The Itch
To be honest, I’ve always wanted to play guitar since I was a kid. We never had a guitar in the house, but I always wanted to get my hands on one, and every time I saw one, I wondered what it would be like to play it. You would think that turning fifty would be a wake-up call, but I didn’t wake up until I was about fifty-two. I turned fifty-two this year, and what occurred to me is that I only have so much time to do some of the things that I’ve always wanted to do.
I didn’t wake up until I was about fifty-two.
Learning to play guitar is one of those things. I want to do that while I’m still young enough to have the cognitive function to learn, and hopefully play long into my old age. My taste in music has changed as I’ve gotten older, and I think that happens to a lot of us — we become more refined, more mature. I find that I have a natural affinity toward indie folk music, and that is why I chose the acoustic guitar. With indie folk music, you don’t need all those other instruments.
The Guitar That Sat in the Corner
I did buy a guitar several years ago. It sat in the corner of my office and collected dust, and I never even tuned it. Actually, I didn’t even know that I needed to tune it. And I wasn’t sure where to start as far as learning how to play, so it just sat there.
I did play a little bit of “Smoke on the Water” on it. Whether I played it right or not is an entirely different story, but it sounded like “Smoke on the Water,” and I learned that when I was about nineteen years old. That guitar had bad timing in life. It came into my life right about the time that my web development business took a nosedive, and I went from making a six-figure-a-year income to literally zero overnight with Google’s Panda update.
The dusty guitar in the corner started looking more like food than an instrument at some point.
Sort of like those old cartoons where two good friends run out of food and start seeing each other as a defeathered chicken, or a T-bone steak. Long story short, it ended up in a pawn shop. I don’t remember what I paid for that old guitar, but I remember getting more for it than I expected. I was sad to see it go, but it wouldn’t have tasted good with A1 sauce. I hope it found a good home.
Why Now
Not only did I turn fifty-two this year, but I had quite a few big life events. The house that I bought when I was in the prime of my web development, I sold it. I bought a cheaper home and I got completely out of debt. I just wanted to change my life. I wanted to change — or should I say become who I was.
Playing guitar is just part of that, among other things. It’s definitely something I’ve always wanted to do, and it’s something I’m going to do. Some of the reason I’m taking action now has to do with books I’ve been listening to. One of them is Atomic Habits, and basically, the time to start is now. It doesn’t matter if it’s playing guitar or golf or whatever it is that you want to do.
You don’t have to be a guitar player on day one. You don’t have to be a professional golfer on day one. You just have to show up and put in your one percent.
Picking It Out
Honestly, I used AI to help me pick out a guitar. This is not the one that was recommended to me. I don’t remember what that was exactly, but there was just something about it I didn’t like. So I started looking for Fender. I know who Fender is, and I know that they’re a good name, a quality name in guitars.
I found this one, a CD-60S all-mahogany dreadnought that came bundled with a hard case, tuner, strap, strings, and picks. I didn’t necessarily tell myself that I had a price limit. This had everything I needed, and I’m just learning, so the price was right. It was a no-brainer.
I got lucky on some of the features in this thing. I didn’t really realize that a lot of them are made with layered wood and have inferior sound. This one has a solid top, so I got super lucky in that regard.
The Things Nobody Tells You
This time, I tuned it. And this time, I’m participating in lessons. All that time I had the other guitar, I never knew what the different parts of the guitar were even called. There’s the fretboard. There are frets. I learned my first chord, E minor, and I have no idea what I can do with that yet.
The hardest thing I’ve dealt with so far is tuning the B and the bottom E strings. My tuner basically thinks the B is an E, and I didn’t realize it would bounce back and forth on that string as I tried to tune it. Once I got those last two strings tuned, I quickly found out my first few strings still needed tuning, since tuning the last two got the previous ones out of whack.
The other thing I struggled with is not letting my fat fingers touch other strings. I have to stick my fingers kind of straight in while not allowing them to rest on or touch any of the other strings. I have been told my fingers would hurt, and maybe they will after some time, when I get to the actual playing-music part. But my years in manufacturing have made my hands and fingers thick enough, I think, to handle it so far.
Hell, I had to Google how to hold a pick right so it glides across the strings while strumming. I just didn’t know.
How I’m Learning
Google Gemini has a feature where you can use it for guided courses, and to start with, that’s what I’m using. I’m also using YouTube University, just as any noob doing anything new would do. JustinGuitar and MartyMusic are both channels I’ve subscribed to, and between the guided course and those two, I have more instruction in front of me than I ever did the first time around.
Where I Want to Be
I don’t necessarily have a specific song that I want to play in a year. I just want to be able to play decent guitar in a year. I don’t have expectations that I’ll be great at any song I play a year from now, and I may not be able to play real good for a couple of years. But the main thing is that a year from now, I still want to be picking up the guitar a few times a week, to learn and to practice and to get better.
E minor. I have no idea what I can do with it yet. But it’s a start.
