It's gonna be a bumpy ride

"Well this is ridiculous. I can't do that and I don't know why it won't make the right noise. It's clearly this guy's fault for asking me to do this, not mine for not being able to do it."

And so, that was that. After less than half an hour I'd decided I couldn't play the guitar. It's that sort of perseverance and commitment I'm expecting to turn me into a proper guitar hero.

It was Christmas Day. I'd got my guitar and had been messing about with it a bit. I found an app on my phone that meant even an idiot like me could tune it. In the weeks before I'd been educating myself about how guitar music is written and looking for some easy songs. Tabs looked pretty straight forward, where the number of the fret you have to put your finger on is written on a line representing one of the six strings on the guitar. Piece of cake.

A Tab - but this one has nothing to do with guitars.

I struggled at a few attempts of such rock anthems as "Jingle Bells" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" before opting to watch a video I'd been looking at on YouTube. No, not one of those videos (for once), but a beginner's introduction to the electric guitar. It was fairly long and after this I'd surely be flying along.

I lasted less than 10 before getting annoyed. The only way things could have been worse was if I'd opted for the video below instead.

After explaining the various parts of the guitar, the video wanted me to play my way up and down the fret on the high E string (confusingly the lowest string on the guitar). I muddled along but, for no obvious reason, half the time the guitar refused to make anything resembling a note. All I could hear was the string twanging but no note. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn't, and I had no idea why. And if, somehow, I managed to get even close to mastering this string, I was meant to do the same with the other five strings before moving on.

Aye, like that was happening.

Demoralised, I sat down for the rest of Christmas dinner thinking I'd made a horrible mistake and there was no way I could learn guitar. I started messing about on my phone and looked for apps with lessons. One from a website called GuitarJamz seemed to get good reviews so I gave that a try and I could immediately tell this was going to be better. For starters, the guy in the video was called Marty Schwartz and he was wearing a hat. No one who wears a hat while playing a guitar can be bad!

Marty Schwartz, his guitar and - most importantly - his hat.

This fantastic logic actually paid off as the series of videos went with a different approach. Instead of teaching single note plucking, Marty taught you how to play chords and did so in a fun, light hearted way rather than in a dull, matter of fact style. First up was E minor, which was fairly straightforward. By the end of the day I'd blasted through a few more videos and had added A and D to my repertoire with G following the next day. The man in the hat said there are only six chords needed to play "millions of songs" so I was almost there.

Cords. Not to be confused with chords.

Of course, playing chords on their own is one thing but linking them together is quite another. The penultimate video started off with a chord pattern to play to practice switching between the four I'd already learned. Thinking I'd become quite the guitar player in the space of 24 hours I reckoned five minutes of this was more than enough and cracked on with the next three chords (the mathematically minded of you will have noticed this makes seven and not the six previously advertised).

This was a mistake and I had no one to blame but myself. Trying to learn so many chords in such a short space of time was too much, too soon and I had no hope of linking them up. I had to take a step backward and spent a lot of the weekend practicing playing the original four while watching TV. Only after I felt I could do that - and without looking at the frets to see where my fingers were while changing - did I go back to the final three chords and give them a bash.

So, a few days on, I knew the fingering (quiet at the back) for seven chords and could struggle through them. In my mind it was time for the next step - learning some songs.



Let me give you some good advice young man - you better learn to play guitar

I have decided to have a mid-life crisis.

Well, that's not strictly true. I turned 30 earlier this year and while Scotland's life expectancy may be a rich source of humour for comedians, I'd like to think I'm not quite at the mid-point in my life. So let's start again.

I have decided to have an early mid-life crisis. And what has led me down this path? Simple. I got a guitar for Christmas.

I had the notion that getting a guitar is a sign of a mid-life crisis but any doubts were dispelled the Sunday before Christmas (by which point I already knew I was getting a guitar) when watching The Simpsons. In this episode, Homer gets a guitar (a bass, as opposed to my normal electric one) and the implication is it's part of a mid-life crisis.

He's having a mid-life crisis too!

If it's good enough for Homer, it's good enough for me - although thankfully I have a lot more hair and a lot less fat.

I've reached this point in my life without having any proper, grown-up hobbies. Watching sport - particularly football and motor racing - can be classed as a hobby but doesn't really require me to do much. Likewise playing video games or messing about online. Walking requires more effort although it's a bit boring.

However, walking is partly responsible for me getting a guitar. In October or November I was out for a walk in the sun and decided to listen to Oasis' "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" album. It's a great record, one of my favourites, and I love most of the tracks on it. For some reason, "Roll With It" really stuck in my head that day and I was addicted to listening to it over the next few weeks - even though it's hardly a recent song. And that got me thinking: "Wouldn't it be able to play that on the guitar?"

The idea is a bit ridiculous. It's the best part of 15 years since I last played an instrument and that was the keyboard. At school we played guitar a bit a but that was mainly acoustic, with only about two classes all year where I played electric. And if I did get a guitar I didn't want to make the financial and time commitment to getting lessons to play it.

But trying to learn an instrument - any instrument - is different now to about 15 or 20 years ago thanks to the internet. YouTube is full of educational videos and you can find the music for just about any song with a few minutes Googling. You're not limited to what's in a book or what school decide you can play.

However, just because the resources are there doesn't mean it's easy so I did what I always do in these situations - I asked on Facebook and Twitter if it was doable. And the answer was yes, so I went for it.

On the left is a picture of my new guitar. It's not flashy or expensive, which is ideal as if I get frustrated or give up in six months at least it won't have cost someone a fortune and I won't feel guilty about this ridiculous idea I had that I could play the guitar. But hopefully that won't happen.

That's why partly why I've started this blog. If I feel I have to post once or twice a week on here then that might force me to keeping up with my learning and practicing and lead to me getting better. If I don't, I'll have nothing to post. I'm not expecting too many people (if anyone) to read this but it would be rather embarrassing having to make my weekly post with no progress to report.

Who knows what is a realistic aim? To be able to play a song - any song (preferably one I know) - by the end of 2015 would be great but I've no idea if that is a realistic target or a wildly optimistic one. And who knows if I'll ever be able to play even the first part of "Roll With It"?

But I'm willing to give it a go and if I don't try it now I probably never will. So the long journey begins here and I know it will take a while. As Liam Gallagher once said, you gotta take your time with these things - and not let anybody stand in your way.