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Here's how things are going.
Through out this project I've had so much anxiety. I was constantly praying that I would somehow be able to take enough time out of my day to learn a song that I don't even like. Stand By Me just wasn't a song that I could enjoy enough to want to learn. I should've looked for a tutorial that would teach me a song I liked by a band I liked to begin with. I tried to take "the easy" way out of this and it ended up actually being harder because I wanted it to be easy.
Thankfully I was saved by my own musical taste. Come as you are has a really catchy yet simplistic main riff. With even more practice I could probably add other riffs and learn even more about what makes a guitar song sound good. I've gone from thinking this project is going to be the death of me to actually enjoying playing guitar as a hobby. Over the summer when I inevitably get bored I'll have another thing to do besides gaming now. The presentation is coming up soon and for me it consists of dialogue about how and why I picked the guitar and at the end there's a 30 second video of me playing Come as You Are for a product. I hope no one tears me apart since there's probably a few people in the class that are far more musically inclined than me. In the end it's only about seven minutes of either greatness or embarrassment so I'm trying to not overthink things.
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Wow, this semester has been tougher than usual. The change in schools messed me up and then ending up with three core classes and ROTC is certainly more than I expected. I've tried to write these blogs as much as I can and I was planning on getting one out last weekend since that's when I started learning one of my favorite Nirvana songs. I couldn't though since my laptop and book bag were at a different house. That didn't stop me from playing some guitar since I got bored. I was listening to Come as You Are by Nirvana and thought "hmm that sounds cooler than Stand By Me". So, I consulted a few YouTube tutorials and determined that I could get the riff memorized by the end of the weekend. It killed my fingers but man, it was awesome hearing my rhythm and transitions get smoother.
This semesters coming to an end at a rate that sort of terrifies me. Mostly because of genius hour but I also have two exams at the end of the semester. Stand By Me was an okay idea at first, then I had trouble memorizing the shapes, then I had even more trouble transitioning between them fast enough. The practice it gave me wasn't in vein though. It showed me that learning songs is achievable with time. Sadly the amount of time I needed wasn't enough. I'm actually glad that I decided to try this riff since it's by one of my favorite bands and I listen to the song frequently. I'm even more glad that Mr Barker said it was okay to learn this instead of sticking to Stand By Me. I feel a bit less stressed now and I'm practicing every other day just for fun. I think even after this project I'll continue to learn different songs. For my end goal, I'm going to get a good recording of me playing Come as You Are by Nirvana and maybe putting these blog entries into a shorter format. Maybe present a google slideshow with a timeline of how this project went and how it changed. I was thinking of bringing my guitar and playing in class but keeping up with it through out the day would be inconvenient. I also want to streamline how the presentation's going to go so having some talking points on a slideshow of what I learned and how it went would help keep me on topic and lead into the end where I show my results. This week I spent 30 minutes reviewing the first three chords which are G, Em and C. I'm transitioning between G and Em pretty easily but C can be difficult since I have to rearrange all three fingers completely. After I got warmed up and ready, I started incorporating the fourth chord, D. This chord is quite challenging for me since I tend to have a hard time with not muting out the E and B chords. I at least have the shape memorized though.
I do still think playing guitar is very fun and rewarding but it also terrifies me to think "oh god, I only have six more weeks to learn this song". At times this thought has been a reason for me to put in the time and make sure everything sounds like I at least know what I'm doing. At other times however, this anxiety makes me want to completely forget I even have a genius hour project. I often do most of my other assignments early in the day since they aren't so loud and time consuming. Today I took a few hours after my other homework to relax and give myself a bit of time to play some video games and eat a snack. Usually when this happens I put off genius hour until it's too late (since my parents go to bed at 9PM I can't be playing guitar after that time) but, surprisingly I didn't put it off until it was too late this time. I'm going to try my hardest to replicate this use of time next week and perhaps even tomorrow since I really need to start writing more blogs. All in all I'm still hopeful that I'll get this down pat by the end of genius hour. This month has certainly been something. Between my regular work from Civics, Biology and English and also having issues at home I've gotten behind on my guitar sessions. I did manage to spend some time this week deciding which song I'd like to learn. I picked a song that's fairly simple and uses a chord I already know. That song will be Stand By Me.
I picked this song mainly because it has chords that are semi-easy to transition between. The chords go G (8 beats), Em (8 beats), C (4 beats) D (4 beats) and G (8 beats). So far I've practiced G and Em and learned how to transition between them since G is right before Em in the song. This song uses a technique called a chuck which is just slapping the strings before you play the next chord to the song. I hope to spend additional time this coming week practicing more G and Em and maybe get to the point where I can incorporate C in there as well. I need to stay focused and keep practicing. I'll probably start listening to some variations of Stand by Me as well just to get the rhythm in my head. Here's to hoping this week is a successful one. This week I continued learning how to play Stand By Me. I spent about two hours practicing and made some progress. I started by reviewing the E minor and G chords and then added the C chord onto that. I'm learning the song piece by piece and it's starting to resemble what I've been listening to.
It feels sort of rewarding to actually be able to reproduce what I hear. I can pick out the different chords and even sort of sync up with the song, not the whole song but about the first half of the beat. It's really starting to be an enjoyable pass time to sit own and learn new chords or songs. I estimate that if I put in extra time practicing over spring break I can perfect the little things and build enough muscle memory to be confident with playing the whole thing. So far, I've found my guitar and I've decided the best way to teach myself at least the basics is to watch some Youtube videos.
I've got my guitar somewhat tuned but I still need to get a digital tuner to make sure everything sounds right. But for the purpose of learning a few chords or at least memorizing the shapes with my hands it'll do for now. The guitar I'm learning how to play is a black acoustic style by J&Z. I've seen a few Youtube videos covering what a tuned guitar sounds like and how tuning works. After I got my guitar sounding decent I decided to learn some chords. I watched a video explaining how to properly hold the guitar and also demonstrating E minor and A suspended. I mirrored his hand movements and tried strumming the guitar in a few different ways with my left hand's fingers applying pressure between the A and the D strings. I played around with E minor and then moved my fingers down closer to the G string and learned A suspended. Eventually I started switching back and forth to practice transitioning between chords. I feel like learning more about playing guitar and actually getting it tuned with a digital tuner will be fun. |
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