#2: The Guitar: Unstrung

Progress:

In my previous blog post, I was at the at the starting point of my guitar learning journey. The checkpoints I surpassed were basically correctly holding the guitar and getting a gist of what each string was. With that basic knowledge, I couldn't really do anything with the guitar itself. All I was able to do was pluck a few strings and attempt to experiment on how other notes sound while pressing on different frets. Now that I've memorized all the open strings, I could finally apply that with basic hand coordination as well. To practice this skill, I continued with the lesson from the same YouTube video and started playing a simple coordination exercise. In this exercise, I had to pick the strings going up the fret while leaving my fingers down.

Reflection:

During this exercise, I played along the frets and focused on building my muscle memory. As I was playing, I noticed how I unconsciously stroked down instead of alternating between upstrokes and down strokes. I never thought that this simple technique would become a bad habit of mine. This exercise also made me realize how inflexible my fingers were. Throughout this exercise, I had a hard time moving along the fret comfortably and smoothly. As I did a few reps, I struggled with stretching my fingers to press down the strings on each fret. My hand was in an uncomfortable position and I didn't know whether I was just doing the exercise incorrectly or if it was just because of my lack of experience with this instrument. I contemplated this thought for a few moments then decided to be patient and to do more reps. Although my fingers were still cramping because of how far they had to stretch out from the exercise, I found it less uncomfortable than it was earlier. It may seem like I'm making very little progress, but it's important to be comfortable with the basics so that it would be easier to build upon each fundamental value. So that's it for now, join me next time as I take the next step in playing the guitar, towards my overarching goal!!