My introduction to the guitar took place about 3 weeks ago at a New year’s party. I was the front man pretending to play the guitar while my friend played behind the curtain. I was found out when the curtain was pulled back. An old gag but still goes down well. A video of it can be seen here .
My friend has then suggested that we modify it when are at another weekend away in June where I will do the same thing, but be able to join him by strumming along with the chords A D and E.
He has lent me a guitar and a small practice amp to learn how to play these 3 chords.
So I found Justin’s web site to learn these chords and I found that I liked his style of training. So now 3 weeks later, I am on lesson 2 and loving playing the guitar, even though it is badly playing the guitar.
My fingers don’t stretch far enough and they nearly always deaden the string below the one I am on. Still I know this will improve.
My goals are, to be able to play the 3 chords and strum to a couple of tunes by June, But my long term goal is to play the guitar as a recreational hobby to provide some chill out time.
Hi Tony,
What a great way to start
I watched your video with my wife and we both had a good laugh about it…
I also wish you a lot of fun and a nice learning curve, with a little bit of discipline you will easily achieve your goal, and in between relax or ask questions on the forum and you can see hopefuly acceleration of your guitar journey/playing, but above all we wish you lots of fun, but with such a start it will continue to go well
Thanks everyone for the kind comments. I just watched the open mic 13, wow!!! Just finished practising lesson 1 for a couple of weeks now starting lesson 2. The journey continues.
Week 4
Still at Module 2, this is the 2nd week of practice. I have found that my office chair was not the best for playing the guitar, so now use a high backed dining room chair. This is far more comfortable.
The 2 songs I am learning to strum along to when going on stage in June are, That’s alright mama and Lay down sally. I am running both at slow speeds at the moment to get the chords in the right place. One really annoying thing is that I can play the chords in practice mode, but they go completely to pot when playing along to a song!!
I have now written all the chords down next to the words in a similar fashion to Justin’s song books, but with a slight difference. I have the whole lyrics written down with the chord names above them so that I don’t need to jump back to the different sections in the songbook. Works for me.
Week 5.
Well the start of another week and I have decided in a slight change of direction. I have decided not to learn any more chords etc yet, I am going to consolidate the A D & E chords as they are the ones I need to know off by heart and be able to play perfectly at least 99% of the time by June.
I am now going to stay practicing the 2 songs that I need to know well enough to perform (not lead, just strumming) in June. I am going to continue with the strumming course and continue with the beginners course doing everything except the new chords at the moment just the theory and techniques.
Also this week I have strung my first guitar! I have replaced the thicker strings with the super slinky strings. Surprised at how much less push you need to play the note with these strings.
Still loving the guitar, but have got to get things right before moving on.
Nice to read the update Tony and the laser focus on your June goal. I’m pretty sure you’ll find that you’ll have A, D and E and changes between them actually sorted out well before then and you can start to expand a bit, but being focussed on those at the moment makes alot of sense.
Well done on the string changing too! It’s always nerve wracking doing a job for the first time but you pick up these things over time. Nice and insightful for you to feel the difference, now don’t press too hard!!
Hi Tony, as the June objective is of utmost importance for you, it makes sense to me putting on hold learning new chords and only working on the strumming and the chords you will need in the shown for now. This restrain may work in your benefit later when you start learning other chords and strumming patterns.
Nice work and thanks for sharing Tony. I’m in about the same spot as you and Angie. Progressing and still building functional callus. Looking forward to your future updates.
Ok, a slight change of plan as I have a cut on one of my finger tips making chords painful, so I have started to learn one of my future campfire songs, True Love Ways by Buddy Holiday. A Lovely song with not to difficult a melody. I can also play it without hurting my finger. Back to my original plan next week.
I am now strumming all the way through and not stopping when the chords are wrong. Just got to improve the accuracy of the chords, very bad at that at the moment.
Tony, you are making good progress. I couldn’t tell from your write-up, but I suppose you are also doing module 2 practice exercises - the Perfect Chord practice for D, A and E and the One Minute changes? That will help with the accuracy and speed of playing your chords.
Accuracy will come Tony and that’s good progress overall. It’s a good habit to plough through the song, what it’s showing you is you can correct a chord while playing with small adjustments, which you have done there.
Good luck for the coming week!
and boy, using 3 chords is hard!
