that sounded cool

Capo on the 3rd fret... chords, strummed with your thumb, slowly E E E G G A. Cool eh?
Then I picked up the pick and made it louder and faster (strumming down and up) and angrier and then slowed it back to nothing.

Jason came by and tweaked with the tone controls on my amp and I told him to go away because it was my creation and he couldn't tweak it :-)

that's my creativity for the day.

Faster, and more confidant

My chord changes are getting faster, and less plinky and I can feel that I'm more confidant with where my fingers are going. I can actually look at where i want my fingers to go and then just move them and they actually go.

I love this, seeing it all come together. I love the feeling down inside of me when it goes right, and the feeling in my fingertips when I'm done practicing. Josh took this picture for me. It's not what I was trying for when I asked a 7yo to do a photo shoot in the back yard for me, but it's good in a deep 'thinking' kind of way. I suppose it's more ME than what I was trying to do anyway.

Tuned

Ahhh, $20 electronic tuner, much easier than bribing the 13yo to tune my guitar. And now my chords sound ok, and I was right about which string was wrong.:-)

Changing Chords

Today I was changing back and forth to and from the chords I know. E-A-A7-D-G-G7-C-A and back to E. And it was going better. I tried C a couple times but oddly I can get G7 just fine but not C yet. I have to pause, and then get my fingers arched better because the first strum still plinks. And then I tried strumming down and up, and it went ok. I still get tangled at times but it was a bit smother. And it's so hot today that I had to stop, the amp and the lights make more heat and the guitar was sticking to my sweaty arms. Here's a decent pic of my 'gear' (LOL). The guitar is a dark blue that you can see the woodgrain through.

Continuing on with life...

I’ve decided not to just let this blog go now that my Spouse has returned to normal life so for right now you’re going to have to listen to me babble about learning the Guitar that I bought back in March.

It’s going slowly, to say the least. Slowly is the operative word, I don’t have music in me, I'm forcing it in, and it will be slow. My friend and I took my guitar in to Music 6000 just to get it looked at and get a minor problem fixed and the guitar tech hooked it up to a giant amp and just wailed away on it while chatting with us about the guitar. And it's something I'm envious of . It's probably just as hard for someone like that who has music in them to understand what I'm dealing with as it is for me to understand how someone like him can just pick something up and play it like that. I’ll never be able to do that. I’m lucky to barely understand 'key of'. :-)) And yes, it's frustrating as all hell. For some reason I want this badly, to be able to play music. I want it way down deep inside of me and one thing having cancer taught me was to just DO things. Why my soul wants this is beyond me, it's not for me to understand, I'm just along for the ride anyway.

I’m doing ok, with ‘slowly’, although I’d love to be able to actually play something recognizable. Ok, I take that back, I can play Happy Birthday, all on one string from the Tab. (LOL). And I can play a few chords: in the key of D I can play D, G, and A7. I don’t totally understand ‘key’ but I can see that those chords sound better together. I can also play A, and C reliably, although my C chords are still ‘plinky’ sounding on the first try. I can do E, E7 and G7 if I can peek at the chart first. Surprisingly B7 sounds ok once I get all my fingers there, but I see no hope at all for F :-). And then I go look at Tabs and boy does Prince use some weird-ass chords! I do ok with simple strumming, I could probably play any ‘cowboy’ song (LOL) but for now I’m busy butchering a very simple version of “King of the Road” and parts of Stings’ “Every Breath You Take”. At least the kids recognized Happy Birthday.