Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

My wife and I got back from vacation last weekend.  We had gone to Mexico for 8 days and for the entire 8 days I didn’t touch a guitar. I had a surprising desire to play and fiddle on a guitar. Ultimately, I did make it the entire eight days without going though guitar withdrawal.

Now that the vacation is over, I’ve been trying to get back in to the groove of daily guitar practice. Even though while I was on vacation I wanted to play guitar, it has been a challenge to go back to my guitar routine (not to mention my work and general-life routine).

I started by re-practicing most of my “harder” material. I only had to go back a few pages in my book. I started with a slower tempo and was able to play though the Ode To Joy without a problem. The Ode To Joy was a milestone marker for me. I quickly worked the tempo back to what I was playing it at — 95 BPM.

After Ode To Joy, I picked up where I left off. I progressed further and I’m now in to playing the High E, B, G and D strings while sight reading whole, half, quarter and eighth notes. That is amazing progress for myself. A few weeks ago I had huge trouble with just the High E and B strings (while sight reading)… I was always fumbling either my fretting or picking hand and screwing something up.

I am also suppose to memorize the following pattern as it is suppose to help with finding chords and other musically important information.

A C E G B D F

In upcoming posts, I’m hoping to be able to explain why memorizing this pattern is useful. From what I understand right now, it has to do with chord theory. Keep an eye out for more in this.

The Music Room, Universal Language Spoken Here

My guitar lesson last Saturday went well. Nothing too fantastic; we went over what I was suppose to learn [See here] and then Gary (Guitar Teacher) showed me a new pattern to learn. I believe he called it 3rd skips. My intention is to throw it in TuxGuitar and post it here at a later date, but no promises on that. I’ve been trying to spend my free time with a guitar in my hand…

The aforementioned 3rd skips I should be playing in quarter notes, half notes and 8th notes.

As for the practice itself, I’ve not done nearly as much as I’ve wanted to. Between my pending vacation [Mexico!] and the election I’ve been a little distracted. I’m trying to focus for at least one hour a day but that has been hit or miss. Sometimes I get a half hour in other times the entire hour. I will be trying to improve that…

Also, I’ve been continuing to practice my Bm and other barred chords. They are getting better but nothing significant yet. I’m hoping that it takes time and my improvement since the first post about this has been vast.

Hopefully I’ll have time to post more about this last lesson at a later date.  Until then (and beyond) thanks for reading! Regards!

My wife and I are leaving for Las Vegas soon — It’s a sort of mini-vacation for us. We don’t gamble at all, but we love shows and we’ve never seen the strip. It should be fun.

What I actually wanted to write about was something that my wife and I were talking about last night. She was explaining some of her adventures in to the world of Tarot, an interest she’s had since High School and she told me that as she learns about it, there is more that she realizes that she needs to learn.

I found this true with the Guitar too… The more I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know about playing guitar or writing music. No matter how much I learn there is always more to learn.

And I guess that is what makes the Guitar such a great hobby. Not only is it a never-ending learning experience, but it can also follow the path of interest. You can always back track later…

Have you ever read the Choose Your Own Adventure books? It is sort of like that, but never-ending…