Masters of War

An old Dylan classic. Really simple strum and chords: Dm and Csus2 (capo on 3). Nice

Going electric

I got a new guitar for my birthday yesterday!

It's electric!

It's a "starter" model, which is just right. I need to see if I enjoy playing electric before I go off an invest any money in a nice one.

So far, I see several things. First, it's wonderfully forgiving with misfingered chords. Nothing buzzes. Wow!

On the other hand, that fretboard is really narrow, so it's really hard to do anything fancy on the fretboard.

The strings are correspondingly close together, so it's hard to do any interesting fingerpicking.

And I find I have to be pretty careful with the pick, not to run into the pickups.

But it's really pretty....

Bad habits

I've decided that playing alone all the time--which is how I prefer it--leads me to perpetuate bad habits. I think I have at least these:

1. My timing is erratic and I should be practicing with a metronome.



2. My strumming seems to be based on getting the strum in the right place, rather than getting the right-sounding strum.



3. I fret the low e-string with the pads of my fingers, rather than the tips.

I'm sure everybody gets bad habits, but I think my solitary style reinforces certain ones.

Without

I've been without the nicer guitar for almost three weeks!

There's always been a little warp in the fretboard, but it's been so negligible, that I've been able to live with it for some time. I started working on a piece where I have the capo up on #4 though and it's really hard to avoid the problem then.

So I took the guitar off to the shop. They said they could fix it easily and have it back to me within the week. At the end of the week, however, they called and said there was a problem with the finish. Since it's a Martin and under warranty, no cost, but it would take another week.

That, however, was after we were due to be on a boat to Alaska, so I'm due to get the guitar back this coming week when we're back in Tucson.

The other guitar is perfectly serviceable, but I'm definitely looking forward to getting the d-18 back....

Help

O.k., I'm still on the plateau and I think I need some inspiration to get off of it.

What I want is new fingerstyle pieces (with tab!) that I can work on. I have a bunch of books with some pieces, but nothing that catches my fancy. Help.....

Change the strings!

I haven't posted in a while, but I have been practicing continuously.

I feel like I've been on a plateau for the last few months. I'm not sure what to do to get out of that. I think the best thing would be to pull out one of the stack of guitar books I have and get started on learning the pieces in it. What I feel most like learning now is something "strummy", but my impression is that those are the least clear from books.

Maybe I should just change my strings though.

The plucky ones

A few months ago, I started a new book with lots of fingerstyle pieces. I've nailed down the two or three that I like and want to know by heart, and started pulling out some of my many other books to find one with pieces that would be fun to work on.

I found one in the stack that I used to play from all the time that's all about Celtic and American flatpicking fiddle tunes. Real nice. There were a bunch that I used to play and that I'd marked in the book and it's been fun going back to these, finding my fingers almost remember them.

There are a few new ones that I've gotten hooked on and those are fun too. I'm noticing that my "guitar memory" seems to have improved. That is, I seem to be better able to memorize lines at a time. I'm also noticing that I'm more comfortable playing tunes with a greater fret range. Where previously I preferred the tunes where I could pretty much anchor my left hand, now I'm much better with moving the left up and down the fretboard.