Abubilla Music

11.01.07: Jimmy ‘Learns Music’ – Blog 1

Written by Jimmy

Day 1.   Jimmy tries to actually learn to play an instrument other than slide whistle.   We felt you’d want a front row seat to his humiliation.So, I’ll try to set up a format here that will track what I’m doing, actually try to provide useful tips, but more importantly, give you a good sense of my incompetence.  We all know that the best way to feel good about yourself is to read about those less fortunate – with this blog, I hope to make all of you feel swell.   That is my mission.   Read on.

Part One:  Where Am I in the Journey?

The journey is to go from idiot status, to someone that roughly knows what the band is doing in the studio musically and can maybe play piano and guitar on a few tracks (recognising that my bits will inevitably end up on the cutting floor for final mix).   This is 2011 goal.  It requires I focus on five things:  guitar, piano, percussion, voice and music theory.  I’ve dedicated 20 minutes a day plus full day a week to the mission.  I’m on my own.  Except for Toby, Lewie and Sammy who all bother me.  They are animals.  The family ignores me.

It is day 1 and I’m at the beginning.   I’ve got a guitar and know 9 chords.  I’ve got a piano and know the same 9 chords.   I know 2 strum patterns for the guitar.  My fingers hurt.

Part Two:  Is there anything actually useful I can tell you?

Well, it is early days.  But there are three things I’ll start with:

1. Boys Toys:  Every Jimmy Journey starts with boys toys.   You gotta buy the kit!  Every Jimmy Journey ends with kit in storage and decades long arguments with Kathy about when to throw stuff away.   But my 1981 ‘Let’s Learn Magic’ left me with a box o’ tricks and books and one can never throw away a trick.  My 1989 ‘ski ’til I drop’ has left me with a number of ski trousers that are really really tiny around the waist (a shame how these things shrink over the years) and a set of books on skiing.  I’m sure they will come in handy.  1994’s ‘Road to Wimbledon’ has left me with a ‘how to string your own racquet’ book and a ‘Swing like Samprass’  book (and poster).  And a lot of shrinking tennis shorts (same bad quality as those ski trousers!).   2000 was all about wood working.  Lots of little machines.  And a book on how to build an Islamic Minbar (see below).   I never did.

Surprisingly, I never built this...

I could go on, but I digress.   Where you benefit, is every Jimmy Journey starts with buying kit.  And you get to know what I bought, all at the advice of my friend David (see below).  So my kit this time starts with:

• Guitar Stand:  My friend David says if you want to learn guitar you have to play all the time and your guitar has to be next to you.  So buy a stand and keep it where you are.  I’m always in front of the TV set when not at work.  So that is where my guitar stand sits.  It hasn’t made me better at guitar, but my guitar stand is watching Day 8 of 24 (yeah, we’re behind!) with Kathy and me.  Loves it.
• A bunch of picks:   My friend David says I need a pick (Plectrum for the English).  I bought 57.  Lewie has eaten 33 of them.  I have 24 left.   My friend David says they need to have raised lettering for traction.  Mine are Sponge Bob Square Pants.  With raised lettering.

Lewie Eats A Lot of These

• A note book to store all my pages of down loads, a black and red book for my ‘practice log’ and 23 chord books for Beatles, Billy Joel, Razorlight, etc…  And a guitar chord book.  All of these are built to last and easily storable.  I’ve bought a nice storage box and already labelled it ‘Jimmy’s 2011 Failed Guitar Journey.’  Not being pessimistic, just realistic and efficient.  Have a nice handy little bag for any remaining plectrums, although I imagine I’ll just feed them to Lewie at end of the journey.
• A really cool tuner/metronome thing.   It uses batteries, which is the definition of an awesome boy toy.  Not sure what it does, but it uses batteries.
  

  It rhymes with Borg, from Star Trek Next Generation, which amuses me. It also uses batteries. Not sure what else it does.

• And I have a Yahama guitar.  Semi acoustic, which means it also uses a battery.  No idea, literally, no idea why it uses a battery.  Judging by the pain in my fingers, I appear to be doing all the work.  Has a little box o’ buttons on the top of guitar.  if you press them a red light goes on.  Not sure why.

So that’s my kit.   So the tip of the day is if you want to learn guitar, buy a guitar, guitar stand, a bunch of picks with raised lettering and the Korg thing and a black and red book to log practice.  That’s what David says.    On reflection, it feels a bit obvious.  Oh well, it is the beginning of the journey.  I think the tip about labelling the storage box might actually be a good one.

2. My Friend David.   I’ve got a special friend David that is taking me on my journey.  I’ve never met him, but unlike my special friend Suzie when I was 7, David exists.   He’s the founder of Next Level Guitar and I’ve subscribed to his website. Check out Next Level Guitar by clicking here, right at lesson 55.  I’ve watched and worked with beginning lessons 1-55 so far.  Lesson 55 just told me how far I should be on our guitar journey and it depressed me.  I’m apparently a lot farther on this journey according to David then I actually am.  Lesson 57 is about storage boxes, however, so I’ll catch up.  Actually, Next Level Guitar is very good and I really recommend it.   He looks and sounds like this:

This video is way, way, way beyond where I am.  I haven’t learned to bang on my guitar yet.  But there’s hope.    But I like David and he doesn’t yell at me.    Based on Lesson 55, he’d be very upset with my progress if he really knew.  But I don’t think he knows.  Shhhhhhhhhh.

3. A really easy way to know the names of guitar strings. After a billion years, I finally learned how to tell the difference between right brained and left brained.  Right random.  Left linear.  It isn’t a nice reference to right brained people but it works.   So my friend David told me how to remember the names of the guitar strings:  Eddie ate dynamite.   Good Bye Eddie.  E, A, D, G, B, E.  Cool.    if my friend David were running a cooking class, I think he’d be arrested by now.

4. And finally, my friend Rob.   My friend David wants me to practice Greenday, Good Riddance, which I love.   I found the chord on Rob’s website and this has proven very helpful.   So to find Greenday’s Good Riddance from Rob, click here and meet my new friend Rob.

So in all seriousness, my new friends Dave for lessons, and Rob for songs are great and should help on the journey . Too bad about their new student Jimmy.

And maybe, I will actually be able to play this before 2011 is out:

Part Three:  How Bad Are Things Actually Going?   Come on, Jimmy, tell all!

Yeah, I’m not going to lie to you.  Things aren’t good.   I suffer two problems.  One, I’m really bad at languages which isn’t too good for a guy who lived in Russia a long time and has a studio in Spain.  Two, I’m really bad at music – every bit of it.  No ability to keep a beat.    No ear.  Very uncoordinated fingers.  Which isn’t too good for a guy with a studio in his house.   So here’s what is happening:

1. I have a real problem with my palms.     Look at picture below.   On a hand there is a flesh bit just below where your fingers hit the hand.  if you cup your hand slightly, it is the bit of hand just above the fold.   If you rub your hands together like you’re greedy, you tend to actually rub these bits of the hand together (I just noticed that).  Other than the ‘greedy rub’, I’m not sure there is any other positive use of that bit of your hand.  But on my left hand, there’s a really big negative use of that bit of the hand.  It mutes the B string and the high E string pretty much the whole time I’m playing.  My ‘greedy rub’ thing is huge apparently, with a mind of its own.  And it’s mind is set out to stop my journey.  not good for d and d minor especially.  they heavily rely on the strings that my ‘greedy bit’ mutes out.  We refer to my d and d minor chords as ‘Daddy’s quiet chords.’   These are in contrast to ‘Daddy’s rubbish chords’ which are all the rest.  The family loves D minor.  Quiet, silent, D minor.

That Flesh Bit of the Palm, just below the fingers, runs all over the guitar strings and mutes everything

2.  My fingers hurt.  My friend David said they would.  Doesn’t matter.  They do.  This is what they feel like.

My friend David didn't warn me enough my fingers would feel like this.

3.  Down up down up feels a lot like Up Down Up Down and it all feels like a pin/pen lecture from my wife.  My friend David wants me to learn strum pattern 2 while changing chords.  It is d/d/u/u/d/u.   some of that pattern spells du du.  that’s how I play it.  I don’t like David’s strum patterns because he hears something in them that i don’t.  he talks about the rhythm of music.  He says d/u/d/u/d/u/d/u in 8th notes isn’t music.  but d/d/u/u/d/u/d/u is.  Oh David.  my wife says pin and pen sound different.  I don’t hear that either.  Or tin and ten.  Or melk and milk.  She says i pronounce ‘milk’ like melk not milk.  my response to her now is going to be:  oh yeah, well d/u/d/u/d/u/d/u isn’t music.  But u/u is, if you put it in the right place.  By the way, years back my Russian teacher would d/u/d/u me all the time, saying this word was different from that word, etc… Never got that.  All Russian words sound the same to me, which makes it remarkably similar to Spanish, where all the words sound the same.  in fact, Spain and Russian sound the same to me.  all d/u/d/u.

4.  God didn’t want me to play the A chord.  My friend David is keeping me on ‘open chords.’  He says they’re the easy ones.   But he had a special lesson on ‘A’ because that is the ‘tough’ one of the easy ones.  Tough of the easy, David?  Down up, down up to you my friend.   First, the easy ones aren’t that easy.  And second, the tough one of the not so easy ones is actually impossible.  If the ‘greedy rub’ bit of my palm is fat with a mind of it’s own, the three fingers that are supposed to be jammed up in the second fret for A are mindless, fat bastards. They fight and push and shove and ain’t a one of them wants to be in the right fret.  They hate each other.

My fingers ALL look like this guy's middle fingers. And they hate each other. Won't get along at all. Makes the A chord a bit like WWII.

5. Apparently the left and right hand are supposed to be partners on this journey: David shocked me on lesson 55.   He has me ‘learning’ strum 2 with all the du du problems that has created.  He has me learning all the ‘easy open chords.’  Then he springs something on me something  that I hadn’t realised.  I’m supposed to be doing both of these things at same time!  Oh David!   That makes this whole journey a lot harder.   Strum 2 is almost manageable especially if my left hand is resting (usually resting on a vodka tonic).  And chords are okay, especially if the right hand doesn’t interfere and ring out to the whole world that the chord sounds rubbish.  So I could ‘mouth the chords’, using my left hand to form them and right hand to drink.  And I could strum away happily ‘downing and upping’ my brains out, holding my drink in left hand.  now David tells me, ‘do chord changes while practising strum2.’    he might as well have said, ‘Do chord changes while painting in oil.’   Oh David.

We’ll that’s the ugly.  Feel relatively good about yourselves.  It is all relative after all.

Jimmy