Mike Jones Music Lessons

This morning a student and I were working on songwriting, something I love to teach! Creativity is an important skill in life, and needs to be practiced. These hints are a good way to get you in a good frame of mind for being creative, whether than means writing lyrics, coming up with a killer riff, interesting chord progressions, or feeling free to doing some improv solos.

Vintage amp sighting at Music4Life! It’s my 1989 Marshall JCM 800 2210 that I’ve had for over 25 years! It was fun cranking up my amp at D.O.V. practice as a fill in guitarist. 100w tube amps are LOUD!!!!!!!!

Check out the inner workings of my Fender Nashville B bender guitar! Just doing a little maintenance on it and thought I’d show the guts. The B string is connected by this lever to my guitar strap so it allows me to do country style pedal steel bends when I dip my guitar wearing my guitar strap. Cool! 🎸

The only time you must not fail is the last time you try.

Look who got a Division I rating for his trumpet performance! Great job Nathan! 🎺

Other people see the wonderful performance, but no one but you ever sees all the hard work. You know how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned.

My Marshall JCM 800 made a new friend yesterday. It’s there to plug into if you want to jam in the band room in Cedar Rapids! What’s your favorite amp?

Few adults play musical instruments, and even fewer do so in a group, Caroline Mimbs Nyce wrote in 2024. What health benefits might they be giving up? https://theatln.tc/oglkQfzJ

“Kids receive plenty of music education, but as people get older, they fall out of practice. Many stop picking up their instrument,” Nyce writes. “This is unfortunate, in part because plenty of research shows that adults could benefit from playing music.”

Playing music helps build larger brain networks and new pathways. “Musicians tend to have better attention than nonmusicians,” Nyce continues. “Banging on a drum or tooting a horn can also relieve stress, reduce burnout, and help with anxiety and depression. For older people specifically, research has shown potential cognitive benefits along with a possible decrease in dementia risk.”

Adults may be skipping out in part because music education is associated with childhood and coursework. And after people grow out of music education in their childhood, they tend to think that music is a special talent, Nyce writes, not something that just anybody can learn.

“Of course, people are busy; they simply may not have the luxury of sitting down to study Bach once a week, much less the money to pay for an instrument or private lessons,” Nyce writes.

Playing music in groups has additional benefits, such as allowing adults to feel more trusting of and connected to one another, and to the world in general. But while it’s easy to go to a park or gym and pull together a game of pickup basketball, “piecing together people at the same skill level to play a concerto or even just jam in a garage is another matter.”

Nyce herself recently began to play the recorder. “I plan to keep learning,” she writes, “not because it strengthens my neuropathways per se (though I certainly don’t mind that), but because making music, even when it’s silly—perhaps especially when it’s silly—is just a whole lot of fun.” https://theatln.tc/oglkQfzJ

📸: Photo Media / ClassicStock / Getty

Apparently Mr. Capo is too close to a realistic human to use in Sora videos. I guess his wacky shenanigans will have to stay at lessons! 🎸