Never the twain shall meet

You don't hear about a lot of guitarists who love spending time in the water. Maybe that's just because guitarists who are famous have no time for swimming or snorkeling, or maybe it's because musicians are lazy bastards who don't like working out. Or maybe it's because time in the water means that your calluses will peel off like mad. I had an extra-long swimming lesson last night (learned the butterfly) and I have no calluses this morning. Good times.

More instruments I can't play

You have to check out this video of a kid playing Pachelbel's canon on two gayageums. A gayageum is a Korean zither or plucked harp of twelve strings. More like a harp in that there's no fretting, as there is with the zither, an instrument in which I have no interest, but like the zither in shape and orientation (rectangle laid flat on table or stand).

The kid is amazing. It starts slowly, but trust me, it gets seriously impressive.

It's also similar to the Japanese koto or Chinese guzheng, but not the same as the taisho-koto I eyed in a Tokyo flea market. That is a pianolin, which hasn't existed in the West since the Renaissance as far as I know (long rectangular box across the lap, press keys that do the fretting for you with the left, pluck with the right, only five strings).

I am pondering a purchase. If I go to Korea next summer, as I am also pondering, I might be able to get one then, though good luck to me getting it back.

A crimp in things

Literally. Namely, that while the circuit-building aspects of pedal making do not daunt me at all, there are two aspects that do. 1) hooking it up to something, and 2) doing all the crap that makes it hook up to something. By the time I got done reading Circuit Building for Dummies' section on how to crimp a cable connection onto the amplifier I would hypothetically build -- which by the way, is housed in a box I've presumably built or bought as well -- with a crimping tool I don't own and have never used, and incidentally I barely even know what kinds of connections and power supplies I'd need, well, I closed the book and pondered deeply while continuing to cycle. (At the gym.)

I don't actually think I'd kill myself or anyone else. I'd probably blow a few fuses (also something I've never had to wire into a circuit, never having used a power supply that could kill something bigger than a spider), but it doesn't look terribly difficult. On the other hand, there's clearly a lot to learn about the outer parts as well as the innards, and many tools to buy. I'm not sure which is a bigger problem at the moment.

Popes in a popemobile

How many rabbits can you fit in a guitar case?

At least one.


The rabbit I'm fostering (named Elenor Rigby, complete with typo, after the Beatles song) had a good time exploring.

Finding the one

Oh, no, THIS will be my first build.

Click and you'll see why.

Home from the hospital!

I'm very excited. Puccini the Japanese mandolin is home. I picked it (him?) up today for $69 and backpacked it home, swaddled in a Harvard sweatshirt. Only the best for my antique wallhangers. The guy I picked it up from in the repair shop greeted me with, "Oh, YOU'RE the one... uh, do you actually play this thing?" Fortunately, his questions were not provoked by the state of Puccini so much as the discomfort of playing bowlbacks in general.

I barely looked at it in the shop, thinking I wouldn't be able to see what they had done, anyway. That turned out to be only partly true. The tuners, well, they could have just blown the dust off them and I wouldn't know. But they definitely did some substantial gluing on the back ribs and a good cleaning and oiling overall, leaving the mother of pearl fret dots shining like the moon and the face of it a little more golden. The back varnish is not even dandruffing as much as it was before. It looks funny to me with its shiny new strings, but it's back up to some kind of playability. I have no intention of ever getting it re-fretted (the frets do have substantial wear). It's not as if anyone's going to gig with it, for god's sake.

Awesome! Another instrument I can't play! :) Photos another day.

Time's a-wastin'

Or it will be when I get my soldering iron. I am zeroing in on some circuit-building projects -- classes seem to be rather pricey and hard to find, so I may just sail in and start reading and building cheap projects. Here's one pedal I've found that looks like a winner. Circuitry's easy enough -- I have my old breadboard to test circuits before I solder them, and I wish I'd kept my old physics lab book for practice -- but having to worry about doing it well enough to keep the sound clean is another thing. Not to mention the enclosure and all that other stuff I never had to worry about before. You should see my final lamp project for Physics 15b. It looked like a train wreck with a light bulb hanging off.

Flight of the bumblebee

My guitar has developed fret buzz. It is severely annoying. I assume that either I have already killed the guitar somehow, or, more likely, that my strings have broken in and are vibrating more, and therefore whacking the frets at midpoint. I'll probably just suffer through till I feel like restringing, which will solve the problem temporarily. A heavier gauge string would probably really solve the problem... I'll think about it.

Get thee to a bookstore

If you're a Wilco fan, and even if you're not, rush to read the Fretboard Journal cover article on their secret loft in Chicago, guitar nerd paradise. FJ is a gorgeous, expensive magazine with fantastic articles about, well, fretboard instruments, players, and history. I indulged in one for my train ride to Wisconsin, and did not regret it.

Cmin, my Everest

Took another run at the glass mountain of Cmin today, slipped off and settled for Asus.

Sigh.

In the hospital

Puccini went to the shop today to get fixed. Namely, to have a rib reglued, exterior bottom veneer glued down, fretboard cleaned, one set of tuners removed and wood smoothed so that they will screw down flat, and finally new strings. Total damage likely to be about $60 for labor and whatever the strings cost, say $12 at full markup. Not bad. I was prepared to hear about $100.

The diagnostician, a friendly guy named Eric, took one look at poor Puccini and said, "Oh, this has been in water." I was wondering what the heck kind of varnish Suzuki could possibly have used that could flake off. Honestly, it's like dandruff. If you so much as hold it in a playing position, your shirt is covered with little flakes. There's no help for it; even if I felt like ruining it by stripping and refinishing, it's got so many little ribs on the back (think a pumpkin with many segments) that it would be a nightmare. He also pointed out to me that there are little holes showing below the tuner mounts, suggesting that the tuners, though quite old, as their ivory buttons show, may not be the originals -- which in turn suggests that the mandolin may be even older than 1945, the only date I have.

However, the structure is sound, even after being examined internally with a little dentist mirror -- that amused me no end. I expect to get it back in a week or so.

In the news

Apparently I'm not the only one sick of Aerosmith. I can't seem to get away from those headlines. I love Aerosmith as much as the next '80s child, but does anyone really think it's a huge tragedy if they don't perform together anymore?

Also in the news is Taylor Swift. I watched her SNL monologue and mostly thought to myself damn, the girl has long fingers. She can wrap right around for the thumb on the E string. Forget getting any tips from watching her... I'll have to do some youtubing.

Movin' on up

The strumming is improving, the fingering is improving... and I'm sick of playing Aerosmith. It's fine to warm up with, but I'm trying to play some fast-paced songs now, and ones with difficult chord combos. "Hammer to Fall" is a good fast one. All A, D, and E, but the constant A/D/A/D ad infinitum is excellent practice for me. I still don't hit the D chord all at once -- I lay down my fingers on the B and G strings, then stick the middle finger down on the e string.

Others in frequent rotation now are "Hallelujah," "Desperado," and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." I also went back to "No One But You," which is much harder now that I'm playing every chord instead of only the ones I know. Funny how that works.

Indecision

I can't decide how I feel about the Silversun Pickups. I mean, I generally like that kind of sound, and they have a female bassist, which is just awesome. On the other hand, I just watched the video for Substitution.

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Kind of odd how Nikki is dressed and even her closeups are cut into the video as if she is one of these high school mean girls. And that's another thing -- what an oddly teenybopper and not quite sufficiently satirical video. It's like Taylor Swift with too little commentary injected.

Maybe I'm just feeling cranky and old. I also just listened to some Zee Avi. Teen folk rock. Nice sound, good voice, some really bad lyrics mixed in with decent ones.

The flesh is weak

Calluses are back, but finger strength and dexterity are not. Not that I was exactly tearing up the neck before, but I could play for quite a long time before my fingers got tired. Gamely going through my song list, practicing and hoping to build up enough muscle that I'll feel like it's worthwhile to sign up for some lessons.

Picking up where I left off

Today, G7 and an alternative G chording. I tried to learn Cmin, which I could use for a couple of the songs I play most often, and realized that I need to develop my picking more as well. Picking only the four middle strings is not easy.

Gone but not forgotten

Sold off my first guitar, the 3/4-size Yamaha. It's kind of a relief; my living room was starting to look slightly ridiculous with two guitars and a mandolin lying about. Better to focus on the playing than the gear... or the interior decoration.

I need to exercise

Once I get the calluses back up and running, it's time to practice seriously. Maybe some scales, chord series, things like that to get the dexterity up a little more. My friends gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card, which I spent part of on a chord book, Guitar Chord Guru by Karl Aranjo. It looked pretty solid and no-frills, aimed right about at my theory level. I didn't need a book that spent a lot of time explaining to me what a sharp and a flat were, nor did I want a lot of lecturing on the Hypomixolydian. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ow, part two

Totally lost my calluses after the month in NYC with only occasional classical playing and then two and a half weeks in Asia with no playing (except trying the Brian May). Ow. The rubbing alcohol bottle once again resides on my desk.

I also got very used to the classical sound. Mine sounds very twangy, though part of that might be that I'm fretting that badly.

Japanese addition to the family!

Come to think of it, the family is already pretty Japanese... since I have two Yamahas.

I went to the Meiji Park flea market behind the National Stadium in Tokyo today, just one subway stop away, and found myself buying this lovely little thing!


It's a Suzuki Violin company mandolin. According to the vendor, who also had about eight guitars, three tambourines, four harmonicas, and two ocarinas, it was made in 1945. I question his ability to translate numbers into English, but it's certainly possible. The label says Suzuki Violins Kojo, Nagoya. Since Suzuki split hither and yon after the war, I would probably need an expert's help on this one. The writing in the red lining, which was helpfully read to me by a hotel staffer, is just an owner's name and address. When I get around to it, I'll post it on mandolincafe and see who knows what.

In original case, which is worn around the edges but will get it home. Condition is poor. Finish very worn, a couple of tiny cracks in the bowl back where the wood is pulling apart, I think. But look at how lovely it used to be. The inlay around the edge and soundholes is outrageous, and so is that butterfly:


It's missing both sets of upper strings, and the ones on it look like hell, but the sound is still in there somewhere. I'll get it all fixed up in Chicago. Oh, and it's very tiny. If Peri, the Soviet mandolin, was not playing size, this is like a child's. But I had to get it. I paid about US$40. Maybe I could have bargained more, but I think I did all right. The vendor was hesitating, and I gave him my best hopeful puppy eyes -- something I would never do if I could actually communicate with language.

I was going to come up with a cool Japanese name for it, but I'm afraid it's named itself 'Puccini.' You can connect the dots.

Oh, and I was also looking at a taishi-gato, a kind of five-stringed pianolin. You press keys and pick. I would have loved to get it, but it was new, and he was asking US$110. I figured even if I got him down to $50, I'd rather find something old... and I did!

[ETA: make that a taisho-koto.)

Little shops of heaven

I played a Brian May Guitar today!

And I only had to go halfway around the globe to do it. I'm in Tokyo, and today I hit the famous guitar shops near Ochanomizu -- also near the famous bookstores of Jimbo-cho. I can't believe that any city can sustain that many guitar shops. Up and down the street, one after another, guitar after high-end guitar, a shop of ukeleles on one floor and acoustics on the next...

Anyway, I played a BM, which was surprisingly small in the body. I always thought it just looked small because he's huge. Solid. Neck not quite as wide and thick as I had heard. I do see the complaints about the hardware, but I really think it's not bad. At the same time, for the $1000 or so they were charging, I'd rather get the used Jaguar I saw at Chicago Music Exchange for $980.

As is becoming all too common a theme on these trips, I was the only girl, except girls trailing after their boyfriends and sitting down with their shopping bags. Less disturbing, perhaps, than consistently being the only girl in the music stores. I stopped in two more branches of Disk Union, Tokyo's big music store, that of course were amongst the guitar stores.

No BM going home with me, but I got a Live Line guitar strap made in Japan. I don't think it's going to be much less slippery than my cheap one, but it does have a red covering with little stenciled rabbits and flowers and gold leaves. Too appropriate.



Also grabbed a couple of picks from the store brand, Shimokura, and a Takamine pick ring. In a striking demonstration of Japan's culture that so despises theft, the picks were all just in an open tray between the cash register and the door.

What else? Saw tons of K. Yairi guitars. Woods of all kinds, and a lot of places had a little explanation panel with samples of the different woods. Crowded shops, hip but helpful salespeople, unobtrusive but around.

Everything old is new again

Why did I resolutely hold out against buying wirecutters, asking my friend to come cut my guitar strings once and then borrowing another's? Second friend didn't even think to wonder why I didn't just buy them. As a matter of fact, she said she didn't know what they looked like and asked her husband to dig them out.

I happily laid my old college Physics 15b wirecutters down on the shelf next to my guitar today. Just simple little wirecutters with a notch to strip insulation, and little red rubber slips on the handles. I sneaked them out behind my dad's back. He wanted me to solder some things for him, and before he put the toolkit away, I whipped the wirecutters out and sat on them. Of course, mom spotted them when I was packing and said, "Heidi, why do you need to take these little scissors?"

Alive and collecting

Visiting my parents in NJ briefly, and dug out an old Peanuts pencil with Snoopy playing the guitar on it while cleaning out some things. I think my parents bought these for me in Korea, where (as in Japan) Peanuts is still extremely popular. That being said, this pencil is probably close to twenty years old. I'm going to take it back to Chicago to add to the collection on the shelf. I can tell that I'm going to become one of those people who starts getting guitar-themed gifts, like cat people who have cat everything not because they bought it, but because friends inflict the tchotchkes on them.

Like swinging a bag of cats against a wall

My lovely practicing drove my friends' cat out of the room today. The placid fat mackerel tabby named Pandora had been firmly ensconced on her cushion on the sofa for hours on end. This cat does not move, let me tell you. But off she went to the kitchen as soon as I started tuning. Oh, and here she comes now that I'm done. It's so insulting.

Obligatory Les Paul R.I.P. post

Les Paul was just a name to me till I took up this whole guitar-playing thing. I admire his playing (listened to a CD of it earlier this year). I'd love to listen to it more if I could find it unadulterated by that old-fashioned singing, that grates on your ears after a while. You know, that Andrews-sisters-tight-happy-harmonies thing.

The NY Times dug up a bunch of interesting retrospectives that I've enjoyed: one, a brief account of seeing him play live earlier this year; another, an interview with him about seeing Jimi Hendrix play. He had a long and distinguished career.

Enjoy.

The joy of practice

It's hard to practice when it's hot. Not just because heat makes me sleepy, like a cat, but because in a house without central air, I don't want to take even a cheap guitar in and out of air-conditioned rooms, and it's TOO hot to play in a non-AC room. Sweat and all that... Today it cooled off enough for me to have fun flailing away at it, though kinked into a terrible posture and, I'm sure, inflicting Aerosmith on the unsuspecting neighbors through the open windows.

It reminded me of the last book I read on the elliptical before I left Chicago, Glenn Kurtz's memoir Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music. Though a great read, it was in some ways incredibly depressing. Kurtz was an extremely talented child guitarist and practiced his way right into the New England Conservatory. (I knew a bunch of singers at NEC in Boston -- lovely and only somewhat dysfunctional place -- and attended many a concert in their Jordan Hall.) There, he retooled his technique, fought for the good practice rooms against other instrumentalists, and eventually headed for Europe to really brush things up for a great career. One fine day in Vienna, he abruptly realized he didn't have what it took, packed up his guitar, headed home, and didn't touch it again for ten years. (Instead, he went to graduate school to study literature, and if that didn't depress me thoroughly, well...)

But he did pick it up again another fine day, taking us back through his career by framing it in one of the loving and rigorous practice sessions he now does next to the window of his San Francisco apartment. I think I was supposed to feel good about how things turned out for him, and that an amateur or failed professional can still love, enjoy, and vigorously pursue their music. But I have to say that it also made me selfishly glad that I have so little musical talent, because at least I never really thought I could make a career of it. I don't know if it's better or worse to have so much and still not enough.

MIK

Here's my friends' guitar, which they bought at a local stoop sale (the city equivalent of a garage sale, in case the term sounds odd). It came with a chipboard case missing one latch, but good enough to sit around and keep the cats off. And, um, that's half my foot and my knee. What happened to the tan I got kayaking?

I don't know how old it is, but it's a Hondo, made in Korea, so probably not more than a dozen or twenty years old. Still has a tiny sticker with an inspection number. This was pre-stringing, so you don't get to see my novel ball-end-through-the-tuners look.

It plays fairly well, but those nylon strings are still stretching. I was trying to play "Scarborough Fair" for my mother, and realized that it was about a full step out of tune. I said to her, "I bet you thought it was my playing and didn't want to say anything." The look on her face answered that question. I'm also having a bit of trouble with the wider, thicker neck and longer fret spacing.

Oh, and since it's a Hondo, I've named it John Wayne. You can probably figure out why... but does anyone else remember when that movie was on TV in, say, the late eighties, and it was a big deal because they had 3-Dized it and you could go to 7-11 to get free 3D glasses?

No fool like a tired fool

I am silently but no less hysterically laughing at myself while my parents slumber upstairs in the Brooklyn digs. Today I bought classical guitar strings to restring my friends' guitar (to be explained another day), and the friendly guy at Dan's Chelsea Guitars (a tiny, tiny, crammed-full store) sold me the cheaper ball-end Martins. I was confident enough in my string-wrapping skills to go ahead even after an afternoon spent rowing my parents around the Central Park lake -- I do, after all, kind of fancy myself as good at fiddly little manual dexterity tasks. But I neglected, in my fatigue, to think long and hard or short and soft about the ball-ends.

I swear that the guy had said they go "up top," but he must think differently about top and bottom. So... I put them through the tuners. Well, it looks ridiculous, and it's wrong, of course, but it serves the same function, after all. And I rather enjoyed doing the wrapping and tying at the bottom end. They're quietly stretching out tonight, but tomorrow morning when everyone's awake, LOOK OUT SEGOVIA!


P.S. In the never-ending saga of my wirecutterlessness, I once again need wirecutters. I hope I can find my friends' pair, because I can cut the nylon with scissors, but I don't know about the others.

The friendly (SW) skies

Flew out to NYC today, and after much agonizing about whether or not to bring my 3/4 size Yamaha, I didn't. I was congratulating myself on this decision when I found that it was a completely full and delayed flight (bad tempers, full bins). Then one of the last people to board was a teenager with an electric in a gig bag. I quote the flight attendant: "You can put your guitar wherever you can find space." And trust me, at that point they weren't going to make him gate-check it. He found space, and I was annoyed with myself. If he, a teen with an overly pretentious hat, could get space, surely a more respectably dressed young lady who looked like a "serious" musician could do just as well. Moral of the story, take the risk and fly Southwest. They have a great reputation with guitars on guitar message boards, and this looked like proof.

One finger at a time

I have started interspersing chromatic scales between songs, so as to build up single-note skills and avoid, in my friend's words, becoming a permanent rhythm guitarist. Fingerpicking these is much easier than up-and-down strumming with the pick -- for that, it really would be nice to be able to see the top of the guitar. I found a good little solo to practice today, "Fields of Gold." I think the Police may be a good source for these -- so mellow that there's nothing too high on the neck or too dauntingly fast.

Down memory lane, part II

I was about five years old when I started playing piano. My brother (three and a half years older) had started a little before he was five, and his teacher at Westminster Choir College was so ecstatic that she wanted to send him to Curtis to play for Jorge Bolet. My parents opted out, something that dad, at least, regretted for years.

All things considered, I was a disappointment. I was all right, but not terribly diligent about practicing. It probably wasn't a boon to my education that we shifted teachers a few times for financial reasons. I started off with Ena Bronstein, who is not hugely famous in a performing way but studied under Claudio Arrau with Daniel Barenboim ("Danny's a genius," she always used to say). You will also find her listed in Arnold Steinhardt's wonderful memoir Indivisible by Four as one of the many pianists the Guarneri Quartet played with in their time. She was lovely, and much too good for me. We then switched to a lady whose name I will not mention, may she rest in peace, but she was an awful teacher and drove me to tears at least once -- and I was a fairly stoic child. We might have taken a break around here. In general, I was not really enthusiastic, not much for practicing, and definitely lazy about memorizing scales, which I now regret a lot.

At this point, say fourth grade, I was Seashore-tested for pitch and musical aptitude en masse in the school cafeteria and scored very high, leading to the band director trying to persuade my father to put me on French horn. But I wanted to play flute, and I think my dad thought that this was a good instrument for a girl, so flute it was. I was never very good at flute. My musical training obviously gave me an advantage, but I don't think I ever had very good air, and only a decent tone. A flutist friend of mine recently kindly said that she thought I just don't have a good facial structure for the flute -- I'd like to blame it on physiology, but I think talent probably fits into the story somewhere.

Then it was back to piano at Westminster, my brother back to Bronstein and me to a gentler teacher named Elise Yun. More laziness, more boredom. I was playing a lot of Bach and Clementi at this time. To jump on the soapbox for a moment, I wish someone had seen along the way how I learned rather than following the old classical style of conservatory training. Goal-oriented child. I would have spent a lot more effort (and did) trying to play things I liked, and fighting through two pages of the Moonlight Sonata probably did more for me musically than a lot of Clementi. Who cared about finger strength? I was never going to grace Carnegie Hall as it was.

Somewhere in here I discovered modern Broadway, and for one birthday my parents cracked and bought me the Les Mis and Miss Saigon songbooks. They heard "Stars" a lot.

I don't remember when I gave up flute. Maybe ninth grade. Piano trickled on... another teaching switch to an old tyrant of a teacher in my home town, who was terrible. I wanted to quit, and my mom caved after the first concert. When she heard how heavy-handed even the more advanced students were, she decided it really wasn't doing me any good.

That was it. No more musical training, ever. I bought a keyboard from another student in sophomore year of college and trucked it around till a couple of years after graduation. My old student flute being out of commission, my aunt found me one that was in a little better shape at a garage sale last year. I played it a bit, but I've lost my air completely.

But guitar's great. It's making me work, it's making me think, and I like the challenge. I never wanted to play a stringed instrument as a child, so maybe I had to grow into it.

More on my musical taste development another day. A little preview there with the Broadway mentions!

Meet Elzbieta

I decided to hang onto the Yamaha dreadnought for while, so I put my Wroclaw sticker (the Polish city where my brother lived/taught the last couple of years) on the case. Then I decided to name the guitar, and it decided to be Polish and female. Elzbieta. Elizabeth. The tallest church in Wroclaw, which I climbed -- it was good training for the Dom.


View from the top of St. Elzbieta.

Down memory lane, part I

All roads lead to the guitar, that's what I say. Who knew that thirty years' worth of dilettante knowledge could come in handy if you just found the right thing to bring it all to life?

All right, the theoretical math itself hasn't come in handy yet, though there's something to that old saw about learning how to study one thing and then being able to study anything. But my two summers at math camp were like a release from the bubble of high school in more ways than one. I don't remember any of my friends in high school being particularly into music, even the band geeks, but at math camp, everyone brought a few cassette tapes. (I am old.) And since Dad only raised me on classical and we only had cable TV for a year (in which I watched much MTV), this is where I really first encountered Simon and Garfunkel, Clapton, Veruca Salt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, U2, Liz Phair... look, it was an eclectic bunch of nerds, all right? For that matter, much of my earlier rock exposure had come via my brother's years at math camp.

What's more, the influence of math camp and my math camp friends led me to start off college as a physics major. A worse idea, in retrospect, could scarcely have been found. Even now, ensconced in English, I do not have what you would call a theoretical mind. I'd have been far better off as an engineer, and the proof of this is that the only thing I was exceptionally good at was the lab component of Physics 15b, Harvard's weirdly named intro course in electricity & magnetism.

Many's the happy hour I spent sprawled out on a dorm floor, sometimes with the door propped open so the smoke and steam from the soldering iron wouldn't touch off the dorm fire alarm. I fried a capacitor once. Let me tell you, that's an unforgettable smell. Years later when my dad's pre-amp blew (with a huge dramatic noise and a roomful of smoke), I diagnosed the problem by smell alone. My friend used to hassle me about taking the time to color-code my wires and trim them all short enough to make the circuits pretty. Our final class project was to build a lamp. I still have it. It doesn't look like a lamp, since it's just a circuit board with a bulb hanging off, but it has a little dimmer and everything.

When I say "I," what I mean is that it's in my parents' basement. My unhandy dad was charmed by the nice red toolbox they gave us in lab and wanted to hang on to it. You know, to save me the inconvenience, since I move often. Well, no more, dad. This time I'm coming for my wire clippers at the very least. And if I end up taking this class at the Chicago Guitar School, I'm coming for the voltmeter, the resistors, the soldering iron... heck, I'm bringing the whole thing back, and damn the airlines!

E is for Eagle

E7, Em7 now joined by D7 and Am7. And if anyone is keeping track, the practice song of choice is now "Desperado," which is filled with 7 chords. I must say that the hunt for good practice tabs is giving me a real appreciation for the musical preferences of my favorites. Queen not so heavy on those 7 chords.

I also replaced the pink silk sash on the dreadnought with a real (if not fantastic) strap, tied to the top by a thin pink ribbon which is the remnant of one of my bridesmaid's duties, supplying ribbon to tie little bags of potpourri to pelt the bride and groom. I sense a distinct theme here: keep everything in your closet and it'll come in handy again one day in the most unexpected of places. The strap helps a great deal for fretting and picking with less pain, but I still can't quite see.

Ship ahoy, or, Female guitarists of the world, unite!

Are all dreadnoughts equal? I spent a happy hour at Guitar Works in Evanston today, sizing guitars, and concluded that folk-sized is easy for me to play (not much bigger than my 3/4, but a longer neck scale), grand concert is manageable, and dreadnought is a little big. Then I came home, put my new guitar on, and said whoa. It just seems enormous. I'm terrible with eyeballing these things.

That being said, the crucial point with this dreadnought is that I can't yet seem to manage to look over the edge of it to see the face while I'm playing. The corollary is that my right arm feels like it's being twisted out of its socket. I suppose I'll adjust, but it raises yet another question: where does the guitar body sit? Over the breasts or under the breasts? Because when I'm sitting down, I would need to grow a few inches to get it under, but obviously if it's over, it sticks out further -- and I don't have an Audrey Hepburn swan neck to help me see.

I facebook-messaged my only female guitarist friend to ask. Her reply:

We female guitarists have to stick together. My sense is to put the guitar over the breasts. It may depend on the shape of the guitar and where it hits the chest, but I think I've always had my chest and body behind the guitars I've had. Maybe because it's a new guitar you have to get used to it and adjust your grips somewhat? I just looked at the new photo of the guitar on your blog--very nice! Yeah, I think when I've played guitars like that (my current Applause acoustic has a rounded back) I've always had my breasts behind the guitar.

This was decidedly not the answer I was expecting; a male friend's reply was that he slings his guitar very low, and that would be his solution. Which would mean I should just always play standing up.

Now, this could all very well be beginner growing pains, but it does also seem like a basic question of positioning, and one that, as I replied to my friend, "is kind of crucial, and something a man (i.e. 99% of guitar salespeople and luthiers) doesn't think about!"

ETA: I was trying to think of female rockers I've seen playing... mostly standing up, of course, and I think slinging under. But sitting down? The only thing I could think of is that scene in Forrest Gump, not my favorite sentimental waltz through American history, in which Jenny is playing guitar nude in a strip bar. It covered everything.

The lord giveth...

... barre chords and the lord taketh away power chords. Ow. New neck scale is going to take some getting used to. "Yoga for guitarists' fingers," anybody? Either that or I'm going to have to grow a new pinky.

ETA: Or tilt the neck down slightly. Helps like mad. Of course, I can't see the frets, but this seems to be a general problem with the depth of the dreadnought -- I just haven't figured out yet how I'm supposed to be able to see the face of it.

Divine chaos

I gym-read a really great book about guitar making, playing, and generally the pleasures of guitar love, Clapton's Guitar by Allen St. John. It's about the long, slow handmaking of an acoustic guitar for Eric Clapton by Wayne Henderson, a great guitarist and greater luthier who lives in his happy little shack in rural Virginia, besieged by requests, eating lemon pie and slowly crafting some of the best guitars in the world in his cluttered, dirty shack of a workshop with his homemade tools. It's a story about inspired craftsmanship, camaraderie (mostly male bonding), fandom, flatpicking, fried turkey, and, of course, Clapton. Clapton doesn't exactly appear; he hovers, godlike, in the background of the book much like he stood in the glassed-in viewing room over his Crossroads guitar auction, which is referenced multiple times. As a matter of fact, Henderson, it seems, almost never talked to Clapton, and the guitar itself was delivered by St. John, who mediated the whole process, to Clapton's gear guy.

That's a little sad in a way, sadder for Clapton than for Henderson, who's not exactly a Clapton fan even if he does seem to like making a guitar for someone so famous. He really missed out by not talking to Henderson himself and seeing his guitar so beautifully shaped. Henderson is a real country character, and St. John a sympathetic, admiring yet hilariously fish-out-of-water narrator. Fantastic read.

Glam rock

After almost dropping the new guitar (which may get a name) three times, I had to put something on it for a strap. No top button, had to tie something onto the neck -- and the only thing I could come up with was a pink silk sash that I wore as a bridesmaid at a wedding in Bermuda.

It doesn't look quite as idiotic as it sounds.

And in other highly exciting news, my F chord is magically working much better on this neck! I wonder if the mystical world of barre chords is going to open up for me now.

Deal or no deal?

Deal. Check out the new addition to the family:


I got this Yamaha F335 for $100, WITH a hardshell case, and not a pasteboard hardshell either. Don't you love this photo of it next to the 3/4 size? It's like a baby guitar and its mommy.

I'm a little less excited than I was originally, because the girl I bought it from gave me the wrong model number. How the hell she did this, I've no idea; it's IN the guitar, for god's sake. So I ended up with a laminate top dreadnought instead of the solid top folk size I thought I was getting, which displeases me quite a bit now that I'm home. When I was playing it, I thought it must be a large folk, but now I think it's a slightly shallow dreadnought. Like I can tell the difference offhand. I'm surprised that I didn't find it more awkward than I did.

Regardless, it's well made and sounds good. Oddly enough, I must have been looking up this model for another ad, because I had read the reviews before, and they're all raves. I'm satisfied. Would NOT be happy if I had paid $100 for the guitar only, but with a case, it's well worth it.

She may have given me the wrong model number out of malice aforethought. Or she may have had no clue. Consider this exchange:
Me: "Uh... have you ever changed the strings?"
She: "Honestly? Um. No, never. I'm pretty sure."

Yup. Explains the little brown spots on them.

ETA: I've never seen such strings, except maybe on my brother's Soviet mandolin. When I say "little brown spots," I mean darker little spots on the completely corroded string length. Restrung with light gauge Martins, letting them stretch. I did a marginally less crappy job than last time; you can probably tell which order I did the strings in, because the first one has maybe one turn around the tuner and the last few have a respectable number, as I finally learned to leave enough slack.

My apartment looks like a musical instrument shop had a birthday and then threw up on it. I am cleaning up the detritus and going to bed.

Squee!

Urban dictionary defines that word as the sound a fangirl makes. I didn't know anyone used it; I thought I made it up, and I use it mostly in online chats to express a general kind of delight. Both are appropriate. My college friends' birthday gifts for me continue to roll in off my amazon wishlist, and I just opened up the Queen Deluxe Anthology. Guitar, voice and piano! I'm in Brooklyn next month, and the house has a piano, which I fully intend to take advantage of this year.

At sixes and sevens

Where did that expression come from, anyway? Slash chords threw me badly enough that I looked for something else to learn, and peacefully settled on seventh chords. Good times. E7 and Em7 in the bag.

The Wall

Hitting the wall, and not the Pink Floyd kind. The slash chord kind. When I realized that the C/G chord required the pinky to fret the lower A string, I hopped up to the next level of pain. I have an abnormally short pinky. Runs in the family. I will adapt.

Ha, I mean, next they'll be telling me to do something ridiculous, like wrap my thumb around to fret the sixth string. Ha ha. Ha.. what? You mean...? NO.

It's following me!

GAH! In a coffeeshop working and used-guitar-shopping, and what comes on the stereo? "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." Because playing it every day for the last 2-3 weeks wasn't enough.

Hopping

I'm going to get a different guitar. Why not? I was hemming and hawing about it, but then had a kind of "get over it!" moment. If I can find a used guitar for decent value and sell this one, no reason not to. Matter of fact, no reason not to do it as often as I like. I have friends who switch jobs about this often, for god's sake.

I have my eye on a craigslist Alvarez folk-size. We shall see. I do need more frets, that's for sure. Alvarezes, from what I've read, tend to have thin necks, and I don't think I could handle a dreadnought size. When I tried my friend's in Tampa, it was like lugging a suitcase under my armpit.

Dvorak > Hammerstein

Still in C major, but no longer "Edelweiss": I have just suffered through the New World largo in several different octaves, that is different locations on the fretboard. Still... determined... to... learn where the damn notes are.

Oh, and when I say suffered, I really mean suffered, because I also fingerpicked (a bit, in a beginner way). I decided that it just looks so cool, and it has a very different sound. I like. Must learn.

Green guitars

No, not in terms of finish, but in terms of wood. I was looking at Greenpeace's site investigating the issue of recycled paper products (tissues and so forth) when I saw a section called MusicWood and thought uh oh, here comes the guitar guilt.

But NO! It turns out that Greenpeace is working with several guitar makers, since Alaska has no regulation to speak of, to develop a sustainable source of Sitka spruce, which will incidentally also benefit Native Americans somehow -- it's not spelled out. Phase two, I hope, will deal with exotics, because all that mahogany and rosewood is coming from somewhere and I bet it ain't good. Check it out. But in case you are both worried and lazy, partnering companies include Fender, Gibson, Taylor, Martin, Guild, and Yamaha (whew).

Coffeetable weights

Having thoroughly perused The Fender Stratocaster Handbook and 50 Years of Fender, I am now moving on to The Stratocaster Chronicles, which is huge, and branching out into Gibson Guitars: 100 Years of an American Icon. Nobody can say I'm not thorough. Of course, a lot of this is for creative writing research, rather than my playing knowledge, but it doesn't hurt.

Giving up quickly

I'm going to buy one of those short slide rings and wear it on my index finger to help with barre chords. I don't see how I'm ever going to make the side of my index finger callus in anything resembling the short term, and it hurts my ears so much when that E string just pings and fizzles. Another little trinket I can buy in Japan or China.

Heidi's Guitar Dictionary

Triad (n.): The less painful lower three notes of a basic barre chord. Used to lead the unwary novice guitarist into realizing that s/he ought to make a severe effort to do better on said barre chord fingering; also may be used to shame novice into learning note locations on the D string.

Last thought

I could not go to bed without figuring out why odd partials are bright and evens are warm. I think I got it. Even partials have a more direct relationship to the fundamental frequency of the string, that is the note. So: string's fundamental frequency is, say, low E. What's the second partial? Well, the second partial vibrates at exactly what you induce when you clamp off half the string by putting your finger on the twelfth fret and get the fundamental frequency of that: an E that is a whole octave higher. And what happens when you clamp off another quarter of that string? You got it. (Sixth partial is a B, eighth is E, etc.) So the evens, on the whole, add up to the same note.

But what about the odd partials? Third partial is three times the frequency. That is, about a B. And if you know your E major scale off the top of your head, which I do not because I have the musical theory of a flea, you know that B is the fifth. Fifth partial? G#, otherwise known as the third. Mostly harmonizing.

Now, why we call those bright, and the evens warm, that's one of those weird synaesthetic things, I assume. OR ELSE it's sloppy terminology coming from the pickup world in which one pickup tends to get both the higher and the odds and the other gets the lower and even, because it makes more sense to me just to say all higher partials are brighter (of course, higher notes) and lower partials are warmer. I'd favor a term like "rougher" for odds. And then we get into the term I've heard with pickups, "fatter"... Good night!

Just to make it worse

In case that disquisition on frequencies wasn't bad enough, I was winding down with a little peaceful googling and came across the following information; you can influence the partials with your playing. Of course you can. Play near the bridge, you get a brighter sound. Play closer to the ideal middle of the string, and you enhance the evens, hence a warmer sound. At least I think that would be the logic there.

Teach a man to fish...

...or to repot pickups, and you repot him for a lifetime. Today's elliptical machine reading was Constructing a Solid-Body Guitar: A Complete Technical Guide by Roger H. Siminoff, a huge picture-book sized thing that had people actually looking at it curiously. Yes, I know how to read.

I wasn't really looking to find out about how to cut the wood, though that's all good to know and was worth leafing through. But I did learn more about the electronics of it, though there's just enough to tantalize and I'm a little too rusty to fill in all the gaps myself. I know more about the vibrations that are causing the flux in the pickups, etc. I can't recap it too well without diagrams, but basically, the string vibrates in numerous ways: a full vibration, back and forth like a hill (a half a sine wave), the usual designated frequency of the string. Then there's a second partial vibration, which is an hill up and a valley down (a full sine wave), twice the frequency, then the third partial, two hills with a valley in between (sine and a half), three times the frequency, etc., on and on, as high as we can hear (20 or so). The first partial, the one-hill vibration, makes up the most of what we hear (not a majority though; say a quarter).

The neck pickup, because it is towards the middle of the vibrating string, picks up the vibration from the lower partials. This gives a warmer sound, made by the first partial (the lone hill) and the even-numbered ones, because their greatest amplitude (top of the hill) is close to this pickup. This is also why the neck sound is usually louder, because again, the first partial makes up the most of the sound. Towards the end of the string, that is around the bridge pickup, the big wave of the first partial is curving down, so to speak -- the foot of the hill -- and so the bridge pickup can pick up the amplitudes of the higher partials. Also, if you think about it, it will tend to pick up the ones that make peaks closer to the end, so it picks up the odd partials (that have hill, valley, hill). Odds give a brighter sound. Repeating again, the first partial makes up most of the sound, so the bridge pickup's sound is usually smaller; this is why sometimes bridge pickups are overwound to amplify and compensate.

To summarize: neck, first and even, warm and loud. Bridge, higher and odd, bright.

God, I hope that's right. Let's talk about what the pickups do another day, OK?

Still, I think I get the idea now. What I really want to read is the brand new book all about pickups, but some guitar-loving jerk beat me to the public library's copy. I'll grab it soon, hopefully.

Two steps forward

Played a little for a friend today -- my first performance. She played my crappy flute, and we dueted slowly on "Scarborough Fair," I think both thinking that the other was setting the pace. Then I did a bit of Aerosmith for her, but I did not rock out the way I usually do in solitude. Must work on performance skills, which come to think of it were always quite crappy on piano. I do not emote publicly.

Also decided to hit the triads today and promptly put away the guitar. Tomorrow's another day to make myself play "Go Cubs Go" with a thousand different variations.

Like a snake

...shedding its skin, my guitar calluses peeled right off, and continue to flake, and ow, it hurts again (or rather, hurts a lot again -- it never quite stopped, but I could successfully ignore it for longer periods). I'm going to have to find some happy medium of moisturizing the calluses to preserve them. I had left off the rubbing alcohol, but was trying not to get lotion on them. Maybe I can stop worrying about that. This is not a thought process to which I am accustomed; I barely think about how to get rid of calluses normally, let alone keeping them.

The good news is that the power chords are quite decent, and I'm learning more where the notes are on the fifth and sixth strings. I do notice that I'm playing with the neck awfully close to my nose, and sometimes the fifth string power chords get played a little as if I want to be holding a cello. Eh, whatever. As long as it comes out decently.

Bit by bit

From a Muscovite poster on MandolinCafe:

Well, most of soviet instruments made at the end of 80s beginning 90s were completely unplayable. Except very rare occasions. There were many political and economical reasons for that. Long story. But on the other hand they have significant historical value Because, mandolins were relatively rare thing in SU. Mass production was only on one factory in Leningrad, and not much of them were produced. Only classic bowelbacks were produced. Most of pro players do not use them anyway because Czechoslovakian mandolins (now Strunal brand) were available and were better. So keep it. It is rare thing :)

This contrasts with a previous Bulgarian poster who told me that tons of mandolins were made for the Western tourist trade, but those were plastic flatbacks and often sold at the big shops near the hotels meant for tourists. My brother also writes that the shop where he bought it had only a few, he thinks, not a whole string of them lining the walls.

He's visiting the U.S. in September, so we're going to wait for him to come peer into the body and read the label. In any case, this is just getting more and more interesting. Playability still up in the air, but the current plan is to buy a gig bag, bring it back to Chicago, and spring for a setup. Even if it's meant for a wall, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have it fixed up, though I suppose that if it really is completely unplayable there's no point in having the bridge in the right place covering the little church picture.

Bad house guest

Snuck in a quick practice on my friend's tele this morning while he and his wife were still asleep. What's more Fourth of July than a red Fender Telecaster? Obviously, I didn't plug it in. Baby steps. I was also just playing chords along with nothing at all. "Scarborough Fair" and so forth.

Lots of fun, though I see that I'm going to have to work on my stretches. A 3/4 size guitar is nice for the learning curve, but then there's one later if you keep going. The tele action certainly is easy, though. On my Yamaha (it has no name, unlike the mandolin; it's just referred to in a deprecating tone as "the Yamaha" or "the low-end travel guitar" or "I'm learning on it"), the action's pretty easy at the top and gets ridiculously higher as you go down. I mean, it feels like going from typing on a modern laptop to an old typewriter, if you know what I mean; that real airy push-push-push kind of feeling.

I hate baseball

Grim determination to get this power chord fingering. I am back to "Go Cubs Go." All power chords. Lots of pain, lots of buzz, lots of sour notes. Perhaps tomorrow I can promote myself to "I'm in Love with My Car" again, but it didn't go so well tonight.

Road trip

I have dreams of buying an electric, so I'm keeping an eye out for used axes at the same time that I take breaks by surfing for the dream guitar. Naturally, how could I not want to at least try out a replica Red Special by Brian May Guitars? Well, in a truly crushing testament to Queen's not-as-hallowed-as-they-should-be status in the U.S., there are four dealers in the entire country who carry the Mays. One is in Rockford, IL. Rent a car and hit I-90? Not today, but maybe someday. It might almost be easier to wait till the next time I'm in San Francisco or England.

They even make a "Mini May" for travel... or hopeless folks like me. But I think with an electric, I can get a full size. The thin neck will help my small hands.

ETA: Dealer in Tokyo. Maybe I'll stop there in September.

Uncharted waters

I really do enjoy practicing, no matter how painful it is -- and make no mistake, it does get painful. I wonder if I'm pushing too hard with my thumb on the back of the neck. Maybe the muscles just have to develop.

Tonight I decided that I was getting into a rut, so I tried a few barre chords, said oh jesus, and went back to power chords. I ventured onto the fifth string, which I found exceedingly difficult. I blame my teeny tiny pinky. I went back to the 1-2-3 fingering I was using originally, then at the end of practice discovered that thanks to the book not numbering the fingering on that tab only, and me getting confused by them calling the index finger 1, I was supposed to be using 1-3-4. I swore, tried it out, found it easier, and was happy for a second till I realized that a pinky callus was going to have to develop. Tomorrow the new pain begins.

The fifth string power chord I tried was C#, which also takes me further down the neck than I have hitherto gone. Not bad, though trying to look at a tab and the neck and my picking at the same time does lead to some sour chords. It nicely fills out a couple of the songs I've been playing.

Incidentally, in a measure of how far I've come, I tried "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" the other night. When I optimistically tried it two days in, I thought it was impossible. Now, managed to follow along half respectably. Rockabilly, dude.

Bohemian rhapsody

From my brother, re the mandolin dubbed Peri:

I think I bought it on the famous Old Arbat Street bohemian district in Moscow, thus in mid-July 1991. That's the same place where the guy did my portrait, an old Arbat tradition. The portraiters were out in force when I was there again last summer, as were the guys selling paintings. I bought kvas from a stall and wandered around, went into a couple of souvenir shops and a church, and decided against all the overpriced tourist trap eateries. (By the way, back in '91 I got back three weeks, not three days before the attempted coup against Gorbachev.)

He's off to Munich, so I'll have to wait to ask him if he got it from a guy with a thousand mandolins to sell, or a sort of antique/vintage shop/stand. The second would obviously bode much better for the mandolin's construction quality.

The perfect rosette

I read a fairly interesting book with a bland title (Guitar: An American Life) by Tim Brookes, which intersperses the story of the construction of his custom-made acoustic with the history of the instrument. Brookes does fairly well with the history until the twentieth century. I think the amount of compression he has to do there overwhelms his writing skills, which are strongest in the descriptive writing about the wood and loving craftsmanship of the luthier, Rick Davis of Vermont. The intricacy of the craftsmanship is fascinating and extremely educational, and so are some of Brookes' chosen historical anecdotes, but I think he's best as an essayist. His agony when his chosen rosette (the decorative yet functional ring of wood around the sound hole) turns out not to be quite what he had envisioned is hilariously memorable.

Heavy handed

I need to work a little on the strumming. I realized tonight that I was making "Scarborough Fair" sound like a dirge.

More experimentation?

I am informed by a poster on Mandolin Cafe that the bridge on Peri (short for Perestroika -- how quickly a name sticks) is in the wrong place; it and the nut should be equidistant from the 12th fret. Normally, I might think that there are other variables, etc., but what makes me really suspicious is that the bridge, if it were in the right place, would be right across the onion dome of the church drawn on the top. So I thought, initially, that this meant that I was doomed.

However, further googling tells me that mandolins have movable bridges. There's talk of things like 'setup' and 'moving' and 'placement.' Perhaps there's hope after all. I shall take two sets of extra-light gauge mandolin strings to NJ in a spirit of hopefulness.

Peri is, apparently, a Portuguese-style shallow bowl-back.

Getting overambitious

This is the mandolin that my brother bought in the Soviet Union/CIS in 1992 (right before it became not that any more -- as a matter of fact, if I recall correctly, he came home three days before Yeltsin's coup). So it's a piece of specific history. I don't know much about it. I will have to ask him exactly when and where he bought it, as it could have been anywhere along his route. He also bought some assorted Soviet-ish memorabilia, a very nice portrait of himself that my parents still have hanging up, a Gorbachev matrushka doll that has all the previous Soviet leaders inside (the tiniest one is the last czar!), and two of those bobbling wooden dolls that stand up when you tip them over.

I haven't looked at this mandolin in years, though I've been talking about doing something with it on and off for years, but my dad sent me photos at my request so I could think about whether it was playable, and my faithful friend Brent took a look and said he thinks it might be. A quick google tells me that the top wood, which you can't see but has a very straight grain, is quite probably beech or birch. The bridge is probably maple. In other words, it might not be the piece of crap I remember it being. It's a bowl-back, as you might guess. I'm going to take good strings and see what I can do with it in NJ. My real fear is that the tuners just won't hold tune. We'll see.

I've never been one to name inanimate objects other than stuffed animals when I was a child, but I almost feel like this one needs a name. Perestroika, maybe?

This little piggy...

My friend showed me a better way to do power chords with the pinky holding down the bottom two notes. And by better, I have decided that I mean more painful. Just as I had gotten the hang of the other way -- I find that my pinky is absolutely incapable of holding down two strings. It is abnormally short and normally weak. It held me back all through piano, and I am determined that it won't do the same here, however many years it may take.

Added "Scarborough Fair" to the lineup. Very pleasing. I could hardly hear Simon and Garfunkel over the rattle of my A/C window unit, of course, but this probably has the added benefit of drowning me out to the new neighbors. They haven't complained, by the way. I think maybe they can't hear the guitar.

But really must get in more single-string picking practice.

The twisted claw

I think that's the title of a Hardy Boys book, but it also somewhat describes my left hand. I kind of figured out the power chord stretch, so today I decided to put it into use, finding that having the f# power chord gave me a yet more satisfying rendition of "Crazy." And that, ladies and gentlemen, finally made my hand cramp. I had been happily surprised that nothing but my fingertips was in pain, but I have entered a new phase.

I ended a long practice session -- fingertips hardening a bit -- by going back to "I'm in Love with My Car," which is my comfort song now, but making myself use all G power chords. Ow. I'm typing this to loosen the kinks.

Incidentally, the warm weather seems to be playing havoc with my tuning. I had to stop and retune twice. Most unusual. That's what happens when your apartment is not really climate controlled. Wait till I start turning the window unit on and off... it's a good thing I bought a cheap guitar. I'd better pick up a hardshell case tomorrow; that might help soften the temperature blows.

Precision and power

The good news is that my open chords are getting wildly better. I realized that I forgot to learn D minor, but that was quickly fixed and led to a highly satisfying rendition of Aerosmith's "Crazy." I also was delighted this weekend when playing my friend's full-size Takamine and realizing that my skills were improving. As a matter of fact, I managed to switch chords without looking at my fretting hand, a pinnacle of success I had not dared to dream of so soon. We will pass over the fact that his dog went and hid in the other room while I was playing, after enduring it the first time.

Tonight, I decided to build on this success by learning the power chords. I have entered a whole new world of pain. First of all, if there is a theoretical equivalent to power chords in classical piano, I most certainly never learned its name. This is a minor blip. Secondly, the stretch required between the index and middle finger is beyond awkward. I'm back to thanking god that I bought a 3/4 size guitar; also going to have to do regular stretches.

Going forward and backward

Cutting practice down to once a day, and a short practice yesterday at that, definitely gave the fingertips some rest, but I just flayed them nicely with spirited renditions of "Crazy," "Amazing," and two repetitions of "I'm in Love with My Car." Did I mention that I'm getting new upstairs neighbors? Wish them luck. The repertoire will expand eventually, but considering that they have to be songs that can be done with a lot of open chords and that I already own or can readily find on YouTube, I'm not complaining.

I found that I was using the pad of my ring finger, and had to cut the nail so I could get right on the tip. Just as I've stopped picking at my nails and they're growing nicely, what do you know? I start cutting them ruthlessly.

I'm also going to return to picking out single-note melodies. My picking could use the practice, and I haven't made the progress on knowing where the notes are on the neck that I would like.

Curb your enthusiasm

Forcing myself not to play this morning. I think I'd better cut down to once a day for a few days. The fingertips are really not so great. I thought playing twice a day might toughen them up faster, and I don't doubt that that's true... if I could ignore the nerve endings. I'm also doing the Clapton thing now, rubbing alcohol a few times a day.

Yeah, baby!

Aerosmith, "Amazing." Sight reading, cold. It was a mess, but I got through!

F is improving. Wearing a bandaid on my middle finger, which helps the pain but decreases accuracy.

F---

F major is hard.

Five and ow

A, C, D, Em, G.

D the hardest by far.

One chord at a time

I progress. I really ought to go back to "Do a Deer," because I'll say one thing for it, it really was giving me a solid sense of where the notes are. However, people seem big on chords, so I've started learning the major chords. I am up to G, D, and C, which lends me the ability to play "Go Cubs Go." It's not bad practice at moving your hand around, either.

G/D/C also gives you plenty of the chords to Queen's "I'm in Love with My Car," though I'm so slow that I don't quite hit everything on time. Amazing what a difference a day makes, though. Two days ago, I could only hit about two chords per verse and kept shouting at Roger (Taylor, the drummer, who sang lead on this song -- extremely underestimated vocalist) to slow down. But today I can hit about two a line. Not always on time, but still...!

Then I got the bright idea to try "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," which is full of major chords. Ha. Do you know how fast that song's tempo is?

As I always say when eating dim sum, it's a marathon, not a sprint. More practice. Today, maybe another chord. A or B, I think.

The axe

Everything moved so fast that I never gave an adequate description of the guitar itself, or the buying process. First I tried Old Town School of Music's shop, Different Strummer, where my choices were between a very cheap 3/4 that sounded like rubber bands on a box or a $350-ish black Martin. I went to the Guitar Center in Lincoln Park and headed straight for the acoustics, found the travel sizes in a little back room, and settled on a stool to try them one by one, along with several other reasonably small guitars. To my great relief, the salesman was friendly and unobtrusive, even tuning a guitar at my request and then going away. How do you try a guitar out? Well, you play what you know. Let's just say that I never want to hear myself play "Do a Deer" ever again.

I ended up buying the Yamaha JR-1 "mini folk guitar," a 3/4 size with a spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and rosewood fretboard. It came with an unpadded gig bag with small handles, fairly useless. I also bought a cheap strap that I detest already, because it's too slippery, and Dunlop picks. I passed over the Fender travel Squier, which didn't have as rich a tone, and according to the salesman doesn't hold tune as well as the Yamaha.

Here's the baby when I was partway through the harrowing restringing process.

The nervous parent

I wish to god I'd seen Brent's comment below offering help before I tried to restring tonight. I am limp with exhaustion. All strings more or less successfully restrung with the help of this video:



My major fault: not leaving enough slack for a decent amount of winds. And I tried to fix this as I went on, but no matter how much slack I left, there was never enough. Next time I'll probably go to extremes. I hope this won't hurt too much, other than needing to retune every ten minutes.

Also: going on the wish list is a string winder with a pin puller and wire cutter. I don't mind the string winding, but using pliers and cloth to get the pins out is not fun and scrapes up the pins. And without a wire cutter, I currently have huge curlicues of wire at the head, done with a penny and cloth.

OK. Now for a few exhausted chords. Tomorrow is another day. Took a pic. Will try to post.

eta: The new strings are D'Addario (someone tell me why people pronounce it Di-Addaro) Phosphor Bronze, light gauge. They do sound lovely compared to the factory strings, as crappily as I strung them. I also got a backup set of Martins. I'm not dumb. I knew I would screw it up. I just didn't know if it would be crucially. Paid retail, though. Next time, the internet.

Already in trouble

Bought a guitar. Broke a string.

It was my fault. I was tuning pitched waaay too high. Broke the high E. Another trot down to Guitar Works tomorrow. David told me not to be such a Sound of Music wuss and restring it myself.

Very traumatic, dropping the baby right after bringing it home.

Guitar trek

Just got back from Guitar Works in Evanston. I had called ahead to make sure they carried low-end travel acoustics, but when I got there... all rented. I did try a used old Gibson ($425) that I fell instantly in love with. I walked away very quickly.

Let's hope the afternoon brings more luck.

Taking the plunge

I almost bought a guitar today in Tampa before I left. My friend and I stopped at a Guitar Center on the way to the airport, and they had an $89 used Aria travel-size acoustic. I'm looking for a travel-size because, well, I travel a lot. It'll also be easier to learn on, since I have small hands. Prices vary, but online, I've seen well-reviewed travel guitars for $129/$149, a Fender Squier and a Yamaha. I couldn't quite face buying a guitar and case and then throwing it straight into checked luggage, though, so tomorrow I'll be popping down to the Guitar Center in Lincoln Park. Hopefully, they'll have something similar. I'll post photos of the baby as soon as I can.

Even worse

Scales, "Do a Deer," and "Edelweiss."

Really not rock'n'roll

Today was more scales. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, and I bitterly regret my extreme laziness at memorizing the scales as a child. I'm going about this starting phase very methodically. I feel the need to know what notes I'm playing instead of learning the chords by pressing a memorized set of frets. It's going to be slow. I feel like I'm looking at six sets of staggered keyboards.

I took a break by playing "Do a deer" from The Sound of Music off an internet tab. I thought my friend was going to cry. He said it was not very rock'n'roll.

My first time

This morning, I played a guitar for the first time.

It was my friend's steel-stringed Yamaha acoustic, which was temptingly sitting against the wall next to the coffeetable with a pick tucked into its strings. Plunk. I found this great guide to guitar notes on my netbook and proceeded to plunk away till my friend got back from the gym and gave me the mnemonic for the strings, "Easter Bunnies Get Drunk At Easter."

By the evening, he'd decided that I needed to try some chords. It wasn't pretty, but I got to mess around with his electric. The night ended with me playing the bass line to "Under Pressure" with a delighted grin on my face the whole time. It wasn't pretty... but it felt awesome.