Guitar talk and the birthday of a guitar player.
Wednesday, 09/10/03 - 12:21 pm.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOE FUCKIN' PERRY!!!! (the Aerosmith lead guitar, you realize).

In accordance to the prophecy, I started my guitar lessons yesterday. It was so good. SO, SO GOOD. And I happened to know more than I thought.

It's a group of 5 students, but one didn't show up. We have two instructors and they're very nice. The room is a little small. On a corner there's a drumkit and some guitars (and one bass guitar, that inmediately reminded me of Mr. McCartney). It's like a small cellar, and the only thing that keeps you from dehydration is a little fan. On a wall there's was a message, like graffitti: Super Paquito Chac (a local rock band) got a problem with that?!. I thought that was utterly cool.

The guitar I got was very shiny, and beautifully tuned. My guitar cannot be tuned properly because some tuning pegs are a little broken. It seemed a little bruised, but from the planet I come from, the looks don't matter.

There was this weird guitar that the instructor was using. It was the lenght of an arm and so thin you could hold it with one hand. It was more like a stick with six strings. Handy, isn't it?. A guy designed it specially for salvadorian guitar players that travel by bus. We cracked up, because it was quite inventive indeed. You see, traveling by bus here is nothing like traveling by bus.

Back to the class. They asked us all how much knowledge on guitar we had. This girl next to me had grabbed a guitar and was playing a tune, and a guy seemed to know how to play. I felt out of place, thinking perhaps this course was intended only for people with previous knowledge on guitars. I had, but say...one third of the basics.

It turned out we all were pretty much in the dark...we had some knowledge, but not too much. It's always good to be in a group we're all members are equal. Well, if you knew you wouldn't be here, now would you?, said the fat, happy, nice instructor.

One thing I was amazed at is that unconsciously I already knew how to hold a guitar. But that's pretty much common sense, isn't it? I've seen my favorite guitar and bass guitar players (Aerosmith's Joe, Brad and Tom, and Beatles' George, John and Paul) hold it. Your left hand (or right, in Paul's cases) does not work as a support for the guitar. You must hold it so that even if you let go of the fretboard it won't fall.

You have no problems with D minor, do you?, the instructor said smiling. It sounded to me like I was doing a good job. He gave me some exercises with chords A, D and E, minor and major, and I actually felt very comfortable holding and playing a guitar for one entire hour, and didn't feel lost at all when he talked about chords.

I guess fooling around with my brother's broken guitar paid off yesterday.

And that's all I'll talk about today, because I still cannot get over it.

John Lennon: I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!!

Dude, I cannot wait 'til I get my first blister.

prev / next