Part Ten: Getting better

Other than 2 days where I have been out all day and evening, I have played the guitar every day for the last ten weeks, on average about 30 minutes a day. That makes about 35 hours of playing the guitar. This is the most I have ever played a musical instrument. I have spent hundreds of pounds in lessons and equipment and it has taken up all my spare home time but it has definitely been worth it.

I now really enjoy playing the guitar: yesterday I sat down and strummed my D minor, A minor, E minor, A minor chord sequence for about 10 minutes, varying the strumming, and I thought nothing else other than how good this sounded to me. When I finished I put my guitar down and thought to myself ‘I fucking love playing the guitar’.  This is success for me – I may never  release a song that I have written, and I may never be remembered for my music – but I have found something that gives me a great deal of satisfaction.  It’s been a struggle but after keeping at it for ten weeks I can now honestly say that I can play a musical instrument. A bit.

In this week’s lesson I showed Max my improvements in chord changes and how I now look at my finger positions and think about the quickest way to move to the next chord. He seemed pleased with my progress. We then played the previous week’s Rock School Grade One piece – Gone but not forgotten.  I say we as I was playing the tab and he was accompanying me with some extra chords and licks. I managed to get through the song in one go reasonably OK which was a good feeling. Playing music with someone else is a great feeling; the connection you have with the other musician or musicians is the closest you can get to telepathy. This was the first time I have played anything of any significance with anyone else since my band disbanded at the age of 20. It may have been a simple Grade Once piece with my guitar tutor but it sounded pretty good to me!

VIDEO: Gone But Not Forgotten. I play at half this speed.

Now I could play these pieces, I moved on to trying to play them better. For me this meant working on the timing until it is spot on with how the piece is written. Max took me through the piece again, line by line as I worked on my timing. I was given another Rock School Grade One piece to add to my collection, and left feeling please with my progress.

That week’s practise continued along my similar pattern of playing Rock School Grade One pieces, the rhythm guitar part from Can’t Buy Me Love by The Beatles, my growing collection of traditional songs, and practising major, minor, sus 4 and seventh chord changes. The good thing about practising pretty much the same things every week is that you can see the improvement. I am definitely getting better with continued practise - it’s the only way to get better after all.

Lessons learnt: E minor 7 chord, better timing, better chord changes.