Learning the Guitar

One day before Zizou's famous head bud during 2006's world cup final, I had just bought myself a folk guitar. During that summer, I had just happened to find the inspiration to learn to play the guitar. Don't ask me why, but it happened. In my quest to master this absolutely magnificient instrument, I set out to buy numerous DVDs and books to learn.

I must admit, things look rather easy at first sight, but it is far from it, believe me. Not only must you memorize the different notes, but for each note there are different chords to strum. Not to mention the steel chords on a folk guitar are quite painful to the naked fingers. But once the chords memorized and the ability to change notes correctly, I was able to start playing a couple of easy songs. Yet for some reason, the songs I played never sounded quite right. My endeavor to play the guitar lasted a couple of months til I broke one of the chords.

Fastforward 7 months later, and I finally got my guitar fixed. I now realize, though I knew the basic chords, I had played them wrong all along. While browsing through Youtube, I found this guitarist, Justin Sandercoe, who was kind enough to give free guitar lessons on the internet. As a matter of fact, his lessons are great as he give pointers on what to do and not do. The URL is the following: http://www.justinguitar.com/

So here I found myself learning to play the guitar all over again. The steel chords still feel rather painful, and my fingers are not as flexible and long as I would like them to be. It is rather difficult to play the different notes correctly, that many times, I have felt like giving up. But with practice, my fingers are starting to get used to the chords, and are becoming more flexing as well. To be honest, with all the stretching and flexing with my left hand and arm, I now feel muscles I never tought I had. In some ways, with my left arm being stronger than before, it feels as if I have found balance between my natural right arm and my left. It goes without saying that practice does make one better, so we'll see how things progress. I just need to take my time to do things the right way.

Whether it be learning to play the guitar or doing anything else, we can always find ways to improve ourselves in our everyday life or society. Nobody is perfect, and there is always room for progress and evolution. Sometimes, we just need to look into the mirror to make a change in this world.