Day One – It’s a Start.

Here we go… 1, 2, 3, 4…

So for the first day in this new project, I’ve been successful. I got my ass in the chair and put in a half hour of practice. And I’m seeing some improvement – barre chords are a right bitch, especially when trying to change to them in an actual chord progression, rather than just practicing the chord itself.

So, the chord progression goes G – D – Bm – A, with a small change to G – D – Bm – A – D during the chorus. The song is “Hello, Shooting Star” by moumoon, which you might know if you’ve watched Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (Assassination Classroom). It’s a slow piece with a steady quarter-beat strum pattern, alternating from a full-bar per chord during the verse 1 sections, and changing to a half-bar per chord during the verse 2 sections and chorus. Pretty easy strumming, so I can concentrate on the chords.

My fingers are still a bit sloppy. I miss the B string sometimes on my D chord, which you’d think I’d have down pat by now, as it’s the first chord I learned. The barre on the Bm is getting better, but I find my non-barre fingers coming down in the right places, though next to the strings, rather than on the strings. And when I think too hard about getting the chords played right, I sometimes forget which chord is next.

A work in progress. Still, I’m actually getting the Bm almost correct and almost within the right timing for the tempo I’m playing. I need to work up to playing along with the track, though. I have a bit of a mental issue with that, even though I’m playing this all through headphones on my own. I catch myself saying “Sorry” to nobody, when I make mistakes, and still kinda get performance anxiety. Even playing exercises or sample chord progressions change for me, between technical exercises where I’m working solely on the chord or progression itself, and when I’m actually strumming a pattern at the same time, trying to make it sound like music. Gotta work on that. Performance, of some sort, is the goal of this whole endeavor, isn’t it?

But I did get a half-hour in. That’s a good start. One day, one practice session. That’s ass in the chair, isn’t it? A hint of Ass Power?

In addition, I’m making my way through a couple books on learning. Jonathan Harnum, PhD. seems to have a lot of good advice on this – both as a musician and in general. We’ll see how well it helps. Most of it seems like common sense but it’s good to see in print – lends some weight to it for me. Sometimes I hate that I’m like that – I tend to feel the need to back up the validity of things that I can logic out through words from other outside sources. But hey, if it helps me shape my learning processes going forward and keep me on the path, then it’s a small price to pay.

So, for today, on the agenda – more practice on the chord progression. Going to add varying the chord progression by playing the chord progression from “Houkiboshi” by Younha, from Bleach, which uses the same chords, but in a different order and tempo. And last, pushing through and putting in honest practice of earlier lessons from my online guitar lesson site Justinguitar.com, to reinforce the basics and work up properly to the more complex stuff I’d been looking over recently.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll be rewarded with a fun practice session (likely) and at the same time, maybe the Sacramento Kings will win their first game of the 2022 season (kinda likely?).

“Life’s a bore if you don’t challenge yourself.” – Nishinoya Yuu (Haikyuu!!)

My 2 yen,

Akiosama