In my EDCI 306 class each person is tasked with learning a new instrument. For beginners the professor suggested to try the recorder, ukulele, or guitar. I tried playing a friends acoustic guitar and it felt really large and clumsy for me so I tried strumming my partner’s electric guitar and that felt a bit easier to handle. I decided to email my prof to see if I would be able to use the electric guitar instead, after I got the green light from them I was ready to go!
First I started looking at chord charts and lists of songs for beginner players. I also started playing the guitar using the game Rocksmith which was a bit overwhelming but had some great lessons on tuning, chords, picking/strumming, shifting and basic things like how to hold or sit with your guitar. I was really excited to learn guitar so it was easy to fit in the 10-20 mins each day for the first week, then things started to fall apart a little.
After the first week or so I was becoming more and more frustrated with my guitar practice. I was sure that I had tuned the guitar well, or well enough for my purpose, but when I went to play a chord or tried shifting it just didn’t sound good. I would start my practice sessions by going through my chord chart trying to place my fingers on the right frets and strumming a few times before switching to another chord. I liked to end my practice time by trying the “play a song” mode in Rocksmith. I would only be playing a small amount of the notes in the song, but it seemed like a fun way to get familiar with the instrument. While the “play a song” was supposed to be a fun ending I would often get really frustrated because the game would often tell me I was using the wrong fret so I would make adjustments within the fret and would still be missing chords or notes in a song. The combination of having the beginning of my practice time with the chords and shifting sounding off, and the Rocksmith game telling me I wasn’t playing notes/chords properly really started to wear on me. Eventually I started to dread playing the guitar and was feeling pretty hopeless about the goals I had set for myself.
One fateful Thursday night I was practicing because I knew I was going to be meeting with some fellow students who were also learning the guitar the next day. As I was strumming I heard, and felt, something weird. Next I felt a combination of confusion directly followed by horrible realization, as my stomach dropped to the floor as I saw that I had just broken the high E string on the guitar. So it was 11 pm, my guitar was useless, and I needed it for a 1 pm class the next day. After taking some time to decide if this just sounded like a made up excuse I elected to email my prof to let them know what had happened. I was a little worried that this would come across as a “the dog ate my homework” situation but I was feeling so discouraged that sending the email seemed like the only thing left to do.
My next post I’ll be writing about the email I got on Friday morning, and the turn my musicianship journey has taken.
Until next time!