At some stage during my late teens, I decided I wanted to learn to play guitar. I’ve always loved listening to people play and wanted to give it a go. I did a short course and bought a couple of books and learnt how to read music.
In my head I imagined myself like the girl in the picture – strumming peacefully, making lovely music.
What I definitely didn’t imagine was the blistered and calloused fingertips, the difficulty moving between the strings and my almost complete inability to play any song with chords.
I stuck with it for a while, because I’m stubborn, but in the end I was frustrated by my guitar teacher who only knew heavy metal songs and my lack of progress, and I decided to focus on writing instead.
Then recently my brother-in-law asked to borrow my guitar. He’d been thinking about taking lessons and wanted to give it a try before he made the commitment of buying his own instrument. I had no problem with that since the guitar was currently more of a wall ornament, hanging in the study gathering dust. When he gave it back, I decided to give it another shot. These days I can avoid the dodgy guitar teachers and learn via YouTube or a number of different apps. The main problem I have now however is the finger I chopped off last year! It’s only a little bit shorter than it used to be, but the nerve endings in it aren’t quite right yet and pressing down a string requires quite a bit more pressure. My playing seems to go la, la, thud as the dodgy finger doesn’t press down hard enough. I figure it’s probably good therapy for it, so I’ll persist for a bit longer and see how I go. So if you have any recommendations for apps or easy songs to learn, make sure you leave a comment! 🙂
