Showing posts with label guitar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guitar. Show all posts

Sunday, 23 May 2010

Choosing what to play

It can be tricky choosing just a few songs to concentrate on. This is one of my weaknesses - I just like to pick along to whatever great song catches myattention. I can't guarantee not to do this anymore, but yesterday I looked through a few tunes and chose 3 to know backwards. So over the next few weeks I am going to arrange, and learn these tunes:-

The Dreadful wind and rain - there are a few versions of this around, including Jerry Garcia's and Crooked Still's

Four Strong Winds - Neil Young's version is my brother's favourite song of all time

Between the wars - Billy Bragg's song never seems right in sync with the times.

Anyway, I will try these tunes out to start with

Saturday, 15 May 2010

Starting out:

I have played guitar for over 30 years, since I was 9 or 10. I first learnt some songs from a paperback guitar tutor book that my mum bought. She was a teacher and a piano player and she thought that she would learn the guitar to teach school children songs in class (a guitar being quite a bit more portable than a piano). However, having bought a guitar from a friend (a Framus f-hole), my mum never got over the sore finger stage of playing and gave up. I got the guitar & tutor book for free and started learning "On top of old smoky". That was me hooked. I saved up and bought a Beatles songbook and, quite a bit later on, a better guitar. After a while, I could figure out the chords for songs by listening to them repeatedly on my record player. The Beatles' Get Back was the first song that I managed to get all the guitar parts figured out by ear. I was about 11 or 12. Over the years, I have always had guitars at home & find playing a great way to relax.