Aspiring to Competence, Part Two: Seven Nations, Six Strings

Welcome back to "Aspiring to Competence", a series of posts in which I chronicle my attempts to become competent at playing guitar. Armed only with a garage-sale acoustic and Justin Guitar's beginner course, I set out to become the next party-crashing "Wonderwall" bro.

Pursuing a hobby can be hard when you feel like you've hit a wall and haven't made any progress. That has been what's happened to me since the last post on the 24th. In my attempts to reach 30 chord changes a minute and move on to the next lesson, I found myself stuck at 25 for attempt after attempt. It started to frustrate me. I just wanted to keep forward momentum. But I couldn't bring myself to abandon what I had started. I had spent all those hours doing the chord change exercises, and by Jove I wasn't going to leave my practice unfinished.

And this week, I did it. 30 chord changes in one minute. 30 horrible, sloppy chord changes. 30 horrible, sloppy chord changes that were a massive achievement and made me jump for joy.

Moral of the story: if motivation alone can't get you up that hill, throw in a sunk cost fallacy.

Anyway, here are more impressions and important happenings from these past few days of learning guitar:

• I still swear I'm not using the pick correctly. Wikipedia says that it shouldn't make contact with the pickguard, but it's happened to me a couple times. I gotta figure that out.
• If I play the wrong strings in a chord while strumming one more time I will personally attack a Guitar Center clerk with a samurai sword.
• My fingers have begun to callus up. It feels kinda weird, but it does make playing a lot less painful and more convenient.
• Where can I get that hat that Justin wears in his videos? It's a nice hat.
• Getting all the strings to sound nice when strumming is a major pain in the rear. It is kind of worth it when you strum and then hear the most crystal-clear tone you have heard in all your days.
• This guitar thing sounds really nice. I think we'll see that it's gonna become a very popular instrument real soon.
• It's really weird how much the finger's position on the fret influences how easy it is to get a nice sound. I wonder what the science is behind that.
• After getting 30 chord changes a minute, I figured I may as well treat myself to a fun, easy, off-the-books song lesson. So I opened up a video (by, who else, Justin) and taught myself the "Seven Nation Army" riff. My attempts at playing it are awkward and sloppy, but it makes me feel so, so cool.
  

And there we go! I think I'm making solid progress, though I'm keeping my eyes out for the next bump I'm gonna hit. For now, I'm content to just practice chords and chord changes, try to strum on time, and, of course, play that riff incessantly and annoy my friends and family with it.

Until next time, blog-types!