If you read my previous post, you’d know I broke a guitar
string, and I’m sure you’ve been wondering if it got fixed. It did. All it took
was taking pulling off the bridge pin and the old string, putting on the new
string with the bridge pin. Then the new string was stuck through and wound
around the capstan until the string was tight. Now you’ve got a brand new
string!
I've gathered some knowledge on the guitar over the last week, for starters I’ve
learned how to tune the guitar. I use a
tuner, so after I figured out which way to twist the knob to make the string tighter
or looser tuning became easy. I would just keep twisting the knob until the tuner
lit up green. As far as playing goes, I’ve learned each individual note, and my C chord is literal fire.
On top of that lit C scale, I’ve also tried my hand at playing
some chords. I started off with C and G7, since these two were very similar to
each other. It shouldn’t be too hard, just press in the right place and strum, right?
Well no. What happened to me was that while pressing one string, my finger
would accidentally touch another string making the chords sound off. To solve
this dilemma of mine I’d looked at this video:
After applying the tips mentioned in the video I started to
play chords clearly more often, so I started to learn D, A, and E. Despite my efforts so far, it’s still going to take some practice before I can switch between
chords quickly. (right now it takes me a few seconds to set up and play a
chord.)
Anyway, while I was having trouble with chords, I had also found an easy version of Jingle Bells without chords. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard so I started to play,
(My brother pops his head in like half way through. Doesn't know how to keep his head out of the shot.)
I’ll continue to improve it, and then move onto a song with
chords. (Probably Streets of Laredo, and I have got to find a song to play after
that.) Anyway, I’ve got to go eat some dinner now. I’ll let you know more about
how I progress with the songs and chords next week.
Looks great Evan. I like how you are talking about the details of the scales and chords. I am playing the saxophone, and I just learned how to play jingle bells too! Keep working, hopefully you can learn more songs next time!
ReplyDeleteMaking some nice progress man! From experience, I can tell you that your fingers will start to hurt from playing those scales and chords. (If they haven't already). But this is just a crucial step in strengthening your fingers, and playing all the more effortlessly. Switching chords just comes with practice. Try to find similarities between the fingerings of certain chords, and you will realize that changing from one to the other is not as hard as it seems. Its all just muscle memory. After learning just a few chords, you will already know a crap ton of songs to play too so have some fun! If you got any questions hmu!
ReplyDeletethe playing of jingle bells sounded really great, already you're making a lot of progress! keep it up! you seem to be unsure of what songs might be good for you to play... in my (limited) experience of guitar (and by limited i mean like I played for a month and a half and then quit), I have found that Taylor Swift songs are extremely easy to pick up. They're pretty much all four chords (basic chords at that), and the chords essentially just go in order and repeat themselves.
ReplyDeleteKeep working at this and I'm sure you'll see even greater improvement very soon, good luck!