About Me

I always loved the sound of an acoustic guitar.  My parents bought a cheap one when I was I kid. No one in the house knew how to play and lessons were out of the family budget at the time. Never even got a single chord to sound so never got to feel what it could be like.  The guitar ended up somewhere in the basement in a very short time.

Fast forward more than 40 years to Thanksgiving 2 years ago.  2 cousins were over with their guitars. I told one that one thing on my bucket list is for someone to finger the chords for a song I like and I get to strum to feel what it feels like to strum a guitar.  He said that if I love the guitar so much why don't you get one and learn to play?  After much conversation, I decided to give it a shot.  But I just would be happy playing a few songs and decided to begin with "Chord Buddy".  That is a device you attach to the fret board and by pressing a single button, you have a chord.  You get D-G-C-EM.  The very first time I used it I was strumming "You Are My Sunshine" like an old guitar pro.

Chord Buddy turned out to be my motivation. I got to feel what it was like to play the guitar.  I could play any song in the Chord Buddy book first try. And actually sound like I was playing.  I got to learn and practice many strumming patterns without worrying about fretting chords. But then I wanted to play other songs that weren't in the Chord Buddy book.  And they had other chords Chord Buddy did not. So a month in, Chord Buddy came off.

First chord was D. I felt like I was playing twister with my hands.  Actually had to hold my fingers in place to keep them on the strings.  If I didn't have the feeling of what it felt like to play from Chord Buddy, I would not have had the motivation to continue.

At this point I found this site (March 2017) I had been strumming around about a year.  Learned everything online.  But all I could do was strum.  And I thought I was happy with that.  Then Tony Polecastro's  popped up somewhere and he was going live in a half hour.  So I signed up and watched it.

As part of the presentation he did the W.O.G.I. thing.  As I connected the dots and looked at the smallest possible bubble, I realized how much I really didn't know.  I was just happy strumming along and not even knowing the string names.  Now I wanted more.