Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Guitar

So, lately, I've been practicing on the guitar that Kim so lovingly gave me for Christmas. It's an Aria acoustic guitar, six strings, frets all over the place, some turny knobs at the top that tune the guitar, and some other technical stuff like a nut, a neck and some other things.

Lately, I've decided that I want to learn how to actually play this thing. I mean, it looks pretty good propped up against the bookshelf in the office, but that really doesn't do anything for the sound.

So, I had to overcome a hurdle. One of the frets sounded just like the fret beside it on the high "E" string. I looked the problem up on the internet (thank you, Al Gore!) and apparently, it's called dead fret. I googled those very words (thank you Larry Page) and one possible reason is that the fret became separated from the neck and could be put back in place with some taps from a plastic headed hammer. The flashlight is plastic, so I smacked it against the fret a little and it worked.

Next came finding resources to learn how to play guitar. I googled "Guitar Lessons for the Absolute Beginner" and came to http://zentao.com/guitar which has ... you guessed it. Guitar lessons for the absolute beginner.

So now I'm getting more familiar with the notes on the fretboard, scales (major and minor, for now), chords (which are way harder than scales, at least at this point) and picking and strumming techniques.

So far, I can play "Mary had a little lamb", "Twinkle Twinkle" and I'm scratching my way through "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

It's a bit of an obsession with me right now and it's nice to actually be able to tell that I'm making progress.

4 comments:

El Cliff said...

Jesus...I read that you'd already learned Mary Had a Little Lamb, and first thought of the Stevie Ray Vaughn song. Thought you were some sort of guitar slingin' Rainman, or something. :)

I think that, at some point in his life, every single man will own a guitar. It just seems to be one of those male rites of passage.

Liam J. said...

No, no Stevie Ray Vaughn for me, yet. I just figured out a baseline, though. Very exciting.

Oh, and C major and E major scale.

I'm working on chords, but they're a lot harder than scales, in my opinion.h

Chad said...

I, too, own a guitar!

It looks fantastic on its stand.
Gathering dust.
In the closet.
In the basement.

Liam J. said...

Sounds like a good start to a new song.