polly want a cracker

Last night The Mighty Sam gave me chords to:

• Man of Constant Sorrow
  
• Well All Right
  
• Gloria
  
• Lola (at least the beginning part)
  
• Polly

For "Well All Right" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" he introduced me to the capo. I actually knew what a capo was before but this was the first time I've ever played with one. It's rather odd. When you get way up the neck the frets get a lot closer together.

But there's a way to play "Man of Constant Sorrow" without a capo - you just slide the F chord up six frets, then up two more, then back to F. That's the whole song.

I'm quite pleased with being able to play "Polly." Now I need to learn all the words.

I also figured out the chords to "Laid" over the weekend. When I revealed this to The Mighty Sam, he got mighty angry. He thinks I'm weird for liking that song so much.

Spent most of tonight working on a brief for our civil division, but I still took half an hour to play through the additions to my repertoire. There's a beautiful mindfulness that happens while playing the guitar. It's very Zen.

like that episode of TNG

I was practicing.

The Mighty Sam said, "What are you playing?"

"A song by Phil Ochs," I said. "'The Bells.' It has a Bm and F#m in it, so I fake them."

"Nah, don't do that. You may as well learn the barre chords now. Screw those fakes."

He taught me Bm and F#m. Pretty cool, especially since they actually sounded ok when I played them. I've NEVER been able to make a barre chord sound right. So that was VERY exciting. He also showed me a different way to play A7.

Sam went off to do some Sam-things, and I practiced those for a while.

Soon, The Mighty Sam emerged from the hallway with a paper in his hand. "Let me show you this song," he said. It was "Reeling in the Years" by Steely Dan.

It has a lot of werid stuff in it. Sam taught me the Bm7 (barre chord) and Gmaj7 (easy) and F#m7 (barre chord), and then there's this very weird chord in there - a Bbdim7. Sam worked out a way to transition between the A7 and the weird Bbdim7, and he said, "That's pretty advanced." It seemed straightforward to me though: Play the A7 the old way, with index and middle fingers on the B and D strings, then slide them up one fret and put pinky and ring fingers on the E and G strings.

I practiced that for a little bit, then the whole song.

"That Steely Dan song is kind of advanced," Sam said.

I said, "Yeah, but it's good to start working on this. I'm going to have to learn it eventually."

The Mighty Sam said, "It's kind of like that episode on TNG when Q flings the Enterprise way out into deep space, when they first encounter the Borg, and they barely get out of it alive."

I am very happy to be learning barre chords already. And even happier that I can make them sound more or less ok!

practice makes better

I practiced a little bit tonight, even though I didn't feel like getting started. I figured I'd just get through a quick song or two, just to be able to say I practiced today.

It's funny though... once I get started I stop thinking about time and just practice. I play a song once, and I feel like I could do it better, so I play it again, and then again. And then I go to the next song and play that three or four times. And before I know it 45 minutes or an hour have passed.

It's kind of neat how, even though my chord changes seem very slow and awkward when I first sit down to practice, they get easier and faster after I've been playing for a few minutes.

Sam came upstairs while I was practicing tonight. He said, "You're a funny little elf."

I know he means it in a good way. Because a couple of days ago, while I was practicing, he said, "You're doing really well. You're doing better than ANY guitar student I've ever had."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes," said Sam, "and it's because you PRACTICE."

It's been a month now. Well, a month since my first lesson. Three weeks of solid practice. I'm still not a Guitar Hero. I am no prodigy, no idiot savant. I have to work to get what I want. But because I am practicing, I am getting better, little by little.

compliment

Practiced guitar for a while tonight. Sam complimented me on my progress, and how much I've been practicing. That was really nice. I had been frustrated because I am not already a guitar superstar genius. Fortunately for me, The Mighty Sam has the knack of saying the right thing at the right time.

you've got to hide your love away

I have now been practicing guitar for two weeks. I missed one day of practice last week.

The Mighty Sam brought out the electric guitar and a little amp and told me to switch back and forth between it and the classical, so I've been doing that.

I noticed a tendency to play certain chords by putting down one finger at a time. I was particularly bad at that with C, especially if I played a C after a D. Sam told me to practice this by repeatedly tapping the chord on the strings, without using my right hand at all. This is very boring practice, but it does seem to help.

I am now able to play Fs pretty well most of the time - they sound like real chords instead of muffled messes, unless I've been practicing for a while so that my hand is getting tired.

I found some chords on the internet for "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", which is one song I've been wanting to be able to play forever.

Here's something I've noticed about chords and tabs on the internet: A lot of them are the same. One person comes up with some chords or tabs and they post them, and then every other chord/tab web site copies them.

So I found "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" in several places, and it was all the exact same thing, word-for-word, chord-for-chord.

I played it, and it was all good, except the chorus. The chorus was G-C-Dsus-D-D6-D. I played that, but the D6 sounded all wrong! And because everyone copied the same tabs, I couldn't find an alternative.

So I messed around with the guitar for while and soon I found the right chord. I didn't know what the chord was but I could tell it was the right one. Sam had shown me a series of D chords that you can do with very little movement - D, D6, Dsus, and this one other one. It was the one other one that sounded right.

I was SO EXCITED when I got it. Sam was off playing golf so it was just me and the animals in the house. I yelled YES! at the top of my lungs and ran around the house laughing. It was great.

the guitar diet

I have found that there is a really nice fringe benefit to practicing guitar: I don't feel like, or even think about, food while I'm practicing. Since I mainly practice in the evenings, which is when I'm most likely to eat when I'm not actually in need of fuel, I've seem to have broken myself of the habit of mindless eating. Pretty much effortlessly.

Well, not entirely effortlessly. Practicing guitar requires effort. But it's a different kind of effort. A good kind, not a bitter kind.

A couple of those excess pounds have been lost too.

Now I think I'll practice a little more, then go read in bed.

take the skinheads bowling

The Mighty Sam played a couple of chords: C, Fmaj7, over and over. "Do you know what this is?" he asked. "Listen," he said. "Think back to your first year of college."

I listened.

I listened some more.

Finally I said, "Take the skinheads bowling?"

The Mighty Sam laughed. It wasn't the song he was thinking of, but it was the same chords. "I'll stop the world and melt with you," he sang.

I laughed too.

The chords for the chorus of "Take the Skinheads Bowling" are G-F-C.

He said, "You know what other song uses those chords?" (meaning C-Fmaj7) He started playing, "Best of My Love" by the Eagles. He played it for a while, and then said, "And do you know what you do next?"

We both played and sang TAKE THE SKINHEADS BOWLING, TAKE THEM BOWLING!