Guitar…

Last night I got the opportunity to pick up one of my ocassional hobbies: the acoustic guitar. My parents bought me my first guitar, a Gibson Epiphone for my 21st birthday. I have long admired my cousin for his mad guitar skills, and I wanted to learn a little more and start to mess with it on my own.

Shortly after my birthday, I decided to set out on a crazy quest to learn Paul McCartney’s Blackbird. It is one of my favorite songs ever, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years.

I haven’t had much ambition otherwise, I mess around with a few simple chord songs but I have a hard time with the technique of switching chords. I’m generally better with fingerpicking songs, which befuddles my cousin because thats “the hard part” for most guitar players.

Last night my cousin and I sat down and deciphered one of Paul’s latest efforts, Jenny Wren. The song is not fundamentally different than Blackbird, but it is in a different tuning and has some different chord progressions. The fingerpicking style is almost the same though, so I have taken to it pretty quickly.

I like playing, but I haven’t gotten comfortable enough with playing to learn to sing along yet. Hopefully this will change once I start joining on his quest to become a Guitar Hero. We joked tonight about writing music glorifying karate kata, but it was mostly in jest. 🙂