Playing the guitar

I've known how to play the G and C chords for most of my life.



I simply cannot switch between them fast enough to play this (3:03).

The F chord makes me wonder if the guitar was a mistake

Sticking to acoustic guitar for now for some reason, I think electric makes me lazy because it's easier to play but my reluctance to plug in and actually amplify it, not wanting the neighbors to hear me ever, kind of defeats the purpose of playing it until I can come back to it with a fair amount of proficiency. To me, that means eventually raising my skill level from a 2/10 to a 3/10.

Strumming acoustic with a thin pick makes the tone sound "flappy" and not great, but it's better than playing with a thick pick, which I start to lose my grip on pretty quickly while playing any song that has quick strumming. It is difficult to hold the pick tighter without sacrificing any sense of rhythm or looseness. I also don't particularly like the sound when I do this because it is loud AF and it reminds me of roommates enthusiastically banging out their praise and worship music.

Yes I realize this is stuff that you just have to practice and figure out on your own.

I was at the deli counter over the summer and this song started playing and I began to wonder if maybe I could learn how to play the main lick from it. That moment was pretty much what got me back into this.



It is not difficult. It is kind of fun, or maybe that says more about me than about the song, idk

Several months later I am sitting at home trying to learn a Hootie and the Blowfish song because why not

undo wrote:I've known how to play the G and C chords for most of my life.



I simply cannot switch between them fast enough to play this (3:03).

I definitely empathize with this from when I first started playing guitar. The song I felt this way about was Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life." I just thought there was no way you could switch between first position chords that quickly, so I always played the song with barre chords instead, which didn't sound exactly right and made that little pull-off lick really tricky. Not sure if you'll feel this way about "Blister In the Sun," but I can def make those changes quick enough now after, iunno, 25 years of trying.

Michael K. wrote:I definitely empathize with this from when I first started playing guitar. The song I felt this way about was Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life." I just thought there was no way you could switch between first position chords that quickly, so I always played the song with barre chords instead, which didn't sound exactly right and made that little pull-off lick really tricky.

Now that you mention it, I will definitely look up how to play "Semi-Charmed Life." Sometimes I have trouble focusing and choosing a song or a skill to specifically work on.

Was only trying to play "Blister in the Sun" because I couldn't find any tutorials for "Add It Up."

Took a month off from practicing/dicking around altogether and that was a huge mistake. My fingers turn to sticks of butter and it's painful to hold any chords down.

Applying the necessary pressure to sound remotely passable means that when I pull my fingers off to switch to a new chord, I OFTEN get a super undesirable "pulling off" sound (like a reverse hammer-on?), and it sounds like shit. I am not "grabbing the strings and pulling them sideways as I do this, I'm just trying to lift my fingers straight up and off the strings. I have not come across evidence that this happens to anyone else or found any way to deal with it other than to just obliterate the everlasting shit out of my fingers until they're callouses incapable of all fleshy give and feeling.

Next time there is a pandemic I’m definitely doing this instead of getting into collecting baseball cards.

Once I get over this grad school hump and am finished with school forever, I'm finally gonna learn to play the guitar for real.

This extended Replacements kick that I'm on has me spiraling into a mid-life crisis and regretting not going into a career with some kind of connection to music. As is, I don't care that much about my life's work, but if my life's work were music-related, it might feel more worthwhile.

If I knew how to play guitar at a slightly below average clip, I'd at least be able to wow people whenever and trick them/myself into thinking I could've been somebody.