Taking Shape

So I moved from a starter acoustic (A Jasmine S35) to a made in Mexico Fender Stratocaster with a practice amp (Fender Mustang I) and I’ve been playing around with a few things. Over the last six months I worked through the beginner lessons on Garageband on Mac, and I’ve been playing a few tabs. Recently, I picked up the Guitar Grimoire Exercise Book and I’m playing through that to get some more technical practice. I may try the blues and rock lessons on garageband as well. One mistake I made early on was using a book on how to use conventional music for guitar instead of tablature. This might be a good goal in the long run, but so much of guitar is done with tabs that it’s not a particularly useful skill for a beginner. What’s more, I picked up a book on songwriting. I want to start trying to compose as soon as possible so I can create instead of simply imitating. A friend of mine had said that playing an instrument is a mere parlor trick if you only imitate the works of others. I would add that it’s a damned advanced parlor trick, and that there’s certainly something to be said for learning from those who came before, but I like the idea of incorporating songwriting in my training early on.

See more progress on: Learn to play the guitar