A Month Past being the Newbie

gadlaw · 2005-10-28T22:18:27Z

Hi againguys, I posted a month or so ago right after I had purchased my first guitar, a nice Blueridge acoustic, and right before I started my first lessons. I'm that 40 odd year old guy who never played anything. I've loaded up on a few books, been buying the various guitar magazines, going to lessons weekly, and of course been practicing. I guess I wrote a rather wordy and long first post. I admit my enthusiasm ran away with me. I remember the words of encouragement and mostly I remember the guys who said shut up and start practicing. So I shut up and started practicing. I think I shut up long enough now. I expected to have aching fingers. Fingertips only really hurt for a few three weeks or so before they hardened up. The real longer term pain at least for me has been the stretching out of those stubby little guys and the time it's taken to strengthen my fingers. Happily I have noticed that my fingers on the frets are stronger than when I started and they are stretching out as required for various chords. I've gone from 'oh no not the A chord or G chord' to 'oh good, the A chord or G chord.' A long way to go but I'm walking the path.I'm really glad that I have a teacher. Michael is a tall, bald professional player and instructor who has the magic. Magic being hard work + practice + time. He'll sit there and listen to a song with guitar in hand, play what he just heard and then write it down so I can work it. You can read all the books in the world and watch all the videos but sometimes you do need to be able to get hands on help to get you to understand things that aren't clicking. I couldn't get strumming figured out to save my life until he sat there and walked me through it. I'm still working my way up to become a beginner. I might have mentioned that I'm slow on some things. The first song (my choice) that I've been working on is Johnny Cash's version of Hurt and while I'm lucky that it has only a few various chords and the simple intro to work out it's been a bear for me. I'm happy to say now that I'm working on the speed of chord changes and it's recognizable when I play it. Great progress from starting at zero. Second song I'm working with is another Cash song - Give My Love To Rose and it's coming much quicker than the first one. I'm also happily taking my newfound ability to read tabs to be able to pick out the beginning of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, Blackbird by the Beatles and even a bit of Stairway to Heaven. Weak I know but unbelievably cool as far as I'm concerned. More later but I gotta go practice. :-)

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gadlaw

(@gadlaw)

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Joined: 21 years ago

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Topic starter 29/10/2005 12:35 pm

Congrats, gadlaw.

Thank you kindly sir. How's your twinkle twinkle song coming? :-)

Enjoy your karma, after all you earned it.
http://www.gadlaw.com

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