Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Spirit First

I'm not a very good guitar player. I won't even try to call myself a "guitarist", because that implies a level of competence that I simply do not possess. I'm good enough to pick up stuff I like, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but I'm not going to be impressing anybody with my abilities.

The problem with picking stuff up on my own, however, is that it makes it almost impossible to unlearn all the stuff I'm doing wrong. Case in point: tonight, I was watching a live stream by Levi Weaver wherein he asked for requests. I've been playing Spirit First for months, but I've always known I had it slightly wrong, and I asked if he'd be able to play it so I could see the fretboard.

I was playing it completely wrong.

I'd shifted the chords down from a Bm to an Am because I found it easier to play what I heard, but that meant that I could never have played it the right way. It actually has a lot more open strings than I thought, but shifting it down two frets means I can't play those notes without some really awkward finger positions.

So the rest of the evening has been spent practising the right way. I can just about make it through a verse by now, but still hit a couple of wrong notes along the way.

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