My way or no way
Discovery time!
I just got my blonde coloured Telecaster today. And let me tell you, tis’ a sweet little thing. My only fret is that it’s China made and not Indonesian, but I’m not complaining much. At least I have my guitar. Playing it is exactly as I imagined. Hard. See, I haven’t played or even the guitar extensively for a LONG time and finally getting the guitar of my dreams and playing it on meager skills seem… wrong.
So after 30 minutes of playing it with the same old chords I finally set it aside in disgust.
Just because I have the guitar of my dreams doesn’t mean I’m going to be playing like a rock star instinctively. But something about it calls to me. But no, if I can’t play it right, might as well not, it’ll be an insult to it.
Boy that was stupid.
See, here’s where the discovery come in. After putting it down I got to my iPod and listened to my newly imported Beatles playlist (which I had totally forgotten that I replaced my previous playlist with). Then after hearing some of the classics, something occurred to me. My gosh I’ve been hearing the same old chords over and over again in 20+ songs! Yet they sound different everytime.
Lesson 1: Modify what you already know. Bitching about new discovery while ignoring what you know won’t get you anywhere.
So I really got in the mood to play again, but I’m still a bit miffed with myself. So I fired up the macbook (which is what I’m typing this with) and watch some music videos that I’ve downloaded. Then another hammer of inspiration struck. I see these people…. they’re not playing any chords that I know of on their guitar. Hell, even the way they hold it sometimes is blatantly wrong. Yet how could they produce such cool sounds?
So back to the Tele I go, firing up my amp again. Then I said “screw proper chords” and started fingering my fretboard by random. And lo and behold, I discovered that two adjacent strings on any frets produce cool sounding chords. TWO strings! Wow. By the time you know it, I’m finally rocking on my guitar to some unknown tunes but they sound pretty pleasant to the ears. Nothing in the chord book ever said anything about two string chords.
Lesson 2: There’s 2 ways to do spectacular things; YOUR way or NO way.
Simply put, If I haven’t fooled around with the guitar after watching those music videos, I never would’ve thought of playing with two strings to get a chord alone (they sound fantastic on distort). Not only some obscure chords can I play now, but a lot more possibilities have sprung up.
Needless to say, I’m much more confident about doing my research now. These two lessons have unlocked that blockade that’s been hounding me for weeks. I think I can finally move forward.
Lesson 3: If at first you don’t succeed, try something different.
p/s: Cornflakes and canned mocha coffee is surprisingly good.
