Saturday, February 15, 2014

My Guitar Year - Week 1- Jimmy Page, Jr.

I have it.  My new thing for this year.  Last year it was a book a week, which was fun and instructional and inspirational.  But reading isn't a new skill for me, I've been reading since I was four.  That's a lot of ink under these fingers.  I decided for this year I needed to learn something new.  Completely new, a skill I had not mastered before.

So I'm going to learn to play the guitar.

Yup.  The old six-string.  Acoustic.  I went to Guitar Center and bought one because they had them on sale.  It's definitely not the best one in the store - made in China - but for beginner like me it's perfectly fine.  It even comes with a bag.  Not a case.  A bag.
   Full disclosure, in third and fourth grade I played the cello.  Badly.  In college I learned how to play the clarinet, for a month of Jan Term.  So I'm not a stranger to playing an instrument.  But I haven't played anything in a couple of decades and I was no good when I last did.
   Second full disclosure, I got the idea for playing guitar from my friend Mike.  He's been saying for the past three years (at least) that by the end of this year (2011, 2012, 2013, etc.) he was for certain going to learn how to play the guitar.*  He tried to get me in on it and I refused.  Until now.  Ball's in your court, buddy.  Let's see who gets groupies first.

Here's my plan:
1.  Don't take lessons, at least not at first.  I want to noodle around with it, get on YouTube and learn from the ground up.  The best guitarists learned by doing, I need to emulate that.  Lessons maybe after the Summer Solstice.
2.  Do at least half an hour every day.  Should be easy enough.  It'll cut into my book reading/ writing time, but, honestly, I could easily eliminate half an hour of TV from my schedule and not miss it a bit.
3.  Learn music theory on the mean streets.  And by 'mean streets' I mean the Internet.  Music is math and math is music.  I'm pretty decent at math, maybe I can translate that to music.  Plus, I have a friend who's a PhD in Music, so if I get stuck I know who I can talk to.
4.  Figure out my style.  I'm really not certain what kind of player I want to be, or even the kind my fingers and brain are suited to be.  Joe Satriani?  Chet Atkins? Eddie Van Halen? Les Paul?  BB King? I have no idea where I'm headed with this, but I'll figure it out.
5.  Learn how not to suck.  I'm sure there will be suckage a-plenty for the first few months, but after a while I should improve.  I was a pretty awful actor at first, too, and then I got good.  It just takes practice.

I'll post here at least once a week with progress notes.  The pressure should also keep me from quitting.  See you next week.


BTW - If you don't know who Jimmy Page is, shame on you.  No, he's not the father of Ellen Page - I'm fairly certain - he's only one of the best guitarists ever and the force behind Led Zeppelin.  If you don't know Zep, then... man, you might be beyond help.  

* in case it's not clear, he has yet to touch a guitar, let alone learn to play one