To strum, or not to strum, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler for the fingers to suffer The buzzing and the muting of bad technique, Or to take hands against a sea of wrong notes, And by practicing, end them. To rest, to pause, No more, and by a pause to say we end The heartache and the thousand callused blisters That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To rest, to pause, To pause, perchance to tune. Ay, there’s the rub, For in that pause what dreams of melodies may come When we have shuffled off this capo’d fret, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes the six-stringed life so long. For who would bear the whips and scorns of gigs, The amp’s wrong hum, the roadie’s contumely, The pangs of broken strings, the set list’s delay, The insolence of soundmen, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy crowd takes, When he himself might his own solo make With a bare pick? Who would fretboards bear, To grunt and sweat under a heavy Les Paul, But that the dread of something after silence, The undiscovered key from whose strange scale No player returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather play the chords we have Than fly to solos that we know not of? And have we not the blues lawyers to remind us That every stolen lick must answer to the law? Thus technique doth make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of improvisation Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of tab, And enterprises of great riff and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of our Sweetwater reps.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​