My blogger pal Scott is thinking about taking up the guitar. I’ve lent him some advice based on my extensive experience as a perpetual beginning guitarist.
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However, my experience is probably not applicable to anyone else in the world, as I am undoubtedly the strangest guitar player wannabe in the history of plucked instruments.
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First, I’m left-handed, and I have a left-handed guitar (not a re-strung rightie like Jimi played). Nobody really wants to give me lessons because they think it would be too weird. I don’t understand that, because it seems like having a student who sees the teacher’s guitar in a non-mirror-image fashion would be a quicker study. But, what do I know?
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Second, I read music…but not chords. Thanks to high school and college band experiences, I’m a fiend when it comes to interpreting and playing a melody line. But it’s really REALLY hard to play simultaneous notes on a clarinet or sax, so the concept of chording is foreign to me.
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The result is that I am a self-taught, melody-playing, chord-challenged novice guitarist. I can sight-read the melody line of practically any piece of music, but I can’t decode a tab to save my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I keep thinking, “well, how hard can chords be? I’ll get to it someday.” I’m going on three years of thinking that.
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Nevertheless, taking up a musical instrument is a good thing for anyone to do, regardless of age or skill. Making music is one of the most heavenly of earthly pursuits, even if it’s only music to the ears of the one making it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My blogger pal Scott is thinking about taking up the guitar. I’ve lent him some advice based on my extensive experience as a perpetual beginning guitarist. However, my experience is probably not applicable to anyone else in the world, as I am undoubtedly the strangest guitar player wannabe in the history of plucked instruments. First,… Continue reading Pickin’ and Grinnin’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kitchen-sink","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7387,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/7387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}