Well. This is the last week. Honestly, it's kinda bitter sweet for me. I've really enjoyed learning how to play the guitar, and I've enjoyed being anti-social on Fridays. Just kidding, but not really.
ANYWAYS, I've just been continuing to practice my song. Frankly, I don't know if the song will be ready on time. However, if it doesn't work out, I have a back up plan for my TED Talk. In case it's not ready, I will apologize ahead of time.
Week 5 wasn't very exciting, but that's alright. My brother and his wife came up for Christmas, so i just hung out with them the entire time, so it was a good week!
My sister-in-law plays the guitar, so she gave me a little mini lesson, and gave me a lot of good tips! She suggested that I get a capo which lets you change the key of whatever song you're playing, so that's up next on my shopping list. She helped me learn a different way of playing the song Hallelujah (the first song I learned) and taught me a couple little things to do that made it sound more like the song. This included teaching me a different strumming style, and teaching me individual notes to play to help transition from chord to chord. It was great getting tips from someone who knows how to play the guitar, in person!
I continued to practice my other song, but it's coming along quite slowly, so hopefully I'll be ready in time.
For my week four, I've just been continuing to practice the song over and over. I am getting better at the song each time I play it, but I am continuing to struggle. I have practiced a lot, but I can only play for a short period of time because my fingers start to ache. They start to sting, and soon I can hardly hold down a string. I also am getting these ugly calluses on the tips of my fingers which makes it so I can't feel anything I touch. You'd think that after all this time, and because of the dumb calluses, that my fingers wouldn't hurt so much. But I guess I'm
So every time my fingers start to hurt, there goes some practicing for a while. That's what happens I guess!
>>The photo isn't of my fingers, but this is what they look like.
To answer your questions Hope, I will update this blog (when I have time haha) with a video to explain the difference between the two types of strumming patterns, and the different sound it makes.
For my third week, I learned the strumming style of the song that I am going to play.
Originally, I was going to use a basic strumming pattern for my song, but it didn't flow as well as if I just learned the strum that was used for the song originally. I couldn't learn the strum just from listening to the song over and over again, so I decided to go to YouTube and see if there were any tutorials on how to play the song.
I soon found a tutorial from Manuel Rottach where he taught me the strumming pattern and some other needed tips of the song.
Now I am just practicing the song over and over. Later on, I may add some percussion with my strumming, but we'll see!
For my second week, I chose a song that I am going to play for my project.
I've had a list in my head of songs that I've always wanted to play on the guitar, but when I went to chose a song, I couldn't remember the songs that what I wanted to play.
It took me quite a while to find a song. I would listen to a bunch of songs, some I liked, and some I didn't. When I found a song that I liked, I looked up the chords for the song, and found that it would be too difficult for me to play and perform.
After a long search, I finally found a song that I want to learn. I chose the song "Angel in Blue Jeans" by Train.
It took me a while to find a song, but I finally found one that I am going to enjoy playing. :)
For my genius hour, I am learning how to play the guitar.
My first week was pretty successful. I learned all of the major chords, and I was able to memorize them. (For the most part) I looked up the main chords on google images, and used that to learn, and memorize them. The F chord however, was giving me grief. It requires one to do a barre chord (hold all of the strings down) on the first fret, with just one finger. For my little weak fingers, it is impossible for me to do that chord properly. Every inversion of that chord that I could find, still involved a smaller barre chord, and it was still hard for my little finger. I thought I could just avoid the chord all together till my fingers got stronger, but it was used in every song I wanted to play, so I had to learn it one way or another.
I searched all over Google, watched millions of YouTube videos, but found nothing. Finally, I found video that had three different inversions of the F chord. I almost stopped watching the video because the first two were still too complicated for me, but the video had only two more minutes left, so I sucked it up, and continued watching. Thank goodness I did, because I learned a way that I could play it without causing too much discomfort to my little finger.
It was a miracle.
