Sunday 10 November 2013

I made it...kind of

Its all finished! The presentation has been completed....without my guitar skills. OOPS. I chickened out. What a wuss! But oh well. I'm so happy with my new learnt occupation. I honestly didn't think that I would stick to it. But I persevered and it payed off!
I think I will continue to play the guitar, especially now that it is coming up to summer and I can finally fulfill my dream of playing the guitar on the beach in front of a fire and singing campfire songs!
My friends are gonna love it!

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Thursday 31 October 2013

Nearly There

I have been practicing! Very proud of myself. I now know two more songs to add to my song collection. I asked one of my good friends the other day if he could help me to learn a few basic songs that everyone would know that I could play in class. I didn't think he would be that keen to teach me but he was stoked that I even asked! I learnt how to play smoke on water and fast car. Great songs and very very simple. I'm still grasping the fast car song as it has quite hard finger placements for some of the chords but i know the chord sequence now so I guess it's just practice makes perfect. Lets see if I can be talented enough to perform in front of the whole class! eek

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Friday 25 October 2013

I'm Back!

It's a few of weeks away from my presentation for my assignment and I not had much practice with the guitar in the last few weeks. I have been playing since my last post (which I know was quite a long time ago!!) but have been occupied with other things. Since my last post I have plucked up the courage to play in front of my flatmates and a few other friends. I wasn't exactly amazing and my talent didn't blow anyone away but I did manage to put a few chords together to make an OK sounding song! I was pretty stoked as my flatmates didn't think I would be able to do it! I have now been asked to teach a couple of them the basics that I now know so that we can all use the guitar when we have free time around the flat. YAY! Moving up in the guitar world.
I now need to practice a little bit more and decide on a song to play for my group presentation. aaaaahhhhhhhhh!

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Thursday 29 August 2013

Return from the..placement

I've been slack. I haven't played the guitar in a while. Actually more like 2 months. But I have an excuse-ish. Placement has consumed my days and work has consumed my nights. And my weekends have been full of visits to Nana's and Aunties and friends and neighbors. So really I haven't had much of a chance to practice.
I arrived back to Dunedin from my home in New Plymouth a few days ago and have realised just how fast you can lose it..guitar I mean.

Sunday 2 June 2013

#winning

I HAVE SUCCEEDED!!!

It took me a couple of days to suss out the finger placements and getting used to the movements between chords but I can now claim that I know how to play yellow submarine on the acoustic guitar.. STOKED.
I think I just need to stick to simple songs for now to keep it motivating for me to keep playing. When it gets too hard, it takes a very very long time for me to notice any improvements in my playing and I can become very frustrated with myself. I'm scared I might end up becoming one of those guitar smashing rock star guitar players minus the rock star bit. I think some more research into some simple songs but ones that I will enjoy like yankee doodle the Red Hot Chili Peppers or John Mayer will be good. 

Onwards and upwards

xoxo 
rachelandtheguitar

Saturday 25 May 2013

Yellow submarine



Ok I have chosen a song. I don't think it's that impressive but I'm going to give it a go..at least it's a start! I heard someone in class talking about learning the guitar a few years ago and they started off with yellow submarine (I used to sing that in primary school haaaahaha). A bit degrading but YOLO. Lets give it a go...

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Friday 17 May 2013

Research

I have been trying to research some songs to play that are easy for novice guitar players. My first google search "easy songs for beginner guitar players" turned out some songs that found me questioning if I really should have chosen something a little simpler to learn for my assignment! I mean the speed of some of these guys fingers are just ridiculous! You tube seems to be the best place to find some good tutorials for beginners, it's just going to take a while to find a song that I like that will be easy enough.

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Monday 13 May 2013

Slow and steady...

Still going strong with practicing the chords (A,C,D,G) but I don't feel like I am making much of an improvement. I think maybe I should move on to practicing some simple songs to get my fingers used to the movements...google here I come.

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Monday 22 April 2013

The first lesson

My first attempt at learning the basics of guitar techniques, simple chords and strumming proved to be more difficult than first anticipated. It was however, very successful! I first researched some sites on google that would help me to tune my guitar by ear (I don't own an electronic guitar tuner) and tuned the very out of tune and out of use guitar. It took me a while to tune my ear to which way each string needed to be turned but I think I tuned it reasonably well in the end.
I then found another site- guitarlessons.com that had some great reviews from people that had used it to teach themselves, like me. It provided twelve short video clips on the basics of the guitar including how to hold the guitar properly, parts of the guitar, strumming technique and four basic chords (G major, D major, A minor 7 and C major). I made my way through these videos, feeling a little disappointed seeing how good the man in the video was compared to me. His fingers seemed to be moving at a hundred miles an hour compared to mine and he said he was playing slowly! I practiced each chord many times over so that my fingers got used to the movements, which helped a lot. Once I had been through all of the videos, I found that I was able to play the chords much easier and my fingers were automatically doing the movements when moving between chords.
Now all I have to do is keep practicing and hopefully I will be able to play the chords one after the other without pausing in between each.
Learning to play the guitar is going to be much harder than expected but I am determined!!

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Monday 15 April 2013

OT and the Guitar

I thought I should probably explain why I am learning the guitar before I start posting about my guitar lesson antics!
I am currently studying occupational therapy and have been given an assignment for one of my papers called occupational science. The assignment involves learning a new occupation that I am familiar with but have little/no experience with and should be of interest to me.
I have been playing the piano since I was 8 (I am now 20) so have a lot of knowledge of music and love being able to learn new songs and perform for friends and family for fun. I have however, always been a little disappointed that my parents made me learn an instrument that isn't so easy to find and carry around (I think this may be impossible with a piano?). Because of this I have wanted to learn an instrument that is a little more versatile. The guitar has always seemed to me, like an instrument that is always available, is able to be used in many different situations and quite a lot of people can play it. My dream is to sit around a campfire on the beach at nighttime eating marshmallows and playing campfire songs (with me as the talented guitar player). This influenced me to choose the acoustic guitar as my chosen occupation for my assignment.
I presented this to my classmates a few weeks ago and promised them that I would perform the song in front of them at the end of the year with a fellow classmate who has also chosen to learn to play guitar. So now I have to learn a song that will entertain and hopefully wont be to hard for me to learn by the end of the year! I don't know if I have gotten myself into an impossible situation or not but lets hope that my musical background will help me through my feat of learning the guitar!

I will be posting in this blog occasionally to record my experiences with learning to play and maybe some different websites, sheet music etc that I have come across during the process.
Thanks for reading!
xoxo
rachelandtheguitar