The one with the theme tune

 

Forgive me Father, it is four weeks since my last blog post...

Aye, as you can see I haven't written a great deal recently. It's not as if I can say I've been too busy either as I'm coming to the end of a fortnight off work and have had plenty of days where I wasn't doing anything. It's just I can't be bothered to write.

Don't think this is me saying I can't be bothered with the guitar any more as it's not. I'm still playing, still putting in an hour or so a day. I recently had a break of about four days without playing which is probably the longest I've gone in the last seven months without playing.

For the most part, I'm continuing with the trend that I mentioned in the last blog post in that when I'm learning songs, it's stuff I want to learn rather than what is on the various courses I've been following. It's wide and varied - perhaps best described as eclectic - to go with my weird music taste. REM, The Beautiful South, some more Oasis and a bit of Taylor Swift, with a few other things thrown in.

Who doesn't love Friends? If you don't then I no longer acknowledge your existence

I'll focus on two songs in particular for this one. The first is the theme to a little known TV show that was only on the air for a decade or so. Chances are if you've turned on a TV in the past 20 years or so you'll have stumbled across an episode of it (and if you don't have a TV, what does your furniture point at?). It is, of course, Friends - or rather, the theme from Friends, called "I'll Be There For You" by The Rembrandts. And as this is a blog post about learning guitar and it involves Friends, it would be remiss of me not to include the following GIF.

Thankfully, learning this did not lead to me dropping my guitar (mainly because I play sitting down). The video I used did include how to play the intro (although not how to stop to clap at the end of the first line), which seems easy until you play along to the music and then it seems ridiculously fast, especially if you're not used to plucking individual strings.

On the plus side, I once again seemed to have stumbled into something that can help me practice my barre chords when that wasn't the reason for choosing a song. The only problem is these are barre chords I can't play already - and although the two new ones are the same shape as each other just at different frets, they are slightly different to the F barre I can already do. Plus, they are further along the fret board and I still need to try to switch back to normal chords which are in their original positions. This is not easy. To change Channel 4 Friday night shows for a moment, I feel at times as if I'm Father Ted trying to play his and Dougal's Eurovision entry.

I can do this bit...

Surprisingly, it proved easier to get a grip on it than I thought it would. I still struggle with the changes but I'm getting there and being able to get these chords in just now should stand me in good stead. I can play most of the recognisable part of the song (that'll be the bit used as the theme tune) although after that is a bit of a struggle, mainly because I'm not sure where the chords change.

 

Joey and Chandler react to the news I can play the theme song

Moving on, I've mentioned before that it was listening to Oasis last year that made me want to take up the guitar. However, I didn't really enjoy listening to them when I was growing up - probably because my brother liked them and therefore I was contractually obligated to hate them. Instead, my favourite bands when I was in my mid-teens included Cast, Semisonic and Travis.

 

The latter I was particularly fanatical about around the turn of the millennium - although I've never seen them live - perhaps because they are Scottish. Some of the stuff on The Man Who is superb so I thought I'd give Driftwood a try. However, the weather during my holiday has been utterly atrocious so I thought it was more appropriate to go for "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?".

 

Just a normal summer's day in Dumfries



From looking at the chords it seemed my work on the Bb with the Friends tune was going to come in handy. However, there were lots of chords I didn't recognise and really have much of a clue how to play. Fortunately, from watching a video, they were actually rather easy - they were similar to chords I already knew but with one finger lifted or added or moved along slightly. I appreciate it this applies to all chords but they were rather similar.

 

Incredibly, my first attempt was a pretty good one. Being able to play a song that I listened to a lot about half a lifetime ago, and being able to play it so well and so quickly, was a great thrill. It's probably in my top five guitar highlights so far. Unlike many of the songs I've played I'm convinced it would be quickly recognisable to anyone I played the song to (assuming they had heard of Travis).

 

Travis Pastrana - not to be confused with the Scottish band Travis

So that's about where I am at the moment. My enthusiasm for playing is still there and I'm still trying to learn new songs, although I'm not writing as much as I used to because there's not much to write about. On the off-chance if anyone reads this, I'm open to suggestions for easyish stuff I can try and also help with power chords, which I have briefly tried but struggled with as I can't get my high E string to mute even though G and B don't sound. To anyone who doesn't play guitar, this last line will probably be rather confusing - just like it was for me last time I turned on Radio 1...