Esotropiart

Pretty much all I did this evening was practice with my guitar. I downloaded some worship song lead sheets so I can learn to play the chords listed in them.

I started thinking of strumming and how it is supposed to be done. Perhaps not everyone thinks about that detail, but I immediately thought of it. There are so many patterns you can choose, depending on the length between the chords. A Google search awarded me with quite a number of sites that share tips on strumming. Here are some of those I found. Some have helpful videos or sound.

• Jam Play - Sample Strumming Pattern
• AccessRock.com - Guitar Chord Strumming Basics
• A Guitar Teacher's Lesson Notebook - How to Strum the Guitar
• The Secrets of Playing Guitar Now - Strumming the Guitar
• Guitar Lessons Central - Guitar Strumming Patterns
• GuitarNoise.com - Strumming For Beginners

After a little reading and practice, I discovered that my self-discovered strumming pattern was working pretty well for me. I experimented with a few others from some of those sites as well. I chose a song to learn and began to try my hand at each of the four chords required to play. One of them was new, the E minor. It's about the easiest one in the book.

Rather than making it easy and telling which song I learned this evening, I'm going to make you guess. After much horrible sound production, I recorded a basic MP3. I know: it's absolutely horrible. I could have doctored it up and made it sound actually quite decent. But I want to show the process of my learning, so I can look back later and see how far I am coming along. I left in all the pauses and mistakes, exactly as they were played. At this point, it takes me several seconds to switch chords because my brain hasn't memorized the positions perfectly. But I did play from memory, not looking at a song sheet or anything - not that it's a hard song, but that's pretty good for me, the ultimate beginner.

Here is the MP3 for listening Note: if you cover your ears and scream (a quite natural reaction), you won't be able to guess the song very well.

Leave a comment with your guess which song I am playing. It should be fairly easy, but my playing is so butchered and pokey that hopefully it will pose some challenge.

Observations after a couple days of practice:

1. My fingers really hurt! Immediately after playing they are somewhere between red and purple. Interestingly enough, at some point they start going numb, and I don't feel it so much. When I stop for some minutes and start again, the pain returns. It hurts most to submerge my hands in hot water - like when I'm taking a shower.
2. The B major chord appears to be impossible. It is not only a barre chord, but it requires my fingers to go directions that my joints don't allow! I don't know if I'll ever be able to play that one.
3. I find playing with the pick very difficult. It is far easier to keep a steady strumming pattern when using my fingers. On the downward strum I use my second and third fingers. On the way up I use my thumb. It feels pretty natural. I also find it very difficult to play softly or at any reasonable level with the pick. And it gets stuck in the strings because it's hard to vary the strinking angle properly. Not only that, but it makes a loud clicking sound the softer I play. So for now I'm using my hand to strum. I read that 99% of steel guitar players prefer using picks. I really don't understand why.