His neighbor, a retired drummer named Carl, banged on the wall. "Turn it down, Leo! Some of us sleep!"

He turned to "The Dissonance of the Hungry Gate." This one required a dropped tuning: A-D-G-C. The fingering was a contortionist's nightmare—a stretch that made his left hand cramp. He played it slowly. The bass didn't growl. It screamed . Not through the amp. The amp was off. The sound was inside his skull, a multi-layered roar of frustrated voices. The bedroom window fogged over from the inside. On the glass, condensation formed a single word, backwards: SERVE .

: Don't try to learn everything at once. Master one scale shape across the whole neck before moving on. Apply to a Groove