First finger, third fret.
A year ago Zachary, back when I still called him Zachy (parenting faux pas) and I took guitar together. He'd wanted to learn, and told me he wanted a (not very) expensive electric guitar. The cherry red number at toys R us, right next to the electronic drum set. I told him if he took lessons (with me) and waited 4 months without buying any other toys I would deliver his guitar. Okay, it wasn't a huge learning curve, but he did resist temptation for four months and at the end of that time he still wanted to do it.
Part of my daily routine in this pocket of time was working out daily at the North Hollywood YMCA. They sign "ask us about our guitar lessons" lead to a discovery that at the YMCA guitar lessons are 5 dollars a class.
I signed us both up.
Sometimes it pays to not read the fine print. The classes are 12 and up and my youngest son was seven at the time. The beautiful thing about this is that I viewed Zach prior to this class as having behavior "issues", not being able to control himself. When we both learned that he was five years too young for the class but attendance was so low Giovani, the teacher, made an exception and for the most part Zachary's behavior was exemplary.
Though it was up to me, a non musician to translate when Giovanni was going faster than a second grade level which was most of the time.
So I would break things down to their simplest components. To play the A chord for example, I learned started by determining which is the index finger, then next by placing that finger on the third string. These are the first two moves of creating the chord, and working this way, moment by moment, Zachary eventually learned to play a song.
He didn't stick with it, unfortunately, as many of us non-musicians remember playing an instrument is a lot of work and gets old after a while. I'm not sure what it is that keeps a kid coming back but I do know that at least two of my musician friends only had a handful of lessons and taught themselves the rest. I do, of course, know those who went down the disciplined trek as children but i suspect those that went down that road had some very good teachers.
Anyway, when I first had the we-piphany of how to learn to play a chord, the first steps of playing guitar, I was impressed and enthused that anything, the most complex activity, begins with the simplest steps. Mathematics, brain surgery, classical guitar. All of it.
Though in hind sight like most duh-piphany's this is something everyone probably knows. I think I knew it to, but I learned it again sharing it with my son, and it gave me faith that we could learn anything we wanted if we just start from the simplest components and build one finger at a time.
Part of my daily routine in this pocket of time was working out daily at the North Hollywood YMCA. They sign "ask us about our guitar lessons" lead to a discovery that at the YMCA guitar lessons are 5 dollars a class.
I signed us both up.
Sometimes it pays to not read the fine print. The classes are 12 and up and my youngest son was seven at the time. The beautiful thing about this is that I viewed Zach prior to this class as having behavior "issues", not being able to control himself. When we both learned that he was five years too young for the class but attendance was so low Giovani, the teacher, made an exception and for the most part Zachary's behavior was exemplary.
Though it was up to me, a non musician to translate when Giovanni was going faster than a second grade level which was most of the time.
So I would break things down to their simplest components. To play the A chord for example, I learned started by determining which is the index finger, then next by placing that finger on the third string. These are the first two moves of creating the chord, and working this way, moment by moment, Zachary eventually learned to play a song.
He didn't stick with it, unfortunately, as many of us non-musicians remember playing an instrument is a lot of work and gets old after a while. I'm not sure what it is that keeps a kid coming back but I do know that at least two of my musician friends only had a handful of lessons and taught themselves the rest. I do, of course, know those who went down the disciplined trek as children but i suspect those that went down that road had some very good teachers.
Anyway, when I first had the we-piphany of how to learn to play a chord, the first steps of playing guitar, I was impressed and enthused that anything, the most complex activity, begins with the simplest steps. Mathematics, brain surgery, classical guitar. All of it.
Though in hind sight like most duh-piphany's this is something everyone probably knows. I think I knew it to, but I learned it again sharing it with my son, and it gave me faith that we could learn anything we wanted if we just start from the simplest components and build one finger at a time.