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?



My string will snap

I know what you're thinking. There's been no posts for more than a week. He's clearly given up, chucked his dream of being a guitar hero after barely a month. He's lost the plot, his anger and frustration has got the better of him and he's chucked it.

And, in a way, you're right. I had to stop for the best part of a week because something just snapped...

It was early in a practice session. I was strumming along to Love Me Do, hardly the most arduous of songs ever - not even the most arduous of Beatles songs I'm trying to play - when I heard a twang. One of my strings - my high E and the thinnest of the six strings - had snapped.



This was not a major problem. The guitar pack I'd got for Christmas came with a complete set of spare strings. All I had to do was untangle them (not that easy as it turned out), find a video guide on how to restring a guitar and do that. Simple.

Don't do it Dougal!



Turns out there are a variety of ways to do this but I found one for dummies, appropriately, and followed that. Everything seemed to be going to plan, however like Dougal in Father Ted when he is told not to press the big red button I couldn't help myself. I decided to tighten it once more just to be sure when... TWANG!

Me about five seconds after the replacement string broke



Now it was time to panic. I had no more spare strings - but this wasn't the biggest problem. I had no idea what size of strings my guitar used.

I first thought this was a bit like getting new tyres fitted. You go to the garage and you have specific details of the tyres your wheel will take. You can't just fit any old tyre - or any old string. However, it's more like changing a lightbulb. There's a variety of types and they'll all work, however it's best to replace like for like.

This still didn't solve my problem. I didn't know what string size my guitars came with. There was no sign of it on the box and no sign on the web. This did not bode well so I did what can at times be a questionable thing to do in an emergency. I asked on Twitter.



Thankfully, this seemed to be the right thing on this occasion - kind of. According to Andy Crowley (@andyguitarleeds), whose website I had been using and have mentioned in previous posts, it came with gauge 10s but as a beginner it would be better with gauge nines. James Shipway (@JamesShipway1) agreed. This seemed a bit odd as surely I'd need to go through the arduous task of replacing them all, but I was assured I only needed to replace the broken one. Grand.

I won't bore you with the details of ordering new strings as this blog post is already dull enough, however I managed to order a job lot of high Es rather than a whole set of new strings. This way I wasn't in immediate trouble if they broke again when I was replacing them.

This time I seemed to have got it right. I fitted the string and began to practice. All my two chord songs seemed fine, as did my three chord ones when I was using a capo - which I thought might have been the problem before. After a bad day at work playing along to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol seemed to be a great stress release as it involves a lot of strumming. Everything seemed fine.

The car chase from Bullitt. As opposed to Chasing cars from Snow Patrol.

 

At half-time in the football I tried to play Chasing Cars again and TWANG! You guessed it, the high E broke again and I had to replace it all over again. Still, at least I had four spare ones (now down to three) and everything seems fine. Hopefully I can get back to practicing and bring slightly more regular blog updates.

Although it's almost half-time in the football again...

Who the cap-o fit

When looking around on YouTube for videos that teach you how to play guitar I'd seen many of them included the word "capo" in the title. I had no idea what one of them was - to me capo is a donkey who Celtic once signed or something a Spanish superhero would wear.

 

Bet you were expecting this to be the Celtic bloke but no, it's Luca Toni - who once won the capocannoniere, another capo thing with nothing to do with guitar



At first it looked as if I'd be able to get away with having to find out what one was as the first couple of songs on Andy's website could be played without one. After that things started getting a bit trickier so it was time to educate myself.

A capo clips onto the guitar at whichever fret you chose and changes the sound the strings make when you strum them. You still use the same chord shapes as before and where the capo has been clipped on is effectively the top of the fretboard. Normally you would play an E chord by putting your fingers on the first and second frets. If you put a capo on, for example, the third fret then you make the same shape but put your fingers on the fourth and fifth frets. This then lets you play songs using the easier chords rather than learning ones that are rather more complex when you're a beginner.

Having found out what one was, I needed to get my hands on one. A quick search of eBay revealed you could get them for a couple of quid - the only downside seeming to be they came from China (despite claiming it had been dispatched from Glasgow). As a temporary measure I tried to make my own using some internet instructions, a pen and two rubber bands. It's fair to say this did not go well. I briefly dabbled in playing a few of the lessons from level two, where another chord is introduced, but while I managed to struggle through a few it was clear I needed to wait until the prodigal capo arrived. Meanwhile I practiced the songs I had already tried.

A homemade capo like the one I tried to make. Do not try this at home - not for safety reasons, it's just a waste of time.



Finally it arrived - at a time when I couldn't play my guitar for a few days. Typical. A few more days waiting was required before I could finally be unleashed in all my capo goodness.

The first classic song to be assaulted by my unique brand of guitar playing was Love Me Do by The Beatles. This was a good start as the rhythm is very similar to Three is a Magic Number, which I had been practicing for a few days. Even better is the fact it's actually slower than that so is fairly straightforward to pick up. It was also probably the first time I'd tried to base my strumming pattern on the lyrics while playing along to the real song, rather than counting notes in my head. Whether or not this is good in the long run only time will tell. However, it seemed to go OK.

The capo in all its glory



Up next a song from Pulp Fiction, although sadly not the one everyone knows from the start of the film. Instead this was the Chuck berry number that John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance to. This took a bit of getting used to as I tried to judge the speed of the rhythm (for this reason I had given up on an Ed Sheerin number. He may be a fellow ginger but that didn't seem to help me) and it was also rather repetitive - eight bars of A followed by eight bars of E and repeat for the whole thing. Doesn't seem the most challenging on paper.



The same could not be said for another Beatles' song - Paperback Writer. This seemed simple enough when played without the song which I'll be honest and say I didn't really know until I tried to play along to it. For a beginner guitarist like me it seemed to be quicker than Usain Bolt and I had to abandon repeated attempts to play along to it. I had to watch Andy's video two or three times to try to get it right and I'll be honest and say I'm probably still not there, although I am getting better. practice makes perfect and all that - an adage that is definitely true for learning the guitar.

If I'd tried Paperback Writer like this it probably couldn't have been any worse.



In my view the capo doesn't really change things. As long as you get it in the right place the rest of playing is the same as before. You just have to adapt to where your fingers are meant to go. In fact, I actually found it easier at times to change between chords than when I was playing normally, which was a bit unexpected!

Playing along to songs seems to be my biggest problem at the moment, or rather judging when to play along to them. I'm not talking about the act of playing the chord sequences in time, more when to actually join in with the music. This was my problem with the final two songs in level one, which are both from U2. Elevation - which introduces some simple, single finger playing stuff for the first time, I can do - but you can't really play it the whole way through. It's a similar problem with When Love Comes to Town - a song I didn't really know. I can play it fine in "offline" mode if you like, with no music playing - then I get confused by the song changing and not going as expected. Suppose it will come to me.

Battering a wasp camera is very much like playing the guitar.

Anyway, in my mind I have managed to complete level one - in the same way I used to complete levels in The Simpsons: Hit and Run game. In that you could complete the tasks and move onto the next level, however there were loads of extra bits like collecting trading cards and kicking wasp cameras (don't ask). I feel I have completed the targets set at the start of level one: I can play the chords from memory, I can play A and E in a variety of sequences and I can play along to at least three of the songs. There are still bits to perfect - it would be great to play along to all 10 songs - but I feel ready to move onto the next level.



 



And that's where things get a bit harder - because that's where I need to learn another chord.;

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...