My string will snap

I know what you're thinking. There's been no posts for more than a week. He's clearly given up, chucked his dream of being a guitar hero after barely a month. He's lost the plot, his anger and frustration has got the better of him and he's chucked it.

And, in a way, you're right. I had to stop for the best part of a week because something just snapped...

It was early in a practice session. I was strumming along to Love Me Do, hardly the most arduous of songs ever - not even the most arduous of Beatles songs I'm trying to play - when I heard a twang. One of my strings - my high E and the thinnest of the six strings - had snapped.



This was not a major problem. The guitar pack I'd got for Christmas came with a complete set of spare strings. All I had to do was untangle them (not that easy as it turned out), find a video guide on how to restring a guitar and do that. Simple.

Don't do it Dougal!



Turns out there are a variety of ways to do this but I found one for dummies, appropriately, and followed that. Everything seemed to be going to plan, however like Dougal in Father Ted when he is told not to press the big red button I couldn't help myself. I decided to tighten it once more just to be sure when... TWANG!

Me about five seconds after the replacement string broke



Now it was time to panic. I had no more spare strings - but this wasn't the biggest problem. I had no idea what size of strings my guitar used.

I first thought this was a bit like getting new tyres fitted. You go to the garage and you have specific details of the tyres your wheel will take. You can't just fit any old tyre - or any old string. However, it's more like changing a lightbulb. There's a variety of types and they'll all work, however it's best to replace like for like.

This still didn't solve my problem. I didn't know what string size my guitars came with. There was no sign of it on the box and no sign on the web. This did not bode well so I did what can at times be a questionable thing to do in an emergency. I asked on Twitter.



Thankfully, this seemed to be the right thing on this occasion - kind of. According to Andy Crowley (@andyguitarleeds), whose website I had been using and have mentioned in previous posts, it came with gauge 10s but as a beginner it would be better with gauge nines. James Shipway (@JamesShipway1) agreed. This seemed a bit odd as surely I'd need to go through the arduous task of replacing them all, but I was assured I only needed to replace the broken one. Grand.

I won't bore you with the details of ordering new strings as this blog post is already dull enough, however I managed to order a job lot of high Es rather than a whole set of new strings. This way I wasn't in immediate trouble if they broke again when I was replacing them.

This time I seemed to have got it right. I fitted the string and began to practice. All my two chord songs seemed fine, as did my three chord ones when I was using a capo - which I thought might have been the problem before. After a bad day at work playing along to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol seemed to be a great stress release as it involves a lot of strumming. Everything seemed fine.

The car chase from Bullitt. As opposed to Chasing cars from Snow Patrol.

 

At half-time in the football I tried to play Chasing Cars again and TWANG! You guessed it, the high E broke again and I had to replace it all over again. Still, at least I had four spare ones (now down to three) and everything seems fine. Hopefully I can get back to practicing and bring slightly more regular blog updates.

Although it's almost half-time in the football again...

Who the cap-o fit

When looking around on YouTube for videos that teach you how to play guitar I'd seen many of them included the word "capo" in the title. I had no idea what one of them was - to me capo is a donkey who Celtic once signed or something a Spanish superhero would wear.

 

Bet you were expecting this to be the Celtic bloke but no, it's Luca Toni - who once won the capocannoniere, another capo thing with nothing to do with guitar



At first it looked as if I'd be able to get away with having to find out what one was as the first couple of songs on Andy's website could be played without one. After that things started getting a bit trickier so it was time to educate myself.

A capo clips onto the guitar at whichever fret you chose and changes the sound the strings make when you strum them. You still use the same chord shapes as before and where the capo has been clipped on is effectively the top of the fretboard. Normally you would play an E chord by putting your fingers on the first and second frets. If you put a capo on, for example, the third fret then you make the same shape but put your fingers on the fourth and fifth frets. This then lets you play songs using the easier chords rather than learning ones that are rather more complex when you're a beginner.

Having found out what one was, I needed to get my hands on one. A quick search of eBay revealed you could get them for a couple of quid - the only downside seeming to be they came from China (despite claiming it had been dispatched from Glasgow). As a temporary measure I tried to make my own using some internet instructions, a pen and two rubber bands. It's fair to say this did not go well. I briefly dabbled in playing a few of the lessons from level two, where another chord is introduced, but while I managed to struggle through a few it was clear I needed to wait until the prodigal capo arrived. Meanwhile I practiced the songs I had already tried.

A homemade capo like the one I tried to make. Do not try this at home - not for safety reasons, it's just a waste of time.



Finally it arrived - at a time when I couldn't play my guitar for a few days. Typical. A few more days waiting was required before I could finally be unleashed in all my capo goodness.

The first classic song to be assaulted by my unique brand of guitar playing was Love Me Do by The Beatles. This was a good start as the rhythm is very similar to Three is a Magic Number, which I had been practicing for a few days. Even better is the fact it's actually slower than that so is fairly straightforward to pick up. It was also probably the first time I'd tried to base my strumming pattern on the lyrics while playing along to the real song, rather than counting notes in my head. Whether or not this is good in the long run only time will tell. However, it seemed to go OK.

The capo in all its glory



Up next a song from Pulp Fiction, although sadly not the one everyone knows from the start of the film. Instead this was the Chuck berry number that John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance to. This took a bit of getting used to as I tried to judge the speed of the rhythm (for this reason I had given up on an Ed Sheerin number. He may be a fellow ginger but that didn't seem to help me) and it was also rather repetitive - eight bars of A followed by eight bars of E and repeat for the whole thing. Doesn't seem the most challenging on paper.



The same could not be said for another Beatles' song - Paperback Writer. This seemed simple enough when played without the song which I'll be honest and say I didn't really know until I tried to play along to it. For a beginner guitarist like me it seemed to be quicker than Usain Bolt and I had to abandon repeated attempts to play along to it. I had to watch Andy's video two or three times to try to get it right and I'll be honest and say I'm probably still not there, although I am getting better. practice makes perfect and all that - an adage that is definitely true for learning the guitar.

If I'd tried Paperback Writer like this it probably couldn't have been any worse.



In my view the capo doesn't really change things. As long as you get it in the right place the rest of playing is the same as before. You just have to adapt to where your fingers are meant to go. In fact, I actually found it easier at times to change between chords than when I was playing normally, which was a bit unexpected!

Playing along to songs seems to be my biggest problem at the moment, or rather judging when to play along to them. I'm not talking about the act of playing the chord sequences in time, more when to actually join in with the music. This was my problem with the final two songs in level one, which are both from U2. Elevation - which introduces some simple, single finger playing stuff for the first time, I can do - but you can't really play it the whole way through. It's a similar problem with When Love Comes to Town - a song I didn't really know. I can play it fine in "offline" mode if you like, with no music playing - then I get confused by the song changing and not going as expected. Suppose it will come to me.

Battering a wasp camera is very much like playing the guitar.

Anyway, in my mind I have managed to complete level one - in the same way I used to complete levels in The Simpsons: Hit and Run game. In that you could complete the tasks and move onto the next level, however there were loads of extra bits like collecting trading cards and kicking wasp cameras (don't ask). I feel I have completed the targets set at the start of level one: I can play the chords from memory, I can play A and E in a variety of sequences and I can play along to at least three of the songs. There are still bits to perfect - it would be great to play along to all 10 songs - but I feel ready to move onto the next level.



 



And that's where things get a bit harder - because that's where I need to learn another chord.;

We better stop, hey, what's that sound?

I'm perhaps going a bit over the top with the blog posts at the moment. This is the third in little more than a week and it's a pace that almost certainly won't be kept up. However, at the same time, because everything is so new there is plenty to write about. No doubt things will tail off in time as the rate of learning decreases (or in six months when I get angry, frustrated and stop) but for now I'm in wide-eyed mode, desperate to see what's next and keen to get home from work so I can practice.

After managing to learn six or seven chords and getting some practice at moving between them I reckoned I was ready for some simple songs. Practicing random chord patterns was all very well but I was quickly going to lose interest if there was no meaning to them. I could compare it to playing a new video game - going through the tutorials is all well and good but you're only going to really learn when you're playing the game for real.

Some searching about revealed a video on YouTube for U2's Elevation using only two chords. This seemed perfect. I like a bit of U2 - it's one of my less embarrassing music tastes - and even I could play two chords. It involved a bit of finger picking but it wasn't too bad and I was able to struggle through that while getting good at the chord changing. However, to me it didn't much sound like Elevation and I couldn't recognise the cool bit at the start The Edge plays.

Er, this was not what I was expecting when I put Edge into Google!



Undeterred I tried another song, this time using three chords. It was The Troggs' Wild Thing, which features a classic and instantly recognisable guitar riff. Unless I'm playing it, that is, in which case it doesn't sound very like it - even without the three second delay to change chord. Still, I felt I was beginning to get somewhere and my mood improved further when I listened to Elevation the following day and could identify exactly the bit I'd been practicing.

Both videos had been put together by the same guy called Andy. He has his own website at http://www.andyguitar.co.uk/ which has a full, free course for beginners, ranging from complete novices (like me) going to more advanced stuff. Many of the lessons use songs to teach which is exactly what I was after. Despite having worked my way through several chords with my phone app I thought I'd start from the beginning. The first section only used two chords, I knew many, so I would surely skoosh this bit.


As it turned out - very!


It only took a few minutes of the first video for me to run into problems. This did not bode well. Maybe I wasn't the master guitarist I thought I was. Who'd have known?

 

The beginners course uses two chords - A (the second one I learned using Marty's videos on the app) and E (one of the later ones). It quickly became apparent that the way Andy set up his fingers for the A chord was different to how Marty did it. This doesn't sound like a problem when you're only using three fingers but trust me, it is. To re-visit my video game analogy from earlier, I have recently switched from Pro Evolution Soccer to FIFA. I used the default controls in PES and am doing the same with FIFA - even though the cross and shoot buttons are the opposite way round. This can sometimes lead to some comedy moments (especially if you're my brother) where I round the keeper or set myself up for an easy goal and then chip it over the bar because I press the wrong thing. Well changing my A chord set-up is the equivalent of that.

 

That was a rather laboured analogy so please look at this picture of some puppies and we'll say no more about it.



The change, involving my index finger, does make sense. Now, instead of lifting it off the fretboard when changing from A to E I can slide it across a fret and back again. After a bit of practice I'm getting used to it and the old way is pretty much forgotten. Now for some songs.

 

Andy's beginners course features 10 songs using just A and E. A lot of them mean nothing to me and I'm not too keen to play waste time learning songs I don't care about, however that's a rather silly stance to take. Working through each of the songs teaches you new techniques - if you only stick with the ones you care about then you might miss something. Besides, my musical knowledge is somewhat lacking and there's an extremely good chance a song I don't recognise the name of might be quite a famous one. Like For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield.

 



 

I have no idea who the band are or what the song is, however after listening to it for just a couple of seconds I realise it's quite a famous one. It's also a great one to start with - to play along to it involves switching between a bar of E and a bar of A. It is very clear in the song where a bar ends, which is fantastic for a beginner, and I'm soon strumming along. Admittedly, if you were to just play bars of A and E to someone they'd have no idea it was a song, let alone what song, but it feels like I'm playing some music and you can't take that away from me, dammit.

 

There's no point boring you with the details of the other songs I work on (Silence is Easy by Starsailor and Embrace's version of 3 is a Magic Number) as it's a similar experience, just with different chord patterns. Silence is Easy is lots of fun as it's quicker and does sound a bit like the song - even if my last experience of Starsailor was when their cover of S Club 7's Don't Stop Movin' came on the radio while I was at school.

 

Andy's beginners course is fantastic and in a few days I've learned some strumming patterns, practice routines and can play along to three of the 10 songs -  three and a half if you include my attempts at Elevation. You have to check out his website at http://www.andyguitar.co.uk/ if you're looking to take up guitar.

 

So why am I only blogging after playing about a third of the songs? Because to play the rest I need to get something called a capo...