Steve Kilgallon
This actually hurts. Not the deep, existential pain of the bluesman howling about a dead dog and departed wife, but an annoying ache in three fingers on my left hand. ‘‘It’s a surprisingly physical instrument,’’ nods Sam Browne, who bears deep digital calluses. And thus the first hurdle for the learner guitar player: exerting enough force upon the strings to make it tuneful, not twangy.
I’ve never even held a guitar, but for my optimistic editor, this is no obstacle to learning to play – inside two hours – that classic Kiwi pub anthem Ten Guitars.
Browne, lead guitar and singer in Kiwi rock band Black River Drive, is more realistic and declares he’ll be happy if he teaches me a couple of chords and how to strum. By happy chance, Ten Guitars – a 1967 B-side for English crooner Engelbert Humperdink that became so intrinsic to our identity it has appeared on stamps, in a world-record ukulele attempt, inspired a Michael Parekowhai sculpture and been hamfistedly strummed by John Key – isn’t the most complex song around: only four chords are required.
Browne hasn’t played Ten Guitars much as his corporate clients don’t ask for it (his most hated request: Ten Thousand Miles) but he has 18 years’ head start. He began playing the guitar at 13, becoming immediately obsessed: ‘‘It was so addictive. I remember thinking this is the most fun thing I’ve ever done’’, but stumbled into playing professionally through a friend. ‘‘When you start playing in bands it does impress the girls, so it is quite easy to stick it out . . . I made what I would earn in a week of teaching in one night. Then we would go out and spend it all on cocktails. That’s me ever since, not that I spend it all on cocktails now.’’
Ironically, to avoid having to teach, he couples Black River Drive’s original material with the lucrative corporate circuit, writes advertising music and runs band-booking website findaband. And yet he’s a patient tutor.
First he shows me how to sit (straight-backed, on the edge of the seat), how to hold the guitar (resting on one knee, almost vertical) and indeed the pick (pointy bit facing in), and then where to stick my middle fingers on the fret to play the chords A and E while exerting enough pressure but not touching other strings, the two reasons a note sounds bad. ‘‘Give it all you’ve got,’’ he says. ‘‘It will take more than you think.’’ It does.
Then he shows me the strum pattern: a relaxed, crescent-shaped rhythm (down, down, down, up, down, up) and even attempts to get me to transition between the chords, practising forming the shapes in the air before dropping my fingers on to the guitar. We manage to get the strum going, and what he calls a ‘‘pretty passable’’ E. ‘‘Not bad: I have heard worse,’’ he says generously.
Given another fortnight, we would learn the remaining chords, practise the transitions relentlessly and work on a natural strum, not my ‘‘rigid and haphazard’’ version. By then, he reckons, I could thrash out Ten Guitars at a party that might enthuse if the listeners were suitably intoxicated. We get nowhere near that, not least because my fingers are hurting. Instead, we settle for listening to Browne expertly finger-pick a melodic version of Englebert’s finest. Two days later, my fingers are still completely numb.