Learn to play the guitar

Playing chords and switching from one chord to another has been one of the most difficult aspects of learning to play the guitar for me, but during the last week or so I have made a lot of progress. I started practicing a song called Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison and I’ve played it at least a couple of times every day. I think it is a good song for beginners, because the strumming pattern is relatively easy and the chord progression is quite simple.

At first it was frustrating because my fingers always seemed to land on wrong strings when I tried to go from one chord to another. I felt like I could never get it right. But steady practicing paid off: I can now play the song correctly at slow tempo. I still need to work on this, but I feel good now, because I have started to believe that I might learn this after all. :)

I’ve been practicing for several months now, but I wasn’t able to stick with my plan. I just haven’t had enough time to go through those online lessons, nor have I played the guitar every day, but I’ve been learning nonetheless. I play every now and then, whenever I have time and interest and it has paid off: I can now play Iron Man by Black Sabbath from the beginning to the end (excluding the solos). I have only just memorized the song, though, which means that I still need to work on it to get the timing right.

It is such a wonderful feeling to accomplish something like this. Half a year ago I could not even imagine myself ever being able to play the guitar, but now it seems that I might be able to learn it after all. This goal is completed for me now. I’m not good at playing the guitar but I have learned to play something and that was my goal. However, this is not the end of anything. Of course I will keep practicing and learning more songs. The fun has only just begun! :)

I started practicing Iron Man by Black Sabbath. It’s fairly simple and easy to play, except for the solos.

I chose Dreams Come True by Hammerfall as a song that I’m going to learn to play from the beginning to the end. It is quite simple, but it uses barre chords, which is good, because I really need to work on them. It is also a very beautiful song with good lyrics.

Another Hammerfall song that I’m practicing is In Memoriam. It is an instrumental with one big guitar solo. It is not too difficult, because it is played rather slowly, but it utilizes string bendings and vibrations.

I haven’t made much progress lately, because I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had much time to practice. Anyway, now that the end of this academic year is drawing near, I’m having more and more free time and I’m definitely going to spend a good part of it on practicing guitar playing.

At the moment I can remember and play the open chords, power chords and the minor barre chords. However, switching from one chord to another is awfully slow and I gotta do something about it. I think I should pick a couple of easy songs and make a project out of learning to play them from the beginning to the end. Any suggestions?

It’s been about a week since I borrowed a guitar from my friend and I’ve been practicing every day. My plan is to go through these beginner lessons spending at least a week on each one before moving on to next lesson. I practice at least half an hour every day, but I usually do more than that. The most important thing for me is that playing the guitar is fun and I’m more than willing to invest my free time on learning it. And I’m not expecting results to come quickly or easily.

However, it has been encouraging to notice that I have made some progress already: my fingertips don’t hurt as much as they did earlier, I can play notes without looking at the fretboard, I don’t need to pay much attention on my picking hand and I can play three different major chords (C, G, D) without looking at my fingers. Of course my playing is still very slow and and my fingers are not very nimble and I make mistakes, but hey, this is the first week. I’ll be more than happy if my skills keep improving at this rate. :)

I will go through those lessons I mentioned and hope that after about three months of practicing I would be able to play at least some songs so well that people could recognize them. If I manage to achieve that, I’ll mark this goal done. But don’t get me wrong now, because I won’t stop there. I want to make guitar playing a life-long hobby and continue learning as much as I can.

My friend lent me the guitar and amp he bought a while ago. He’s in the army now so he doesn’t have time to play it and I need a guitar to practice. It is a cheap starter set made by Behringer and I guess it’s not of very good quality but hey, it’s a guitar nonetheless. :D

I cannot start practicing regularly before I get a guitar of my own. But I don’t have enough money to buy one! It seems I have to put this goal on hold for a while. :(

I began playing about a week ago and now I’m totally hooked on this. I’ve been practising a couple of hours per day and it has been wonderful to notice that I have actually learned something.

My biggest problem is the lack of dexterity, but I know it’ll get better through practice and repetition. Playing chords was really difficult for me at first but now my fingers don’t hurt anymore and I can actually switch between some chords without looking at my fingers.

I played my dad’s guitar while I was on holiday, but now I definitely need to get a guitar of my own, so that I can keep on practising whenever I want.

Yesterday evening I began practising some chords (C, G, G7, F) and now my wrist aches and my fingertips hurt. No pain, no gain, I suppose.