Week one's practice

So far so good. I've managed to practice an hour each day. It's usually 20 minutes in the morning followed by a couple of 20 minute sessions each evening. The second round of evening exercises, however, begin with mucho fingertip pain. It's akin to running hot water on a sunburn. Ouch. That said, the pain has lessened considerably this past week. Unfortunately, everyone I've talked to said it will be a good 6 months for the real callouses to develop.

Right now, each lesson begins the same. I start by playing along the first 4 frets on each string with the first 4 fingers. Basically it's a chromatic scale. It might be a bit boring, but it's also where I've noticed considerable improvement on my dexterity and note striking (or would that be strumming?). Even my speed is increasing.

Once I run through this a few times, I move onto the C major scale. Again, noticeable improvement in accuracy and clean notes. Up the scale....down the scale...up the scale...down the scale.

Next, I simply practice the 4 chords Josh taught me in lesson #1. C...G...D...A. Nothing fancy here, just strumming them as whole notes. After fingering the chord, I pick each individual string to make sure they all ring out clean and true. For the record, they usually don't.

My transition between chords is nonexistent and that's a big source of frustration. Hopefully muscle memory and practice will speed this up. Otherwise, I'll need to stick to realllllyyy sloooowwww songs.

Finally, I finger pick Amazing Grace. It's a favorite of mine and has an easy enough melody. Toward the end of the first week, I got brave and actually resolved the song with a full out G chord. Whooo Hooo. Hey, it's the little victories.

Lesson number two's coming up!


Gregg