On the eve of my 51st birthday, in two days' time, my mind goes back to the day of my 49th birthday, and a present off my children, Owen and Molly. A voucher for two lessons with a guitar teacher in Leamington Spa. Had always loved guitar music - The Smiths, U2, Simple Minds as a Bridgnorth teenager. Then on to Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics. I even had an old guitar sat gathering dust on a stand in my front room, but I'd never played it. The vouchers gave me the kick I needed. Pretty much every week since the end of August 2018, I've been having lessons with Paul. I always looked forward to my mug of tea on a Monday night in Paul's teaching room - until Covid-19 intervened. Albeit with cheat chords, I started to play Wonderwall. I could just about find my way through Don't Stop Believin' by Journey. My personal nightmare was the D chord. But we got there, eventually. Big issues for me have always been finding time to practice, and getting to grips with a metronome. But the biggest challenge (ongoing) is to improve the speed between chord changes. I know the chords, can see the chords, but struggle sometimes to land the chords. But at least I've cracked the basic strum... I've always got time for my lesson, and always enjoy it. Then life gets in the way. I need to have a better plan. I also have a camp fire dream (not that I ever sit around a camp fire!). Someone passes me a guitar and says 'play us a song John'. One day I'll get there. Maybe this blog entry is a start...
Trying to build the number of songs that I can play. Always loved Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. It's been my focus so far in 2023. I can play the intro in the proper style (A-E-D), but still working on when the singing starts. If I start immediately strumming, I find it easier to start singing in the right place. I've tried to use midi files (although can't find a Snow Patrol one) and also been playing around with Garage Band. But that's not proving much use. It's so complex, and it will import the midi files but doesn't show what the chords are. So I'm back to Chordify where I found a karaoke version of Chasing Cars. Duffed the intro on this but overall kept up I think!
Inspired by Noel, even if it’s a slightly different financial level! Bought an Epiphone ES-335. I know it’s all about the guitar player rather than the guitar. But it still feels like Christmas Day
Still trying to nail the D chord
It's now exactly four years since I started playing guitar with Paul. It's one of the best things I've ever done. It was slow going at first, and I'm still by no means perfect, but I love playing and look forward to my lessons with Paul every week. My ambition now is to build the repertoire of songs that I can play without needing to rely on a chord sheet. I've got a few under my belt (Wonderwall, Chasing Cars, Hotel California, Shivers by Ed Sheeran. I can probably do a few more but still feel like I need the comfort blanket of a sheet or computer screen (I use the website and app Chordify). So at last night's lesson we looked at another of my favourite songs to play. I was lucky enough to see the Eagles in concert at Anfield in June. I was blown away by their music even though I was only a young boy when they were in their pomp, honest.
So my challenge is to learn how to play this without any help. I made some progress last night. So tonight is stage one. Record something that I'm happy with to kick me off. I kept looking at the screen, but hopefully by next week's lesson I'll be able to post a video that doesn't show me "cheating". :-)
To add to the drama and excitement, I played with a pedal bought as a father's day gift from my guitar-playing son. It's pretty much taken me until now to work it out!