Guitar Lessons 4: A Change of Tactics

Oh hi, didn't see you there. Wondering where I've been? No, didn't think so, considering that only five people read this thing, and half those people are my parents. Apparently, I have some weird half-parent that makes up the .5 in my 2.5 parents. (See...because half of 5 isn't a whole number and...yeah....) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, no one reads my blog.

Despite that being the case, I would say I've been making progress in this hobby I call "guitar playing." I do have a callus on my pinky, so that's one goal done.

Also, the G chord is a breeze now. I'm not perfect at it, but at least I'm as mediocre playing the G chord as I am playing all the other chords. So another goal is checked off.

And, the Ring of Fire? I'm..OK at it.... Actually my "Songs I Can Kind of Play" list has changed. These songs include and are limited to:

• You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift
• Mad World by Gary Jules
• You Can Do Better Than Me by Death Cab for Cutie
• Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric
• Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash (it's last for a reason)

I've noticed the transitions between G and C are much easier, considering You Can Do Better Than Me is pretty much G and C over and over again. There's an A minor in there too.

Songs I've been working on:

• Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright
• I Don't Believe You by P!nk (again, last for a reason)

Hallelujah is teaching me not only how to spell "Hallelujah" but also the much dreaded F chord. Yes ladies and gentleman, I am taking on my first barre chord. I'll hold for applause.**

Oh yeah, barre chords. They're difficult. I now question my right to call the G chord difficult now that I'm attempting the F chord. It's almost humorous. Haha. Yeah, so humorous. Tell that to my fingertips that still turn purple when I'm on the guitar for more than ten minutes.

Goals for next blog post? Um..how about:

• Don't sound so terrible when playing F chord
• Oh, and progress on those songs will be good too...

All right, it's signing out time. See my blog post below if you want to hear me ranting. Two blog posts in one night? Yeah..I went there. *high fives self*

I really need to get out more.

That's all I have to say. Peace out.

EDIT (3/29/11): OK, the song "Hallelujah" had too many F chords so I have switched to playing "Jar of Hearts" which has five or so F sharp chords, which is the same as F chords, only a fret higher. I'm progressing at it. Also, I've been playing the G chord with the wrong fingers this whole time. That wouldn't be a big deal except in "Jar of Hearts" the transition from G to G minor would be way easier if I was using the right fingers to play. So I'm working on that now too.






**Hey, have you ever noticed how the word "applause" looks really similar to the word "applesauce?" I confused the two words once and now every time I'm reading and I come to the work "applause" I think "applesauce." Anyway, what was I saying?

Things I'll Never Get: What is Success?

In order to fully understand this, you need to have an idea of what success is to you. When someone says, "He is a very successful man," what images or ideas is fill you mind? It depends on how you were raised, I suppose. It also depends on what country you live in. But in order to think about this, you need to already have an idea of success in your mind.

When the typical American thinks of a successful person, what usually comes to mind is a financially stable person with a good home and loving family. What I wonder is how many of those people actually exist. I know they're out there, but it seems like a lot of families has one of those aspects but lacks others. For example, financial stability usually requires long working hours for one or both parents. So this could easily mean that the child doesn't get the attention they require. Of course, if the child is older, that required attention goes unnoticed by them. If this older child grows without attention, they grow independently. This would be a good thing, except this child doesn't know it needs attention. Then when the parents want to have a "family day out," they dread it and are miserable the whole time. The parents may or may not know about this feeling the child has. They may try to hard to "make up for lost time," pushing the child further from them in the process, or they could let the child do what he or she wants. This makes the child happy, but now it doesn't have parental guidance because the child no longer wants it. When that is missing, the child goes to other sources for advice. Maybe they are reliable sources. Maybe not. Would this be considered a loving family? Is success reached?

Of course, you can't take the above scenario completely seriously. It is hypothetical. I know for a fact that not all children are totally unstable and are neglected by their parents. The point is, there are fewer and fewer instances of a typical "successful" American family. Looks are deceiving. 

But the ultimate question is: What is success?

All throughout my years in school, the first thing teachers tell you to do is follow your dreams, stand up for what you believe, etc. The funny thing is, is that as I got older, I realized my teachers had already picked my dreams and beliefs out for me.


Belief Number One: Money is essential.
Dream Number One: I want money.


Belief Number Two: A well-paying job is essential.
Dream Number Two: I must use my money to go through years of college to get this job.

Belief Number Three: Owning a nice house is essential.
Dream Number Three: I must save lots of my money from my well-paying job to get this nice house.

I didn't really see what the big deal was. Was any of it wrong? No. But I had different goals for myself. I was raised to think that what I want to do with my life is my decision. I never really understood why anything different than the above beliefs and dreams was considered a "waste of life" by some people. Is it so wrong?

This comes to the part that I don't get. Society is so hypocritical. Why in the world would you tell children to follow their dreams and do what they believe is right when you clearly already have the idea of "right" in your mind? And if these children decide to go against what you think is right, then it is suddenly wrong, which completely goes against what you just told them.

Perhaps I'm being too judgmental, I probably am. Usually what happens when I get worked up over something is I start venting to a person who thinks logically (pretty much anyone) and they find a hole in my logic and my rant fizzles out into oblivion, and I am left looking stupid. Still, I'd rather be stupid and informed later than being stupid and ignorant my entire life. I've met people who are like that. It's not a pretty sight. Especially since I occasionally meet the ignorant guy who thinks he is so much more right than you and spends his time debating something he clearly doesn't know anything about. Then when you prove him wrong, he refuses to believe it. Yeah, I really don't want to be that person.

Hypocrisy gets me all riled up I suppose. Although I would think I'd be used to it by now.

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.

2 Inches of Snow?? Life=Complete

As many of us Washingtonians know, winter time mostly consists of gray days and rain. However, I am happy to announce that Washington has been rewarded with early snow! Did you hear me? Early snow! Of course, I'm sure people who live on the West Coast or Alaska think this is nothing, but don't ruin this for us rain-dwellers! This is a big deal!
So, after many conflicting weather reports, I was still skeptical about any snow this year. The days were growing colder, but the ground remained bare. I finally decided to bring out the Puffy Coat. That's right, Washingtonians keep note on when the Puffy Coat is brought out. It's kind of a momentous occasion. Well, maybe that's just me. But anyway, a light dusting of snow precipitated the previous day, so I decided it was time.
When I got to school, there was no snow at all. I was starting to wonder if Sunday's light dusting was just to make us all have false hope. But alas! On the bus ride to Sno-Isle, the snow started trickling down from the clouds of gray. Fortunately, my classroom  has a big window in front of me with no blinds, so I could watch it fall throughout the day. It was mesmerizing. At one point, while looking out the window, someone started talking to me and I totally missed it because I was in awe. Or maybe I just decided not to listen to her. Either way, I blamed the snow.
After the snow started sticking and accumulating, one guy in the class told our instructor to go out and make a snow angel. She laughed and told him there wasn't enough snow yet. He kept asking. When it started snowing harder, he asked if we could go outside and make snow angels. Of course, only a few would do it, but we would all watch. Our instructor sighed and told him to wait until after 10. We refused that because some of us were to be bused back to school after ten. So we agreed on 10 sharp. Several people were watching the clock. The snow continued to come down. At 10, about three people announced it was time for snow angels and went outside the back door in our classroom. Our instructor followed them out. Other people were watching, including the people in our class. The door they went out of locked from the outside, but we made sure they all got back in. Eventually.

Sno-Isle Snow Angels

I took a picture with my cellphone of this day. I have to say, Sno-Isle is the highlight of my day, but this was the highlight of my highlight. I mean, come on. Sno-Isle? Snow? It's the perfect combination! It maybe be even better than chocolate and peanut butter! Well, I shouldn't say that. Certain people reading this will have a fit and send me angry messages.
Anyway, when I got back to school, the snow was falling there as well. It was exciting. It took as a lot longer to get back because all the buses had to drive at practically 20 mph so they didn't slide. It stopped eventually, then during 5th period someone look out the window and gasped, "It's snowing!" And so it was. Even harder this time.
During lunch my friend decided to throw snow at me. There was barely enough to make a snowball, but she did it. And I did too. Oh, what a fun day.
When I got home, the snow still wasn't sticking to the roads. It probably started sticking later that night. That evening we got a call from school saying school was canceled the next day. Seconds later I received a call from my friend who then repeated the news. While talking with this friend I got a text from someone I knew saying school was canceled. Word travels fast if it involves schools being canceled.
It froze that night, so not only was there snow, there was ice. And it was only getting colder. So the school called that evening saying school was canceled Wednesday too. Thanksgiving Break was after that.
So basically, we went to school one day this week and have a six-day weekend. Plus, two inches of snow. Don't judge. This is twice the snow we got last year!
The downside to this is all my friends have cabin fever and caused me to go over my texts and minutes in four days. Thanks guys. Haha, just kidding. I love talking to all of you. :-)

Anyway, the snow is gone now, aside from the few patches. It rained yesterday. The magical moments are gone. Oh well, hopefully this means more snow for Winter Break!

...Right?

To Be Continued....never...

Writing has always been a big passion of mine. Hence, a blog. But I've found I've always been terrible at satisfying suspense. At least to me. No one has told me either way. But I do know how an ending can ruin the whole book.
There is a certain author I read for a period of time. She was excellent at producing cliffhangers and the "edge-of-your-seat" kind of format. But she wrote preteen kids books. So her books had impossibly happy endings. This ruined the whole experience for me. Ever since I read her books I wanted to make sure I was never like that.
Recently I wrote a dark story. This is pretty normal for me, but this one I tried to make more realistic instead of morbid. I think it's ok, and the two people I showed it to said it was ok, but I hated the ending. I ruined my story with the ending. It was intended to be a story about someone who no one cared about. So the first half or so is pretty depressing and sad. This is the part of the story I like the most. It sounds like my usual voice of writing. Then I wanted the story to have a happy ending. So I made an incredibly happy ending. Like, too good to be true happy ending. I hate it.
This is exactly why I don't normally "end" my stories. The words cease to continue but the story still goes on in the reader's mind. That's how I want my audience to experience my stories. Those stories always get the best feedback. So I don't let myself learn how to end a good book properly. Then I'm not able to progress in my writing, it just stays the same. Of course, I don't write like a five-year old, but I'm not positive I'll be able to get past my teen writings, which become less and less good the older you get and the higher everyone's standards get.
I'd like to think after a couple years of doing a blog or something of that nature, I'll look back and wonder if it's really me, if I really used to write like that. There's no way that I can progress unless I make mistakes first. Mistakes help you learn, it's a fact of life. But how can I possibly know the mistake I make unless someone tells me? I know there are writers better than me, there always will be, at least in my opinion. This doesn't mean I want people to sugar coat their feedback. Yet, I still want them to be tactful. Is that too much to ask?
Anyway, if you want an example of how I usually end my stories, have a link to my favorite video I've done. I'd show you from here, but the file's gone. So here, have a link:

Sara Bareilles-Gravity Music Video (sims 2)

So now you know how I hate ending things...

*ahem*

Um...I'm...just gonna go...then...bye..

*leaves awkwardly*