Practice Space and "Legit"

We've been having the basement finished over the past month, and as the work has progressed, I've been getting more and more excited at the thought of having a dedicated space (a corner of the basement) where I could set up my gear and keep my guitars and amps, and a place where I could hopefully practice without bothering anyone else in the house.

Late last week, the work was completed with the installation of the carpet, and I had a guitar and an amp down there just as soon as I could. So far it's exceeded all my hopes and expectations.

The first thing I did was turn my amp up louder than I would normally play and played for five minutes. Darling Wife said she could barely hear me, and didn't even have to turn up the volume on the TV. Both girls were studying upstairs in their bedrooms, and also said they could barely hear me - that it might disturb them if they were trying to sleep, but it wouldn't disturb them from studying.

I'm not even close to fully set up - I have one guitar and one amp down there, and no furniture. But I can turn on my amp, start up the looper, play a chord progression, and practice improvising over it to my heart's content. And I've been doing a lot of it, and already feel like I'm much more comfortable with extended improvising. More on exactly what I'm working on in my next post.

I was down there playing on Thursday night, and Sarah came down to look at my setup. Her first reaction was that it looked sad for me to be playing all alone in one corner of a huge space. I understand that - but we'll work on filling in that big space over the coming months. But her next reaction, after listening to me play for a minute, was that I sound "legit". I'll take that as the compliment I think it was meant to be, as my interests more often than not get eye rolls from the teenagers in my house.

"Legit"? I'll take it.