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My Path to Guitar Godliness

May 17, 2007 1:52 AM

ome people make New Year's resolutions. I make those, too, sometimes--although I haven't kept a single one. In addition to resolving to do certain things at the beginning of the year, though, I usually resolve to do certain things at the beginning of the summer. This is largely due to the fact that the summer is, historically, the part of the year during which I've had the most free time. This being my last summer of relative freedom, I think I should set some pretty lofty goals.

I've been playing the guitar for about eleven years ago. Although I think I initially picked up the basics of the instrument pretty quickly, my progress plateaued in the past few years. That's almost entirely due to the fact that, because of law school, I haven't had a lot of chance to just practice for the past three years. But, with law school over, I think it's time to rededicate myself to my chosen instrument.

I've already started rebuilding the callouses on my fret fingers. The first few days that I picked the guitar back up, my fingers hurt like hell, especially when bending notes on the higher strings. I developed blisters on my first, middle, and ring fingers, which is strange because I had built up huge callouses on those fingers (which I lost during law school). Anyway, it was really strange having to start over again with the finger stamina.

When I first started playing the guitar, my primary goal was to be able to play the sort of rock songs I was listening to at the time. Therefore, the riffs to "Today," "Tonight, Tonight," and "Come as You Are" were amongst the first pieces of music I learned how to play. Eventually, I learned whole songs, like "Cherub Rock" and "Stumbleine" and, you know, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." While this was cool enough for me at the time, it had the unfortunate effect of teaching me how to play songs, not how to play the guitar. So, while I was able to play certain riffs pretty well, I couldn't move outside of those riffs too easily. In other words, I couldn't improvise or solo worth a shit.

If you can't improv, you're not a real musician, so I've been trying to rectify this situation. Specifically, I've been trying to train my fingers to know the scales by muscle memory, which is something that's been really easy to do. Over the next few months, I hope to expand the group of scales I have on "instant recall." Also, I've been trying to speed up and strengthen my fingers. And I've finally started integrating my pinky more, which is something that I avoided doing before for some reason. It's amazing how much easier certain things are to play when you can use four fingers instead of just three.

So, I guess that's one of my main summer goals: get a hell of a lot better on the guitar. I'm also going to resume my goal from last summer, which was to be able to play the outro solo from "November Rain." And I've almost got the solo from "Stairway to Heaven" down, which is actually pretty easy, even though it's the greatest guitar solo ever, apparently. (That list is all fucked up, though. For example, I personally think that Billy Corgan's solo from "Soma" is the best guitar solo ever, but it didn't even make the list, even though his solos from "Cherub Rock" and "Geek U.S.A.," which I think are hugely inferior to the "Soma" solo, are on the list at 97 and 54, respectively. Also, Kurt Cobain makes several appearances. Say what you will about Mr. Cobain, but a great guitarist he was not.)

In any event, although I might not be shredding like this guy by the end of the summer (but then, who would want to?), it's my goal to improve substantially.

5 Comments

TheExpat said:

meh, that list is contrived in it's choice of order and full a few too many of lackluster performances that only seem half interesting once a buzz has been sufficiently tied on.

Fucking Alex Lifeson?!? NO WAY does he belong on any list that includes the words 'Great' and 'Guitar'. He sucks my balls.

Also, Steely Dan? John Fogerty? Kurt Cobain??? Ted Nugent!?!?!? Fucking A, the reviewer is running dangerously close to a clearing house for successful wankers rather than a real list of great guitar players. Even fucking Yngwie Malmsteen plugging in his guitar while applying extra hold Aqua Net in is more audibly entertaining than these performances.

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