everything.)
Ultimate Guitar (this guy has a really good pre-game warm-up going on)

These are just a couple of places that really have stood out to me or places that I have trusted in the past. I encourage you to search for yourselves, deep inside your interwebs to find self-satisfying programs of progression. Tune in next time: I'll go into guitars themselves. It'll be an epic struggle of life and death as I try to escape! *Insert dramatic outro music*

Life is an adventure... but so is music :)