Week 2- Problemsolving, Progress, and Picking with the Class

It seems like whenever I doubt that I can manage something in one of my guitar pieces, if I come back the next day, I succeed.  I don’t know if it’s just that my fingers are already getting stronger and more flexible, or if the time away from a problem helps you better solve it.  I’m making good progress.

While I am liking the book I’ve chosen, it is definitely more of an intermediate level rather than a beginner level.  The chords it starts with aren’t necessarily easy ones, and the patters that it starts with are manageable, but not as simplistic as they could have been for a beginner.  This is ok with me, as I was looking for a little more challenge, but I wouldn’t pass this book on to someone who’s never picked up a guitar before.

Part of what made me realize that the picking patterns that begin this book weren’t really for beginners was our in-class session.  We did some beginner fingerpicking with the whole class this week, where we simply picked four strings from lowest to highest on the three chords we already knew (A, D, and G).  While somewhat less interesting, this feels like more of a beginning for those who’ve never tried fingerpicking before.

So far, I have taken up five of the exercises.  In the process, I’ve run across a couple snags.  First of all, I didn’t think my hands were flexible enough to reach a few of the chords.  The C chord used in several of the pieces has an extra little change to it that makes it more difficult: the first string is held at the third fret, instead of being played unfretted.  I though this was impossible!  Yet, I came back a day later, and managed it.  Later on, I realized that having that string fretted helps you change chords in the rest of the piece, since half the chords use that same fret.  It becomes a matter of pivoting your hand.  The other chord that stumped me was F, as there are two strings fretted with one finger.  This is incredibly difficult to do on a classical guitar when you have tiny hands!  Yet practice is helping, and I’m managing to make this chord ring clear about 50% of the time.  The final struggle has been Gsus, which I don’t know if I’m going to ever be able to reach, although I guess I shouldn’t say that just yet.

The other problem solving that I am really proud of involved an error on the book’s behalf.  While most of the pieces

have chord charts for all of the chords used, a few don’t.  The chords on these pieces aren’t necessarily simple or used already, so I think that they were forgotten.  Instead of struggling to remember these chords, or reading the whole measure of the tabs while trying to change chords, I decided to draw the chord charts in.  Hey, it’s practice at memorizing the chords, isn’t it?  A few of them are altered slightly for use in this song.

My favourite piece so far is a short, repeated exercise called Bayou Rock.  It just sounds really catchy, despite being not that difficult.  Here’s a little listen.  It’s kinda rough in a few spots still, and the chord change really hurts my hands, but it’s coming.  I also realized later that I was counting it slightly off; it should be a straight eighth note rhythm, but I’ve added some swingy-ness to it.  To be honest, I like my version better.

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