Well another day and another practice session. Things didn’t go as well as they did yesterday. Who would have thought playin gth enotes on 3 strings could be so hard. Playing from the Method book, learning the notes on the first three string. Trying to follow my teachers instructions and say the names of the notes as I play them so I can start to learn the note names as well as the standard notations. Having trouble remembering to play E open string when I have a run… just a mental black.

Also working on playing Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison) and practicing alternating picking always picking up down up down even when my natural instinct is to sweep pick when moving from one string to another. Also working on remembering to play the last note on the main riff on the 5th string 5th fret instead of on the open D.

I need to start working on making a list of songs to work on in class

• Oretty Woman
• How can one woman be so mean (Buddy Guy)
• You shook me all night long
• House of the rising Sun
• Sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Well, day one of practice after my lesson.

As my goal was to pretend (sort of) that I didn’t have any playing
background, I am starting from the begining. So, I am now learning the
notes and standard notation for the first 3 strings. I guess I sort of
know this stuff already, but to make it as a better player, I have to
re-learn this all over again.

EFG, BCD,GA…. over and over again until I don’t have to even think
about it again. My biggest problem is that I can learn to notes of the
studies within 2 or 3 playings that I don’t learn any more. I think I
might have to do a little programming to create some random songs using
the specific strings.

Also, its nice to have someone to work with on songs. One thing that I
have been doing is learning songs, but learning them wrong…. well
maybe not wrong, but at least not as good as I should.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and signed up to take guitar lessons at a local music store (My Music Store http://www.my-music-store.com/).

I was a little trepidatious about doing it, worrying about how well I played and trying to learn to play at 36. But I decided that no one gets better without practice and learning.

So I went in and signed up and finally had my first lesson. I tried not to tell my instructor (John) too much about what I knew already. I really wanted to pretend that I knew nothing and start from scratch.

That was harder to do then I thought. I know most of my open chords and I know (by rote) a lot of scales. What I found out I didn’t know was that I wasn’t a familiar with the notes on the fretboard than I thought I did. So this could be a real education.