Homonym for “Guitar Tough Fear”.
September 3rd, 2010
If you were to ask me the exact date, I would be unable to tell you, but I’m 98% certain I bought my first guitar in 2002. It’s a black Gibson SG knockoff – a Yamaha SBG200 with humbucker pickups and gold tuning pegs. If you’ve never seen a Gibson model, picture a guitar that Bruce Wayne might own if he was into purchasing them at second-hand shops in Uptown, Minneapolis, and was simultaneously unprotective of letting anyone and everyone know he is The Batman.
(Quick aside: I always love when Batman’s enemies speak his name prefaced with a “The”. It’s a stylistic and linguistic choice that is extraordinarily pleasing to these ears.)
It’s been 8 years since my purchase of this instrument, and in that time, I’ve learned approximately the same number of chords. I can’t play you a tune, but I could throw down a blues scale for you like you’ve never heard (unless you’ve heard a novice play one).
Over the last week, I’ve been picking up the guitar more and more between bouts of surfing the web and writing in this very blog, and I’m pleased to find that I’m enjoying it again. In fact, today I even learned a new scale, which is my favorite part about playing guitar. I’m not yet to the point where I enjoy playing chords, but I love picking strings and trying to find sequences that sound good together. Rumor has it that this is why scales were invented.
When I started learning to play the drums way back in 1996, I made a lot of recordings that would be laughable to listen to today if I still had them. I imagine the same kind of documentation may be necessary if I’m ever going to improve at guitar. Stay tuned for haphazard recordings of flubby performances!