four finger yoga
Going to shelve the intro book for now, before I develop more bad habits. Guitar.about.com is my teacher now.
Whoo...oh man, this is way more difficult now that I've put all the kiddie stuff away. Those A and lower E strings change everything. It's a little discouraging since I pretty much have to start over from scratch, but at least now I'm making real progress. From a problem solving perspective it's kind of interesting because whenever my chords don't ring (which is almost every time), I have to stop and figure out exactly what I'm doing wrong. The problem is always something obvious--not enough force, thumb too close to the side of the fretboard, finger touching a string it shouldn't, string touching the finger too far away from the fingertip, that kind of thing--but figuring out a workable, permanent solution takes a little thought and a lot of trial and error. Books can only offer general advice in this regard because everyone's hands are different, and I'm putting my fingers in very unnatural positions. A lot like learning tae kwan do, actually, except that I'm trying to redefine the natural movements of my body instead of discovering them.
I could just call it good enough for government work and move on to learning songs from tabs, but getting the strings to ring just right is important to me. Jimi Hendrix probably sucked this much when he first picked up a guitar. Johnny Cash, too, when he was, like, eight.
Given up trying to figure out chords by holding down all the strings and shifting my fingers on the fretboard. Hopefully soon I'll have the finger strength to press multiple strings against the fretboard for minutes at a time without producing buzz, but not yet. (Violin never fought back this hard...) Cramps from doing the chromatic scale get less bad the more I practice.
Ugh. It's a three-legged race. But Shandy and I are in it to win it.
Whoo...oh man, this is way more difficult now that I've put all the kiddie stuff away. Those A and lower E strings change everything. It's a little discouraging since I pretty much have to start over from scratch, but at least now I'm making real progress. From a problem solving perspective it's kind of interesting because whenever my chords don't ring (which is almost every time), I have to stop and figure out exactly what I'm doing wrong. The problem is always something obvious--not enough force, thumb too close to the side of the fretboard, finger touching a string it shouldn't, string touching the finger too far away from the fingertip, that kind of thing--but figuring out a workable, permanent solution takes a little thought and a lot of trial and error. Books can only offer general advice in this regard because everyone's hands are different, and I'm putting my fingers in very unnatural positions. A lot like learning tae kwan do, actually, except that I'm trying to redefine the natural movements of my body instead of discovering them.
I could just call it good enough for government work and move on to learning songs from tabs, but getting the strings to ring just right is important to me. Jimi Hendrix probably sucked this much when he first picked up a guitar. Johnny Cash, too, when he was, like, eight.
Given up trying to figure out chords by holding down all the strings and shifting my fingers on the fretboard. Hopefully soon I'll have the finger strength to press multiple strings against the fretboard for minutes at a time without producing buzz, but not yet. (Violin never fought back this hard...) Cramps from doing the chromatic scale get less bad the more I practice.
Ugh. It's a three-legged race. But Shandy and I are in it to win it.