Industry and Intimacy: on connection, craft, and listening
Updated: Sep 9
NAMM was more or less what I expected, although knowing what to expect did very little to prepare me for actually being inside it. Sound spilled from one booth into the next, manufacturers competed for attention, and every turn offered another guitar, amplifier, pedal, or piece of technology asking you to stop and look. The scale was impressive, and so was the amount of craft gathered under one roof, but the sheer volume of it all created its own kind of momentum. There was always another room to explore, another sound coming from somewhere nearby, another reason to keep moving. I enjoyed it and found plenty to be inspired by, but I also became aware of what that pace was doing to my attention. I was surrounded by instruments designed to be heard, touched, and explored, yet the environment made it surprisingly difficult to stay with any one of them for very long. Somewhere inside all that motion, I started thinking less about how much there was to see and more about how differently we experience things when we actually give them our attention.
Wood Wire Volts was happening alongside NAMM, but on a completely different scale. The difference changed the way I moved through the room almost immediately. There was enough space for conversation, enough time to stay with an instrument, and no sense that something more important was waiting at the next booth. Instead of moving from product to product, I found myself talking with builders about why they made certain choices, what they were listening for, and how an instrument developed through their hands. I played guitars I had admired from a distance for years, many of which I had only known through photos and videos. Having them in my hands one after another revealed something that pictures and specifications never could. What separated them wasn't simply quality, because the quality was extraordinary across the room. It was specificity. Each instrument responded differently and asked for subtle adjustments in touch, patience, and the way I listened to what came back.
At some point I stopped evaluating the guitars altogether. I wasn't comparing them or deciding which one I preferred. I was simply playing, responding to what each instrument gave back, and realizing afterward how completely I had lost track of time. I remember looking up and wanting to find my friend Hank, because I knew he would understand the experience without requiring much explanation. There are certain musical experiences that become richer when shared with someone who already knows how to hear them.
One encounter brought all of this into focus at the Beetronics table. Their setup looked nothing like the typical pedal demonstration I had encountered elsewhere. Instead of standing alone in front of an orderly collection of pedals, switches, and knobs, I sat at a circular table surrounded by more effects than I could count. The builder put on headphones along with me, which immediately made me curious about what exactly we were about to do. My first instinct was predictable: I wanted access to the controls. I wanted to push the buttons, turn the knobs, and figure out what everything did - then I played a chord. Chorus, reverb, delay, and other textures opened around what I was playing, and almost immediately I started responding to the sound rather than thinking about the equipment producing it. My playing changed to suit the space I was hearing. Without saying anything, he reached over and adjusted a few controls. The sound shifted, so I adjusted with it. He heard what I did and changed something else, which sent my playing somewhere different again. We continued like that for a while, neither of us explaining much of anything. I wasn't testing pedals anymore, and he wasn't simply demonstrating them. We were listening and responding to one another through the equipment, building an improvised sonic landscape that neither of us could have planned in advance. What began as a gear demonstration had become a conversation. That experience stayed with me because it revealed something about craft that can be difficult to put into words. The most interesting thing he did wasn't showing me what the pedals could do. It was listening closely enough to hear what I was doing and shaping the environment around it. Craft doesn't announce itself - it listens back.
I teach more than fifty students each week, both in person and online, and after all these years I still think of myself as a student first. That isn't an attempt at humility. It feels more like a practical necessity. The longer I teach, the less interested I become in assuming I already know what a student needs before I've listened carefully enough to understand what is actually happening. Every student reflects something different back to me. One reveals tension I hadn't noticed before. Another exposes a habit in the way we approach rhythm. Someone else asks a question that forces me to reconsider an explanation I've used for years. Teaching stays alive because the people in front of me keep changing the conversation. That is part of what connected the builders at Wood Wire Volts with my own experience as a teacher. I watched people pay close attention to materials, sound, touch, and the person holding the instrument. At the Beetronics table, I experienced the same principle from the other side. He wasn't dictating what I should play, and I wasn't dictating what he should do with the sound. Each choice changed what became possible for the next one. Good teaching often works in much the same way. There are things I want a student to understand and skills I want them to develop, but teaching cannot simply be the delivery of information. I have to listen to what comes back. Sometimes the lesson needs more structure, sometimes less. Sometimes a student needs an explanation, and sometimes another explanation is exactly what is getting in the way. The conditions change because the person changes, and the teaching has to remain responsive enough to change with them.
NAMM showed me an enormous industry built around music, full of ambition, invention, expertise, and an almost absurd amount of gear. Wood Wire Volts changed the scale of my attention. It brought me closer to the people making the instruments and, in doing so, closer to the experience of playing them. What stayed with me wasn't a particular guitar or pedal. It was the relationship between craft and attention, and the realization that the deeper I went into either one, the more listening seemed to matter. That relationship sits at the center of my teaching and much of what I'm exploring in Guitar as a Mirror. Learning an instrument isn't simply a matter of accumulating information or finding a faster route toward improvement. The guitar keeps asking us to pay attention to touch, timing, sound, habit, expectation, and eventually ourselves. The longer I do this, the less interested I become in finding a way around that process.
I went to California expecting to spend a few days surrounded by guitars, gear, and the industry built around them. What I keep returning to is something much smaller: two people sitting at a table wearing headphones, listening closely enough to change what the other one did next.
Maybe that was the clearest demonstration of craft I encountered all weekend.
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