My name is Spencer Westwood, but my friends call me Spenny or Spen. I’ve been playing guitar for over twenty years on and off. I went to Music College and then did a degree in Computer Engineering. Funny what’s a music college student doing computer engineering – well I got interested in the electronics side; building and repairing synths and amps. To learn more about how modern synths worked, I needed to understand more about the inside of computers. Hence the Computer Engineering.
I’ve played on stages in the UK and USA and I’ve recorded and produced demo tapes, roadied for other bands, and all that fun stuff – All as a hobby.
At the beginning of my working career I had a choice – either the music business or the computer business via computer animation. I chose the computer graphics and animation business and the music stayed a hobby albeit an important one. Since then I’ve had a variety of jobs, mostly IT related.
When I started playing, I had help. My dad played guitar in a band in the sixties - a “shadows” clone called the Palamino's. He taught me how to hold the guitar, how to strum, some basic chords and how to hold a plectrum (wrongly so I later found out). He taught me how to read basic music and charts. I had a head start
About four years ago, quite by accident, I got into the whole self-help and personal development thing that was sweeping through corporate cultures like a virus. Not content with skimming the surface that the few compulsory courses I attended taught, I got more and more interested. Especially on things that would increase my learning speed.
Anyway to cut a long story short, I ended up taking some courses on Neuro Linguistic Programming, which allowed me to discover what was stopping me from being my best in all sorts of pursuits. During one of the courses, I chose musical applications for most of the self-help exercises. I learnt some very useful techniques that have helped improve my guitar playing and musical abilities generally.
After that I spent quite a while searching for articles, books, tapes etc. that would allow me to find out even more musical applications of this ‘mind’ stuff. There wasn’t one book out there that specifically covered guitarists. Yes there was one about using this ‘stuff’ for music in general. There was one written for guitar teachers to help their students – but no book specifically for guitarists, especially one written by a primarily self taught guitar player.
That’s when it struck me – I’ll write a book. I’ll learn even more in the process, I’m sure there are some other people out there that would want to know how to use this mental stuff , specifically for guitar playing.
I selected or invented as many useful techniques as I could. I tried them out, adjusted them and then finally wrote them down for others to follow – this book is the result!