— Daily Journal Entry 008 —
On my “About Me” page I talk a little bit about how I was first introduced to music. That my first ever introduction was to the piano, then on to the trumpet, until finally the guitar. It was playing the trumpet in junior high that taught me how to read music. From there I was able to just buy books and teach myself a lot of the basics of the guitar. Not that you really need to know how to read music in order to buy a book on guitar and start learning, but that experience had put me in the mindset of learning music from books.
Let’s Buy Some Books
The few books that I have (I’ll write about each one at some point) are a mixture of regular sheet music style lessons where knowing what the notes are ahead of time is a slight advantage, and guitar tab, which can be learned without any knowledge of music structure.
Once I had learned things like: most of the basic open chords, barre E-Form and A-Form chord shapes, the G Major scale, and had gotten fairly decent at switching between a few chords with ease, I decided to start taking guitar lessons. I was around 20, or so…
In-Person Lessons Are Worth It
I can’t remember the guy’s name at present, but when I do, I’ll update this post (and add an update date to at the top) to make sure I don’t forget it again. I’m always forgetting this guy’s name. I have to ask someone at home because he doesn’t appear to come up in the searches I run – too many people show up in the results and none of the names look familiar. My Dad will know, but its 0630 in the morning, and I ain’t calling him right now. Maybe later… Anywayzzz…
Unfortunately, I only took a total of four, 30-minute lessons, when I should’ve let this guy mentor me over the years. OK, so I definitely lost out on that opportunity, but learned a great deal in that 2 (Two) hours of training. I learned (or, got far more familiar with) the A Minor Pentatonic scale and various positions; however, I still don’t have them down as well as I should. I have them memorized, but can’t crawl up the neck of the guitar without stopping and thinking about it.
Increased Finger Style Knowledge
I also learned four finger-style songs: Blackbird, Dust In the Wind, Broon’s Bane, and (of course) Stairway To Heaven). Learning those finger-style songs (and the scales) took my playing to a whole new level and opened my eyes to the future possibilities. SO, naturally, I quit. I don’t remember why I quit, except that maybe it was due to financial reasons. The lessons didn’t cost that much, but I was still attempting college at the time and had no real extra cash. Looking back, future, on-going lessons would’ve been sooooo worth it.
Alright, this has gone on too long for the purposes of this “Brain Dump,” so I’ll continue in a full post at some point…
Until Next Time,
- Featured Image: Me and my yellow Fender Stratocaster. View on Flikr. I learned most of my guitar playing on an apple-red Fender squire made in Japan that I now longer have, and so, bought another modern red one because I missed it so much.
- Note: These “Daily Journal Entries” are part of a mini blog within the main blog where I make every effort to publish a 250+ word post per day on top of the regular, longer posts. The idea is to just create a daily habit of publishing written content. And also, to try and become a better overall writer… We’ll see…
