In my late teens, twenties and the first couple of years of my thirties (basically until I got married!) I played guitar often. We didn't have central heating at home so in winter in my bedroom I wore several jumpers and cardigans. Occasionally I'd treat myself to a blast from the fan heater and play for an hour or longer, depending. Now after all these years of not playing I have the painful fingers syndrome as my soft skin meets steel string. I'd forgotten how bad it was. I've had two sessions - one was just to re-tune my guitar. It took me ages, not helped by the fact that my fingers hurt from trying to hold the string that I kept getting that buzzing sound. The second session today started very painfully and I thought I'd have to give up but maybe I hit the pain barrier as I ended up playing for about an hour. My fingers are sore but the more I play the quicker I'll get over it.
When I was in Guildford on Thursday I visited the Oxfam book shop and found some second hand books -The Complete Guitar Player and The Complete Rock & Pop Guitar Player so I bought them. Each is a four book set and I ended up with two in each set. However, today I pulled down all my past guitar books and found that I have another in the The Complete Guitar Player set which means I have the first three books now and my one is a more up to date copy with a CD of backing tracks to play along to. Hours of fun! The other day I reckoned I knew between 6 and 8 chords but when going through my chord book I found I knew fourteen! Even so it is back to the drawing board, learning to play them again and change chord without buzzing or putting my fingers on the wrong string. Today I have been playing Mull of Kintyre and The Times They are a Changing, both songs only need three chords!
My aim is that once I have gone over the chords I already know so that I can change between them successfully again I want to learn some new chords or increase my repertoire. My main enemy is impatience. I always want to move on before I'm ready. I will never be a great guitarist but it will be nice to play again. And while on the subject of obsessions I guess music has always been an obsession but in varying degrees and in twists and turns....it is a obsession with sub-categories! You see, on Thursday I also bought another book - Gareth Malone's Guide to Classical Music. I want to learn more about it. My knowledge is very poor and I don't know where to start. Obviously I know certain famous pieces and have my favourites, some composers but sometimes I can't match up composer to pieces. Mmmmm...classical music....I see another obsession (sub-category) coming on! So, my friends what are your obsessions?
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