Oowweee...

Alright... Who forgot to warn me about the pain that follows learning to play the guitar?



I started messing around last night, after a quick trip to target for a tuner and some picks. It was all fine and dandy until about 20 minutes into it.



I found this website online that, until I can get some lessons or a DVD or something, will teach be basics of guitar play (and it's pretty impressive and easy to follow, too!). It teaches you how to tune your guitar, what all the parts are called, the proper way to hold it, and then the musical stuff.




So this is a little bit of what I learned last night:


- The strings on the guitar are E-A-D-G-B-E (which I'll remember by thinking eat all day, get big easy).
- Each fret raised the pitch of the string by a half step.
- When tuning, tightening the string raises the pitch, while loosening it lowers the pitch.
- Playing a string, while not touching any part of it is called playing the string "open".




And the biggest thing that I learned last night about playing the guitar? It's SO not as easy as it looks. So the tips of about 3 of my fingers are pretty much hurting, today. But ya know what? I think it'll be worth it. Apparently my fingers will eventually start to callous up and not hurt so much. And hopefully by then I'll have at least mastered my first chord!!


So it's not coming as easily as I'd hope it would, but I guess that would mean I wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much, either. So it seems to be a fair trade, I suppose.




For those of you whom already know how to play the guitar - rock on! You guys make it look wicked easy, and it's SO not!! Hopefully I'll be one of you some day. But until then, any tops on how to keep from killing your fingers? It's actually hurting as I type this blog...








*sniffle sniffle*