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New to the Forum, and Small Wins
As a short background, I started playing guitar about 23 years ago. I was given 3 chords to learn and I set to practicing. It didn’t come naturally to me, and after the struggle to form C, D. and G chords, and then learning to move fluidly between them while strumming, I figured I had a terminally stupid left had, and I decided to give up after 6 months of struggles. Something made me give it one more day, and with that day, my left hand suddenly got smarter. I’ve been learning chords to songs and strumming ever since.
That leads me to the sharing of my small wins. I have always used a pick, and I have decided to give finger picking a go. All of a sudden, I felt like I was back at square one, because my fingers are not used to finding the correct strings, ect. Fortunately, I have past history to keep me going, and lately, I can see the progress starting to compound. I feel fortunate to have found this community and I am looking forward to more “small wins.”
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3 Replies
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I started with little experience in either flat or finger picking (I knew a few basic chords, but was not smooth). I started at an older age, and found I just have to keep going. It does come along; at my pace. Enjoy!
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@pastorbob428gmail-com Welcome to the TAC community! I appreciate the introduction, because it is difficult to know everyone. I’m always amazed at the vast differences, as well as the similarities we all share. We all have to start in the exact same place, just different times in our life.
I can so relate to it not coming naturally and to that desire to quit early on. It still doesn’t come naturally even after 4 years. I feel like the slowest to learn, and I have vocals that need a lot of work, but I’m glad I didn’t quit. There are many of those aha or pivotal moments to be experienced in our journey, and if we don’t keep putting one foot in front of the other, we’ll never realize them.
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Welcome to TAC, and welcome to the forum! I know what you mean about fingerpicking feeling like square one! I felt like once I could strum a few chords, picking individual strings felt like square one, now I’m going through the same with fingerstyle. I’ve come to realize that taking on new things that make you feel like that is a good feeling, or at least leads to a good feeling. One of the beautiful things about TAC is that it forces you to wander out of your comfort zone ( no matter how big or small) at least a couple times a week. It might be a new genre, a new tuning, a new technique, a key you’ve never played in, or a transition between two things you can do but never connected before. Every couple weeks you’ll be walking along in the borders of you comfort zone and realize how much bigger it’s gotten. You’ll find yourself paging through your bookmarks for that one song you couldn’t quite manage a month and a half ago and remember “Oh, I can do that slide now!” Or “I can play that barre chord now.”
Have fun and hang in there!
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