learn music theory

As expected, the acoustic guitar I purchased has provided excellent incentive to (try) to play more. For various reasons, I have a narrow window during weeknight evenings that I can play. Thus, I haven’t been able to really use the twenty-something episodes of Guitar Sherpa my Tivo’s downloaded. There are apparently a million jillion Hal Leonard books, and I’m working through the ones the library has. (Biggest problem: the library copies often have missing CDs.)

But there has been progress – I have small callouses forming on the tips of my fingers! And, sometime during the last few weeks, I learned (passable) versions of several simple songs, most recently Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and Pearl Jam’s “I am Mine.”

As pleased as I am with finally getting that opening riff of “I am Mine” down, what’s brought the most accolades from my family has been impromptu renditions of children’s songs. For example, last night I plugged the electric into the amp (something I hadn’t done in >10 years) and did an embellished (_but not too loud) “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with the waaaah of the slowly stretching string. There was much giggling.

I tried out some guitars Sunday afternoon. The place was pretty huge, but thankfully the acoustics were in an humidity-controlled room sound-buffered from the rest of the store. Otherwise, I would have been pushed to sensory overload in about ten minutes.

For the first 20 minutes, I had the room to myself as I tried different makes and models I’d previously read about on the Internets. Since it’s been a long time since I’d had lessons, I was relegated to random finger picking and the seven random chords I know.

Soon, other customers came in and were doing Nirvana, Clapton and Zeppelin. As one was strumming the opening to Stairway to Heaven, I kept thinking of that scene from Wayne’s World.