Abubilla Music

11.05.27 Jimmy Learns Music. Blog 6

Written by Jimmy

With horror, I realised I hadn’t updated the Jimmy learns music blog since … oh a long time ago.  It isn’t that I have been learning, it’s just that well… I haven’t been progressing very far… All sort of sad really.  I’m stuck in Lesson 107.  And will be here a very long time.

Feels like a good time to update folks on this horrid journey.  My last blog was blog 5 (click here):  Seven things:

1. Goals:  Have taken Friday’s off from work to learn music.  Ambitious plan:  learn basics of guitar, piano, percussion and vocals and pour on a bit of musical theory.  Simples.
2. Early Progress:  Know a bit of piano, so focused first on guitar starting in January.  Met my good friend David Taub from Next Level Guitar and he’s been my guide on the musical journey.   Breezed through the first 100 lessons or so with out too many hitches and feeling really good.  The open chords were my friends.  I had a big fight with the little F chord and basically kicked him out of my life but other wise, was quite palsy with G, C, E and A and loved D and all his little outfits.  Wrote my first song on the guitar from scratch, Footprints and was really quite chuffed (for a pretty good set of Jimmy’s bad moments with the English language, click here…)
3. Death at 107:  Then, at around lesson 100, my ‘friend’ David introduced my to the bar chord.   At that point my life ended as we know it and I stopped writing blogs about my journey.  Because frankly my journey just stopped.  And David, having thrown the little F chord at me early but then sort of let us both forget about, simply won’t let the bar chords go away.  And I hit lesson 107.
4. More specifically, sickness and death from 101-107:  Okay, I’m not good at a lot of things (See running in Richmond Park).  An awful lot of things.  But I was pretty happy chappy with lessons 1-100.  They were little five minute number and did stuff like – ‘dont even play chords, just learn this strum – up up down up down.  Five minutes and I could up up down up down with the Queen.  Or one lesson was – ‘let me just tell you about the fret.’  hell, I could listen to five minutes of David telling me about the Fret.  Then in succession, no kidding, here is lesson 101:  Here’s a 6th String Root Bar Chord, and your forefinger points at the root note of the chord.  Learn the fret for the E string and the bar chord.   Lesson 102:  From any major position you can easily play the minor, minor 7th, 7th, major 7th, 9th and 11th.  Learn these.   Lesson 103:  Here’s a 5th String bar chord – learn the notes on the A string now.  Lesson 104:  now learn all the major, minor 7th, etc… for 5 String root bar chord.  Lesson 105:  As you practice, make sure each note rings out on the bar chord.  Lesson 106:  It is really important that you can bounce back and forth between 5th and 6th string root chords.  Then, lesson 107, and I kid you not:  okay, now practice around the following until you can do one strum per chord, alternating between 5th and 6th string.  A (6th), C (5th), Gm (6), Dm (5), A7 (6), E 7 (5), Cm7(6), Fm7 (5), Bb7(6), Ebsus2(5), G#(6),  C#(5).  I kid you bloody not.
5. The sad and horrible truth…my sports bar!  Okay, I’m really crap at a lot of things, but this is a whole new ball game.  First, bar chord are really hard and there ain’t no notes ringing out when I play. My bar shuts down music.  It’s an anti-music bar – just sports on TV.  Second, bar chords require the tips of your fingers.  Not the part that was developing blisters from open chords.  No, different bits of the finger.  Cheers David!   So speaking of bits of fingers, my fingers were shreeded to bits.   Little bits.  Third, to figure out one of these chords, I have to decide what fret, remember which finger, try to hold the bar (that kills music), place bloody fingers on the other strings, and then strum.  That takes about a day.  David said to hold off on lesson 108 (which involves playing guitar while knitting with your toes I imagine) until all the chords take one strum and I can shift around quickly.
6. And then BEE CELL intervened…Okay, I really, really suck at most things, but I’ve now been stuck on lesson 107 for 8 weeks.  And I got an IPod touch, which meant I downloaded Bee Cells, which means I have a perfect excuse for a break, which means that I sort out one chord, ‘play it’ (well, my bar’s a sports bar) and then take a break on bee cell.  Each bee cell game takes 10 minutes.  You can’t just play one game so you have to have 3 goes.  So right when I need to focus on music the most, I find myself playing one chord, or more specifically not playing anything at all, and then taking a break.  I will be at lesson 107 for at least a decade.
7. A Retreat to E Minor:  I really like open chords. They are my friend.  During breaks from 107 I return to them and play and play and play. There are so many songs that one can write going back and forth between F Major 7th and C.  A ton of them.  At least as far as I’m concerned.  And the amount of music between A minor and E minor.  Goodness, two or three albums worth of materials.  I wish I was a better person, but I’m not.  lesson 107 has shown me that.  I’m kind of a loser. Stuck between Ebsus2(5) and Bb7(6).

So that’s how the musical journey is going.

Jimmy