by Carol on August 20, 2008
Have you ever wished you could play guitar? Heard a track played by one of the greats, such as Eric Clapton, and longed to have just a little of that magic at your fingertips? Well, you’re not alone. When asked for a skills “wish list”, around half of the people I questioned wished they had learnt to play the guitar. When I asked them what was stopping them, their answers included not having time, being unable to read music and getting too old to learn.
I had news for them.
If you want something, you make time. Anybody can learn to read guitar notation with the method I’m going to tell you about. And you’re never, never too old! If I can learn to play acoustic guitar aged 46, left-handed and unable to read music, then so can you!
When I was younger, I really wanted to be a guitar player. I scraped together enough money to buy my first guitar and spent hours (when I should have been studying) trying to pick out a tune. I actually managed to teach myself to pick out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and was thrilled to bits with myself.
But then one night I took my precious guitar to a party, and a big ox of a guy managed to step on it by mistake. He did his party trick of jumping off the table – and put his foot right through it!
I wasn’t pleased, and told him so – in no uncertain terms.
That was 20 years ago and I’m still married to him. And no, I’ve never quite forgiven him!
But I was quite surprised when – on our 20th anniversary – he presented me with a new acoustic guitar and this amazing product to teach me how to play it.
It’s called Jamorama – and if it can teach me, it can teach anybody.
Aww..How cute is that – he’d never forgotten.
All the best,
Carol J Pearson
Technorati Tags: learn acoustic guitar, beginner acoustic guitar, learning acoustic guitar, beginner guitars
by Carol on August 18, 2009
It’s not that easy to pick up a new skill – any new skill, for that matter. And it seems, the older I get, the less willing my brain and my body are to learn anything new. So when I do achieve something new, I’m dead pleased with myself!
For example, I’m qualified to teach Aerobics; Exercise to Music as it’s often called in the UK. Not unlike line dancing, it involves the class going through a routine of various moves that the instructor calls out. All done to music with a steady beat. The instructor has to be able to count the moves, be on the correct beat, be ready to cue the next move at exactly the right moment and also do the moves herself facing the class. Which means she has to go the opposite way and be on the opposite foot to the class. So she calls a grapevine to the right, points to her left and herself grapevines to the left.
Now most instructors take to this like a duck to water. But not me. In theory I could do it all perfectly. But in practice? Absolute shambles! Wrong way, on the wrong foot and off the beat. Gave up in disgust. My class got most of their exercise from laughing at me! (In the nicest possible way).
There’s a point to this sorry tale. If I had found myself a good instructor to teach me the moves from scratch before I ever attempted to get qualified, I would have found it all so much easier. And it was the same with my earlier attempts to play the acoustic guitar – the instruction book I chose to teach myself with was way, way too complicated and I made my life hard. With Jamorama, you start with the absolute basics and it assumes you don’t know one end of a guitar from the other. Which is what most beginners need. Why make my mistake and pretend, for the sake of your ego, that you know more than you do?
Life is tough enough already. Choose the easy option.
Take the advice of the Jedi master to the novice on his first visit to a Chinese restaurant….Use the Forks, Luke.
All the best,
Carol
Technorati Tags: learning the guitar, easy learn guitar, guitar easy to learn, learn acoustic guitar, how to learn the guitar
