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...