Lesson 50 Tuesday 7th January 2014

My first lesson of the year and my first lesson for two weeks and exactly one day off of a year of trying to play the guitar.

In my two weeks off I had been practicing each day. Maybe not as much as I would have liked but I had been trying to play. In that time I had played a few tunes I thought my parents (who grew up in the 60’s) may recognise some of the tunes like The Animals song “House Of The Rising Sun” or “Maggie May”. Unfortunately they did not so I think I may have to improve of them a bit then.

We started off the lesson going through the intro from the Oasis song “Wonderwall”.

This has been proving a problem to me and I have tried to build up the song but once I get to the Dsus4 it all goes bad and the A7sus4 is a disaster.

My teacher decide to get me to slow down on the tune so that I can get the idea. It took me several attempts just to get past the first bar which I can only assume is because I was nervous of getting it wrong. By slowing down it did give me time to hit the chords correctly and I did get better and I even got through the whole intro without a mistake.

Even though we did practice through this part for a very long time with me making many mistakes sometimes on parts that before I had spot on. I have to say I did enjoy myself and the time went by so quick.

Near the end of the lesson to give me a break from the intense practice I was doing on “Wonderwall” and probably to give my poor teachers nerves a rest too, we had a look at how I was doing with “Maggie May”.

  

The intro I still have problems with but I am managing to push through it.

The main song is getting better but the bridge chord hgh still slows up the flow of the song. But the rhythm and timing appears to be correct which is great as this has been a problem with me keeping the rhythm and speeding up too much. It is not perfect though and I can see many areas to improve on like the old favourite of changing chords cleanly and on time.

A great lesson for the new year. If I look back to 12 months ago I knew nothing about the guitar. I had no idea about chords, how to do a rhythm or anything. So even though I am no Jimmy Hendrix I am pleased with my progress and look forward to another 12 months on improvements. The thing I have come to notice is that the improvements are not instant but subtle and its only when I think back to how I used to be I can see a progression and me being more comfortable playing (mostly badly) the guitar.