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.

Just Press End

If you are interested in seeing what I'm reading, what I've read recently or what I'm looking forward to reading, at the bottom of the blog is a nifty widget that links to Visual Bookshelf, which is a Facebook app. I'm usually pretty good at keeping it up-to-date.

So check it out. Or don't. The choice is yours!