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...