Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur

Three months in and I'm still going strong. Still learning, still improving (I hope) and still playing an hour or so every day unless circumstances prevent it.

One thing I have learned is playing the guitar is like everything else - you'll have good days and bad days. There will be no reasons why it happens, it just does - and there's nothing you can do about it, no way to explain it. It happens to everyone, anywhere - at the office, playing sport or trying to play music. It even happens to superstars like Rory McIlroy, which is why they occasionally do this...

 



Of course, for a guitar player the equivalent would be this...

Now, admittedly for me that isn't really an option. I'd have to buy myself a new guitar, plus I don't have matches. However, I can't say I wasn't feeling a bit like that last week.

Having done some work on the minor chords I've now been working on the C chord. The websites I'm using show lots of great songs at this level and I eventually gave into temptation to jump ahead. Brown Eyed Girl? We'll have some of that!



It seems there is a Korean band called Brown Eyed Girls. Who knew?



The chord changes seemed easy enough. The strumming pattern looked straightforward. And yet, for some reason, I couldn't get the rhythm right and couldn't play along to the song. It was an absolute nightmare. This, I decided, must be where I hit what runners call "the wall". I'd reached my plateau, found the limit of my abilities and wasn't going to be able to progress any further. The rest of my session that night wasn't particularly great and I could tell my interest would start to wane if that continued.

Move forward a night. I hadn't done any practice of Brown Eyed Girl in the interim. After having a decent bash at another new song - Sweet Home Alabama - I decided to try Brown Eyed Girl for fun, even though I felt I was wasting my time. Suddenly, inexplicably, I could play it almost perfectly. I couldn't believe it. My confidence shot up and the rest of my practice was superb. Parts of other songs that had been problematic were suddenly a breeze and I could even sing along fairly well (timing wise, not singing quality wise) to some tunes.

The cast of Sweet Home Alabama welcome the news my playing has improved.



What caused this improvement? No idea. Maybe it's because Sweet Home Alabama was quite fast paced and helped me out, thus proving I should do songs in order and not jump ahead. Maybe it's because my expectations were so low there was no pressure on me to do it well. Or maybe it was just because the planets aligned and I could play it fairly well - I haven't been able to play it as well in the few days since.

It just seems that it was one of those things - there was a bad day, then a good day. It also shows that, like lots of things in life, confidence makes a heck of a lot of difference. One day it was pretty low and I was worried just how much I could still develop, the next it was unbelievably high and I feel I can still improve and learn a heck of a lot more.

Now I just need to keep practicing to ensure the good days come along more often and my confidence remains high.

Manic minors

What do Margaret Thatcher and I have in common? We both had problems with minors.

Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week. Try the fish. And in my defence, I reckoned that was a more appropriate joke than something involving a 1970s DJ and minors.

Anyway, I digress. My guitar learning adventure has led me on to playing minor chords. The chords I've been playing until now have been the regular, major chords. The minor chords are similar but a more downbeat, sadder version. And, on the face of it, they're pretty straightforward as all you need to do is move the finger on the highest string one fret along. Simple!

Not really. It seems you can't just move one finger along and fire on with it, you have to readjust your other fingers as well so it's easier to change between all the chords. The first three to learn - the minor versions of E, A and D - are easy enough to play on their own. Changing between Em and Am is also fairly straightforward. However, things get trickier when you're trying to go from Em to Dm (although back seems easy enough). A fair bit of practice will be needed there.

Now I know how this guy feels...

Thankfully, it seems there are few songs that are made up just of minor chords - a good thing as they'd all be pretty sad and depressing and I'd rather keep that sort of thing for when my team gets relegated in a few months. If I'm learning the songs in the order they are on the website I should be starting off with Bill Withers' "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" but I am somewhat distracted by the fact there's an Oasis song on the list.

Hopefully all my practice sessions won't end up being Pointless

As I said right back at the start of my blogs, one of the reasons for taking up guitar because I wanted to play some Oasis stuff. My first chance has presented itself, although admittedly it's "Songbird" - a song that would probably score quite highly in a Pointless question about Oasis singles. It's actually not a bad place to start as it only has three chords and only one of them is a minor one - Em, probably the easiest of the ones to play. However, for whatever reason I'm struggling to get my head around things and keep messing up the simple strumming pattern and when I'm supposed to change chord. Fingers crossed a bit of practice sorts that out.

I know as much about reggae as this guy

This section of the course I'm following on www.andyguitar.co.uk also has a section about playing in a reggae style. My knowledge of reggae pretty much starts and ends with the fact Bob Marley played it. It seems playing it on a guitar is quite hard as you play a strum than instantly mute it. However, the really difficult bit is the fact you strum off-beat.

I put offbeat comedy into Google and got this...

This doesn't mean you play it while watching a quirky comedy show - rather you strum in between the regular beat. This is a bizarre experience if all you've been doing so far (as I have) is playing on the beat. It's difficult to pick up, especially if you're trying to change between chords - even more so if it's chords you've only just learned!

Finally - singing. A key part of songs, I'm sure you'll all agree. I am not a very good singer, and not in a comically bad way that would get me onto X Factor. I'm just bad. However, in the privacy of my own home I'm willing to give it a go - but I found it quite hard while playing guitar. Trying to sing along to stuff from James and Pulp was quite difficult and I found I could play or sing but not both. Multi-tasking is clearly an issue.

If I have X Factor a go this would almost certainly be Britney's reaction

"Have a Nice Day" from Stereophonics seemed the ideal way to solve that problem. Fairly straightforward strumming and chord changes and I know the lyrics fairly well. And it would have gone OK had I actually known the lyrics as well as I thought, because trying to play along to a video that included the words made me realise I know hardly any of them. Oops! Still, once I'd realised what they were I was able to play along OK without my singing ruining anything, so that's some definite improvement.

But the singing is a small part of this, an added extra it would be nice. For now - and the foreseeable future - the focus is on playing the guitar and tackling those pesky minors.