I picked up the guitar again in November 2021, after being away from it for about 25 years. When I was young, I did a little strumming, picking, and singing to a 12-string. Never took any lessons, and never got very good at it. Bought myself a Taylor acoustic 6 string and a Les Paul Studio after retirement and started learning from Justin. I tend to get obsessed with things once started, and guitar was no exception. I was playing 5-6 hours a day for several months (putting up with very sore fingers and doing lots of hand and forearm stretches and strengthening to prevent tendonitis).
I’m not terribly settled when it comes to choosing a genre or style. As a fellow guitar-playing friend of mine said when choosing genres, “I have trouble deciding. I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to guitar music.” But for now, I’ve gravitated toward acoustic picking, blues, and electric lead parts.
I also started writing songs pretty much from the get-go this second time around on guitar. I didn’t write songs when I was young, but when I took up guitar in 2021, I started getting notions for lyrics in my head, and then finding myself spinning them out pretty quickly. Then I’d come up with some simple set of chords and melody to go with them. At least that was my method until my most recent song in which the chord progression came first, then an idea for the lyrics. One thing has remained the same though - when I get an idea for a song, I think of almost nothing else for about three days, and then it’s done.
I’m now working on Justin’s 5th grade intermediate level course, specifically starting to try to incorporate hammer-on’s and flick-off’s into my improvising on the electric guitar. On the acoustic, I’ve been working some time now on a few songs to improve my picking skills. I’ll often take a fairly lengthy hiatus from the lessons to just work on challenging songs that I like. Songs motivate me.
Anyway, still loving this journey, and appreciating the support of the community. I’ll leave links below to the songs I’ve uploaded so that they’ll all be in one place, and the songs from the old forum will be transferred over here.
