It's getting better all the time

It's February 25, which means Christmas was two months ago, which means it's two months since I got my guitar. Time to take stock.

So far I can play four chords - A, E, G and D (although don't ask me to change between G and E as that ain't happening). I can play along to plenty of songs. That's the bare statistics. But am I enjoying it?



I wish I'd taken the plunge and given it a go sooner. I love playing guitar. I don't see practice as a chore - I'm doing about an hour a night and the only times that doesn't happen is when I have to go out or I'm away for a few days. Or, like tonight, when one of the strings snaps and has to be replaced. Grrr.



And at times I'm limiting myself to an hour to ensure I do other things in my life. There are nights when I could quite happily play along to stuff all night, that's how much I'm enjoying it.

What has surprised me most of all is how much I can improve on songs or chord changes with just a bit of practice. Each time I learn a new chord it looks pretty complex, yet within a few nights I'm able to switch between them fairly competently. There are very few things I can think of doing before that I have seen such a big improvement in such a short space of time. I once downloaded a game called Simraceway which, as the name suggests, is a racing game. I played it for a few months and was as bad as when I started. My guitar playing I'm noticing a week by week - if not night by night - improvement.

67 different ways for me to be crap at a game with no different ways of improvement



Of course, eventually this enthusiasm will wain and practice will lead to diminishing returns, however I can't see that coming any time soon. To be two months into this and still loving every minute (aside from those sodding snapping strings) is better than anything I could have imagined.

That's probably because instead of just playing random strumming patterns I am, for the most part, playing along to songs. Some I hadn't heard of when I set out, some I had, some I listened to in my teenage years and one I've heard live. To be able to play along to them, no matter how simplified my versions are, is incredible and is almost certainly what's keeping up my enthusiasm. I can compare it to studying journalism at uni. Going to the lectures and learning the theory side was all very well but you needed to put those skills into practice to learn properly.

The fine learning establishment that is Napier University, where I studied journalism



There's still a heck of a long way to go. No one has heard me playing yet - and probably won't for a while. It wasn't until I listened to the recordings I made for the quiz on this site that I realised just how basic, simplistic and, let's be honest, poor my efforts were. Playing along to songs can trick you into thinking your sounding good because it adds the lyrics, drums and so on.

Perhaps the biggest downside is that the songs I'm learning seem to have a subliminal message about how my football team is doing at the moment. At first it seemed OK as Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" had the line "Don't worry, bout a thing, cause every little thing, gonna be alright." However, as my team's slide down the table has coincided with playing "Free fallin'", "Highway to Hell" and a Beatles song containing the lyrics "Get back to where you once belonged". Perhaps the guitar Gods know how the season will end - not that that's difficult to predict!

Let's just hope I don't need Status Quo's "Down Down" to describe this lot's efforts come May.



When I posted my first blog I mentioned that what set me off on this journey was the intro to "Roll With It" by Oasis and wanting to be able to play that. I'm miles off being able to do that but while messing about I found a video on Youtube that showed you how to play the whole song. It's pretty complicated and there's only about two of the chords I know, however I thought I'd give the intro a bash. I'm miles away from getting it - there's about a five second gap between chord changes - but it's something to aim for. Eventually.



Another indulgence is far more realistic - Semisonic's "Closing Time". I love Semisonic, they are easily in my top five favourite bands, and this is probably their most famous tune - probably in part to the US version of The Office. Again, it uses chords I didn't really know - but the good thing is there's only four chords in it and two I've learned. Using a video from Marty of GuitarJamz fame I was able to work out the other two chords needed, change between them and muddle along to the song tonight. Again, it's a simplistic version but if you listen closely you can work out what it's meant to be.

 

So, to sum up, two months in and I'm loving it. And if that high E string could last more than a week I'd be enjoying it even more...

Here's how it should have sounded

I'll post a proper blog in the next week or so, however here's the answers to the quiz I posed last time around where I asked folk to guess what songs I was attempting on the guitar. You'll be amazed by just how wrong you were - mainly because I'm not very good!

1. The Who - Can't Explain

2. The Troggs - Wild Thing

3. Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars

4. James - Sit Down

5. The Beatles - Twist 'n' Shout

6. Kenny Rogers - The Gambler

7. Stereophonics - Have a Nice Day

8. Pulp - Common People

It's time for the intros round!

Not much to report since my last blog - I've tackled the first few stages of the G chord and am still persevering with A, E and D, however I've not really done enough to merit another post.

Instead, at the risk of hugely embarrassing myself, let's play a game where you have to guess the songs I'm playing on the guitar.

The quality of the clips is not great, mainly because I'm playing them. In my mind I'm headlining Glastonbury when I play guitar, however after listening to these clips I realise I am still just an eejit in my bedroom. These recordings were produced using an amp, not that I'd know.

The clips are of varying length - some are long parts of tunes, others are the riff - and nearly all the songs have been mentioned at some point in previous posts, which should help. The songs will open in media player or whatever you use for listening to music. Not many are obvious I'm afraid but I'll provide the answers next time around.

So, without further ado, it's time for Cheggers Plays Pop! Kids, ask your parents. In fact, anyone under 35 may need to ask your parents and thankfully that still includes me.

For the time being Keith Chegwin is one of the few personalities from the past who it's still safe to talk about.

Song 1

Song 2 Not a Blur tune...

Song 3

Song 4

Song 5

Song 6

Song 7 Long and repetitive - there's a slight change near the end though

Song 8 Probably the worst of the lot, sounds very tinny and there's even a whole line missing. A deliberate mistake to make it harder. Honest

If you want you can leave your guesses in the comments or chin me on Twitter @SMTID

Sweet D-reams are Made of This

The last blog should have been about me trying to learn a new chord, however instead it focused on my fun and games with snapping strings. The chord learning happened either side of those problems so this will just be a general ramble about how I got on - which is what most of my posts are I suppose.

With A and E and changing between them under my belt next up was learning D. I had already messed around a bit with D using the videos on the GuitarJamz app, however it was a few weeks since I'd tried it and I'd almost forgotten the fingering.

Playing a chord shape is fairly straightforward. The difficult bit is being able to change between chords. I used to play golf and could hit a shot, however what separates me - and just about everyone else on the planet from the likes of Rory McIlroy is he can do all the complicated bits too, like getting the ball to go where he wants it to so he can link them together. It's the linking together of chords as well as learning strumming patters that is the difficult part for me just now.

Sergio and Rory's guitar playing is almost certainly better than my golf.

The good thing from my point of view is that the new way I have learned to play the A chord using Andy's videos (http://www.andyguitar.co.uk/) helps with the change to the D. One of my fingers stays in exactly the same fret and just has to move over a bit. Of course, that doesn't solve the whole problem but it does make things easier.

It's incredible how much difference a bit of practice makes. It sounds obvious but it's true - and I've never known it to be more true than playing the guitar. I started off my adventures with the D chord thinking it would be impossible to get the changes between it, A and E ever up to scratch - yet after about a quarter of an hour of strumming away my confidence rises and I think I'm fairly confident.

No idea who this chap is but he seems to agree with me about practice.

Before moving onto the songs I also have a play about with power chords. Despite the name, these are not a snappy pair of business trousers. Instead, they're slightly different versions of the chords I'd learned before. You only put your finger on the root or base note (the lowest of the strings that make up the chord) and play it and the one above it. It gives a darker sound and is used for blues stuff - it sounds kind of cool but it'll take a bit of practice before I'm anyway near up to scratch as I keep strumming the wrong strings or playing too many of them.

A power cord. Not to be confused with a power chord.

And so to the songs. As I said in a previous blog, I feel the best way to learn the chord changes is to put them into practice in a song. Learning chord sequences is all very well - it's vital and it's how I start my practice sessions to get me warmed up - but when you're playing something real, no matter how basic a version, it makes it more enjoyable and you're going to want to keep playing.

One of the first songs I tried with my new found - but still developing - skill was Twist and Shout. Until I watched Ferris Beuller's Day Off (and that was embarrassingly only a few years ago) I had no ideas it was a Beatles song. I'd managed to get their previous ones on the course OK so this should be the same.

My version of Twist and Shout wasn't quite like this...

WRONG! It may only have three chords, it may only be the same sequence over and over for much of the song but good God it's fast. Playing it along without the tune - no problem. Playing it with the song? Forget it! Whatever speed it's meant to be at and wherever it's meant to slot in I can't manage it.

Lean on Me was at the other end of the speed scale and incredibly easy by comparison. Pretty much one strum of a chord per bar and it was easy to match in with the songs. That gave me a bit of confidence back.

Some of the other songs in this part of the course are fantastic - not just from a learning point of view but also because it's stuff I like and regularly listen to on my iPod. Can't Explain by The Who has a great riff to play over and over and it's easy to pick up. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol has lots of strumming and, as I mentioned in my previous blog, can be a great stress relief - especially the chorus when you can hear your guitar match up with the guitar in the song.

The Wombles - a group of people who live on a common.



And then there's Pulp's Common People. From the lesson this seemed straightforward. Strumming the same chord for four bars before changing, then changing again after another four bars and so on. What could go wrong? Turns out everything (and not just snapping strings). It's fast. And, just to confuse a beginner, it gets slightly faster after each verse.

However, once again practice pays off. When I started out I could just about manage the first verse then I'd get lost and have to give up. I've now almost abandoned counting the number of notes (and my awful attempts to sing) for bits of the song and am changing chords with the lyrics. The exception is a section where there are no lyrics - but I was delighted to discover the other day that I'd got my note counting pretty much spot on. It was a nice feeling when I realised I was bang on track with my chords just as the lyrics were about to start again.

Special mention must go to another website I've been using called Justin Guitar - http://www.justinguitar.com/ As the name suggests it's run by someone called Justin. I already knew about this but when Andy's website was down for a few days I turned to this one. It too has a beginner's course, although the first stage dives straight in with three chords rather than two. Despite already knowing these three chords I watched through the lessons and found them really handy. There were some great practice tips and help with techniques.

Remember when Facebook goes down? Well Andy's guitar website going down was far worse.

Handily, there were also some different songs - and it was helpful to get an alternative view on some of the ones I'd been struggling with. It's surely no coincidence I've got better with Common People since I watched the video on the site. I've also tried a bit of Bob Marley and also The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, which I'm now addicted to playing and reminds me of someone I used to work with! It's slightly harder to pick up the songs as there are no chord charts, you have to write things out yourself, but it's definitely another great site worth having a look at.

I'm still working my way through the D stuff and I'm nowhere near the level I'd like to be at, but I've also decided to dip my toe in the water by taking the first steps with another chord. How hard could it be?