Guitar Lessons 3: A-chord-ing to My Records...

...I am very bad at making puns.

I started becoming less motivated recently, which caused my complete calluses on my middle and ring fingers to start peeling. So I figured I'd try it again. Eventually. Then my dad bought me some books on guitar playing, including one of just chords. I was already trying to play Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" but it was somewhat a hassle because I could only search how to play the chords via YouTube. Now there's a book I can look at. Books FTW!

However, I am finding that transitioning from a G to a C multiple times throughout the song is quite difficult. First off, the G chord is a hard chord in general. You have to keep your ring finger on the sixth string and your pinky on the first on the same fret. If I do play it semi-right, my pinky finger gets sore fast. I'm hoping it also develops a callus soon.

I am finally getting the rhythm of the song down. While that may be true, transitioning is vital when you want the song to sound well like the song you're trying to cover.

Also, after I get this Ring of Fire down, I can start playing several other songs too. Did you know a lot of songs use pretty much the same chords? I know, right? Who knew? So after Ring of Fire comes Mad World. Mad World's difficulty I think will come in strumming, since it is originally a piano song. The chords are simple, and most I know already, but I think the strumming won't just be all six strings at one. I'll probably have to fiddle with it to get it right. That, or look up covers on YouTube to see how their rhythm is. I'll probably do that latter.

In other news, I can pretty much play Whole Wide World without pausing now. I'm not sure how good it sounds, but it's better than when I first started. That's all that matters, right?

Goals for Next Blog Post:

• Getting a callus on my pinky finger
• Progressing at Ring of Fire 
• Playing the G Chord better

Guitar Lessons 2: Doctor, I Can't Feel My Fingers!

Well, two of them. Yes, day four is upon us and I am happy to announce I have an official callus forming on my middle fingertip. The ring fingertip's getting there, don't worry. I realized today while practicing that when I notice "fret buzz" (which is when the guitar string buzzes from not being pushed hard enough) I tend to push my middle finger down harder. Then when I played each string individually, I noticed it was the ring finger I wasn't pushing down hard enough, explaining the smaller callus.
Because of these calluses, I am also proud to announce that I can transition from the E chord to the A chord without it hurting as much. It still hurts occasionally when I hit the wrong spot, but it's certainly an improvement.
Speaking of transitions, I was also able to successfully transition today. Yesterday, I had to pause almost every switch to the A chord. Now I can do it more successfully. Certainly not perfect, but it is progression. Mostly today I tried to get through the song without pausing, ignoring any mistakes I will make. And while I can go from E to A easier now, I still need to pause more frequently when going from A to E. Not sure why. But sometimes when I did so, I hit the wrong spot on my fingertip so it hurt.
I tried to focus more on singing today as well. I have noticed this: Guitars hide voices well. Too well. I'm worried that when I get the nerve to sing in front of people I won't be able to hear my voice well enough to know if I'm singing on-key. I guess that's what microphones are for.
Oh yeah, about Open Mic. I'm having second thoughts. See, I have this thing where I'm really really excited to do something until about two minutes before I do it, then I chicken out, but do it anyway. And then when I do, I'm incredibly nervous and don't do as well as I could. My dad reminded me of this yesterday. Then I talked to my friend this morning who is also learning to play the guitar (about four months ahead of me) and he said singing and playing is way harder than it looks and I shouldn't do it.
Now, even though the whole reason I'm doing this is for Open Mic, I might not do it. I probably won't do it. I'm not going to do it. Not unless I can find someone to play the guitar onstage with me. Or maybe a group of five friends just stand behind me. Would that look weird? Yes. Ok, I'm not doing it.
I love speaking in front of people, though it does make me nervous. But when my voice gets shaky, I just cover it up by cracking more jokes, making my audience laugh which calms me down. If my audience doesn't laugh, or if I'm not playing a character (not in a play or anything really, but if I'm pretending to sell something or something like that) I do get really nervous. But I've never broken down or anything. And I do love presenting to people. Maybe I just love talking.
Anyway though, I'm not going to stop playing the guitar. I'm interested to see where it takes me. I'll probably do it for six months or a year or so, and see where I'm at. If I like it. It's better since so many people play the guitar, I can talk about it with a lot of different people at school and Sno-Isle.
Maybe next time I post I'll be able to play the song without pausing at all. Maybe.

Guitar Lessons 1: Let Us Make Beautiful Music Together!

By "us" I mean, me. By "beautiful" I mean mediocre. And by "together" I mean you get to watch me stumble through one song over and over again. Sound fun? All right.
So apparently school is starting this new thing called "Open Mic" in which students sign up for it, get up on this stage thingy in the cafeteria during lunch and pretty much do whatever. Because of Sno-Isle, I don't get to hear the morning bulletin, so I had no idea this was happening last Friday (when it was last Friday). After hearing a couple people play guitar, watching two students "rap", and listening to one kid reciting part of The Odyssey, a friend of mine was very excited and wanted to be in the next Open Mic.
I volunteered to sing with her, because I have zero self-confidence in my singing voice, and singing with someone that was playing the guitar would certainly be better than just me by myself....right? We were thinking of what songs to do, when lunch ended. This is when friend number 2 let me in on some news, friend number 1 couldn't sing very well. Now, I've never heard her sing, and I'm sure she's not terrible. But when friend number 2 told me this, I started thinking.
I told my dilemma to friend number 3 in history class, who promptly told me he could play this song I knew on the ukulele. This got me all excited, and I was thinking of doing that instead of doing a duet with friend number 1. Or I could possibly do both. Friend number 3 told me he couldn't play that song very well, and we started discussing other songs we could do while walking to our next classes. He said that if we could find a song he could play and I could sing, he'd do it. Then we departed.
When evening rolled around I told my dad this whole story (or at least the last part) and he told me I could easily play a song on the guitar on my own. I was skeptical, then he told me about the song "Whole Wide World" which was literally two chords. E and A. So I said ok, and here we are.
Currently, I'm at day three of guitar playing and I can't really feel the tips of my ring and middle finger. Hopefully they become calluses soon. I try to practice for an hour, but yesterday I could only do half an hour because my fingers hurt too much. I'm still working on transitioning from E to A. The pick keeps slipping out of my hand too. But, I mean, come on, it's only day three.
But hey, the next Open Mic is January 6. I have 3 1/2 weeks and during that time I have winter break. I'm sure I'll progress.
And since this whole guitar playing this is different from the "funny-things-I-notice-in-life" part of my blog, I'm making it a separate string of blog posts. By this I mean if "Guitar Lessons" is put in front of the title, then it's about me playing guitar. Get it? No? Your loss then, buddy.
Anyway, I'm going to go practice a little more for today. Maybe next time I'll have calluses and won't feel the guitar strings much. At least, for the E and A chord.