Wednesday, September 10, 2008

This playing guitar isn't all it's cracked up to be.


Hrumph! So, I was totally expecting to just pick up the guitar (about a month ago) and be wailing by Thanksgiving. I have come to the sad conclusion that it ain't gonna happen by Thanksgiving. 2010. I don't have any plans to take it on the road at any point, I just want to be able to sit down and sing to myself accompanied.

I am learning to read music (again) and playing with tabs when I need some instant gratification. Me loves me some instant gratification. The reading music is going "okay". My 8-year old can read more notes than me, but I do better at switching from one note to the other. Take that, Cooper! Tabs can be fun, but when you aren't sure how a note should sound, you have no freakin' idea if you are playing it correctly or not. Throw in a hammer or the requirement of a capo and I want to throw the damn thing across the room.

I started out playing "Jeremy" with a tab, since it has such distinctive first notes. It sounded kind of like "Jeremy", but after looking around online, I found three other tabs for it that were nothing like what I was playing! WTF? I gave up on that one. Then onto "Trouble", which should have been easy enough. I even wrote my own tab, as it doesn't seem to exist anywhere. No comment, but suffice it to say that there is no Cat Stevens a la Ed Ved going on around here.

Then, I tried to play "Porch". Uh, no. Now, I am thinking it is going to be "Lukin" since it's basically just 5 or 6 notes played really fast. If you screw up, no one is really going to know. Look for a boot of it online and you will see what I mean.

I really have no business trying to learn an instrument at the age of 36, but I am going to keep at it.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Honey, I couldn't play the guitar at 16, so I admire you for the effort!

Natalie said...

I wanna know how to play the piano. Can you teach me?