On Practicing Guitar

My first guitar teacher was a really young guy, but he showed me the basics, and he may have inadvertently got me on the path to the blues. It was the early 70s and he wore his hair like Noel Redding. I only remember a few other things about him and the lessons that I took at Crest Music Center on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens, but all of the memories are good. 

We were working from Alfred’s Basic Guitar Volume I, a great book. Whenever he (I wish I could remember his name) would demonstrate one of the little tunes for me, at the end of the song proper, he would race up the neck of his guitar, a Favilla classical, and play a wailing blues or rock lick. I remember saying once, “I want to play that!” Maybe he thought I wasn’t listening. But I made my way through the entire book and still own it, with his check marks and the dates on all of the pieces.

Perhaps because I said that I wanted to do more, he gave me a simple chord piece, the second line of the exercise below. It was no harder than the chord melody arrangements in Alfred’s, but there was an element of independence to playing something outside of the book.  I liked it. It was more adult to me, just strumming chords, and using chord symbols.

Years later, I expanded it to four phrases. It’s a little more difficult, with the two-fingered A minor chord in line three, and it has more of a place to go. Most adult beginners can play it after a few hours or less. Try to play slowly enough to where you can make the chord changes without interrupting the rhythm. Also, make sure to observe the rests at the end of each line. Don’t play on those beats. This lets the music breath, and gives the fingers and eyes a chance to rest. For an explanation of chord charts, see my Anatomy of a Chord Chart handout.