Sore hands

I seem to have perpetually sore hands. My wrists have always bothered me with the guitar, but now my knuckles are trouble too.

The latter seems to have started when I overdid the rock climbing...which I stopped. Stretching out my wrists seems to help the first some, but I'm convinced now that they're just the price of doing business, that my fate is to have sore hands. C'est la vie.

Carter style

There's a style of playing called Carter Style. I believe it's named for Maybelle Carter, a member of an old group called the Carter Family. It involves alternating pass notes with strums and the base notes effectively pick out the melody.

I've got a bunch of pieces like that that I like and have worked on for some time. I enjoy them; they're a lot of fun to play.

I've gone listening to the original Carter Family tunes though, and most of them don't float my boat all that much. So I'm having a bit of a disconnect between what I like to play and what I like to listen to.

Railroad Bill

There's a wonderful version of "Railroad Bill" performed by Etta Baker. I think the most often heard one is from an album with Taj Mahal. You can find free mp3 versions of the song on the web.

It's pretty straightforward and real pretty. I found a book that offers a simplified version of it that I've been working on.

It's fingerstyle, which is new for me, and the picking is nicely syncopated.

I'd love to find tab for the full version by Baker, but no luck yet.

One story

I'm an older fellow going through my nth life crisis: my only son has just left for college out of state to study music.

With time and conflicting emotions on my hands, I'm resolved to spend more time with the guitar and really try to move from the "fiddling around with it" stage to the "actually can make music" stage.

I think I'm guided by my son in several ways. First, there's the empty nest syndrome. I've got some time. Second, he's a musician himself---violin---and he gets such pleasure from his playing that I think I might too.

I think there's a third reason too possibly. Is it that I miss the sound of somebody practicing in the house? Is this at least partially a way of trying to deal with my son's moving out?

Why

The overt goal of this blog is to document my progress--or lack thereof--in learning how to play the guitar.

There, are, however a number of covert goals as well....which, for full dramatic effect, I'll leave to later posts.