Sunday, March 8, 2009

i've got blisters on my fingers!

The Mighty Sam gave me a guitar lesson last night.

I'm pretty happy with how it went. I started playing on his electric guitar, and then switched to the classical guitar. I would like to eventually be able to play a big steel string acoustic guitar, so even though the classical guitar is harder to play I like the feel of it much better than the electric.

Sam made song charts for these songs:

  • Heart of Gold
  • No New Tale to Tell
  • Pictures of Matchstick Men
  • Last Dance with Mary Jane
  • You Got Lucky
  • Breakdown
  • I Won't Back Down


He also taught me some of "Everybody Hurts" (but I don't have a chart for it). And I found a chart on the intarwebs for "American Pie", which I would probably only want to play if I sang the Weird Al lyrics. A lot of folks were croakin'/The battle droids were broken...

I had made up a little chart for myself so that I could build some chords. I showed it to The Mighty Sam, who pronounced me "smart."

I now have a blister on my right thumb from strumming.

It was fun though. Given that it was only my second lesson, I was pretty happy with how I did. I took guitar lessons for about 3 months in the late 80s, so I remembered a little bit of what I learned then, but I also recall that in three months of lame-ass practicing I never got very good at transitioning from chord to chord and could never manage an F.

Being more disciplined in my middle-age makes a lot of things more rewarding than they were in my foolish youth.

No comments:

Post a Comment