So many updates...

Let's start off with the most important update. Mel got me my own guitar for Valentine's Day! Along with a music stand and a stool to sit on. It's an accoustic electric guitar because she knew I wanted to try an accoustic just to be able to compare and get a feel for which direction I wanted to go in. It was kind of timely because I had just broke my first guitar string on Mels B.C. Rich about 2 days before. It was tricky at first because it kept going out of tune and the strings were rather high off the fretboard.
At my next lesson, David examined the guitar and filed the top nut so that the strings could rest in it without sliding around and it also lowered the strings somewhat. After my fifth lesson he suggested that I take out the bottom nut and file it down about a 16th of an inch to lower the strings some more. I have taken it out and filed it down but I haven't put it back in yet.
Also, yesterday, at my last lesson we started to leard the scale and how to read music. I said that I wanted to learn how to play "Happy Birthday" for Striders birthday in May. We went through the song with playing the chords a few times and then he wrote the frets under the notes for playing the song just on the third string. It was fun to practice and hear the guitar sing the words.

chord switching

My main focus the past couple of practice sessions has been learning my new chords and swapping back and forth between more than just G and C. With the practice today, I was shaky but better than last time. I find that working through songs helps me more than just switching back and forth from one chord to another. I haven't been doing the upstrokes and bass picking as much, unless I get a chord several measures in a row. Then I will either throw in an upstroke or do a suspended chord just to keep my head moving and to try to keep timing. I have also been trying to concentrate on my right arm movement. I need to just keep my forearm still and move my wrist and fingers. Thats about it for what I'm doing now.

Third Lesson

Eight AM guitar lesson, what a way to start the day. I learned more about the naming of chords, about suspended chords, and bass chords. I have to practice (of course) some more chord changes and some new chords. I have some minor and some dominate 7th chords added to my list. I mostly have been practicing switching between G and C thinking that some of the others were easier. I found out, that if you don't practice them then they aren't easy. SHOCKER!!

We switched guitars for part of the lesson today because I kept bending my E string up while playing the G chord. David has a nice electric accoustic guitar with 11 gauge strings. They are thicker and don't bend as easy. It was real nice, I didn't want to trade back. We talked about putting on some new strings soon and oiling the finger board.

David told me to keep the guitar handy so I could pick it up whenever I had a few minutes to practice. We also printed out and practiced Dust in the Wind by Kansas. It has a lot of chords that are a bit new to me. Amsusp2, Amsusp4, C2,Csusp, and a bunch of others. They aren't as hard as they sounded at first. Suspended chords are just ways to make the major and minor chords more interesting by making them slightly different.

The guitar at the top is what I use, except in blue.