Everything Bianca

Another guitar update.

I asked about the action on my guitar. My teacher handed me a guitar from his wall with lower action and told me to play it. It was like butter in my hands really, silly putty compared to the steel guitar I had. 

I want to stick with the guitar I have at its current action. I have done nothing but constantly improve in playing it. I'm building my strength. It's not "easy", but that's not a requirement. If I lowered the action on my current guitar, I'd probably get a lot more buzzing out of it anyway. Once I've built my strength, I'll make that decision with more experienced hands.

Speaking of constant improvement. My teacher wanted to impress upon me how quickly he thought I was learning. He even mentioned how it was a trend among the growing amount of female students he has. They actually do the work, he told me. They pay attention, play with more finesse, and learn far faster than males. He noted that most males have a hubris about playing the guitar, they attack songs with brute force, don't practice and claim they already know the material. Gender differences aside, I'm happy there are more female guitar students in the world (or at least Pensacola). \m/ (^_^) \m/ I am 100% sure there are female slackers and studious males with grace. My teacher just hasn't met any lately.

The only thing I personally think is not coming along as smoothly as everything else - chords. And, I am very sure that's because of my guitar. Now that I know that, I'm cool with it. With time, comes improvement. With practice, will come the strength.

Oh, the tips of my fingers have reached a 3rd stage - crustiness. *laughs* Slightly dry looking, looking like they want to peel. I'll buff those little bits down though.

As for the other hand, I have no fingernails on them anymore. *grins* Tore the natural ones off. I'm going to roll with playing with my flesh, see how that progresses.  

Oh! There was one other bit about my session I wanted to mention. He showed me how the scales I have been practicing playing into playing blues and other licks. I asked him how that related to jazz. He played it. (Jazz is the geek of guitar playing, from what I understand now.) I asked how that related to bluegrass. He moved to a closed G form to show me, but as I watched him play I was grinning from ear to ear. I'm still smitten by the style. Somewhere between Bluegrass and Contemporary Jazz (for it's embelishment minus the complex chord formations) is where I'm going to land. I love the play style, the frolicking all over the fret board.