Maybe I Should Change This Blog Title...

The last time I posted to this blog was May 19th (approximately 6 weeks ago). 
And in that post, I lied.  It wasn't intentional, but it turned out to be a lie nonetheless.
I said, "I will be picking up the guitar a little more often now that I have curtailed my running activities a bit."   Well, that day was the last time that I have picked up that guitar, or any other guitar for that matter (I would never cheat on my guitar!).
There's just no inspiration.  I'm just not feeling it.  And, no one has asked me about it so it's been pretty easy just to leave the guitar sitting in a corner of the bedroom. 
Still, I thought that I'd probably better post just to be honest about my lazy ass. 
Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to "JJSB Plans to Learn to Sing and Play but Feels Blah So Instead Doesn't Touch His Guitar for 6 Weeks."  No?  Too long and cumbersome of a title?  Oh well, life is long and cumbersome right now so why not match the title to life. 
Oh, Okay.  I'll leave it be for now.
And maybe I'll pick up the guitar again soon.  For a couple of hours... and then set it back down for 6 weeks.  A practice session every month and a half.  That should help things progress well.  Eh?

Bob Dylan's "Mississippi" added to the Songs to Learn List

I will be picking up the guitar a little more often now that I have curtailed my running activities a bit.  I spent some time yesterday evening playing the couple of songs I (sort of) know.

I'm posting this YouTube video here because I came across it while looking up different version of Bob Dylan's song, "Mississippi".  I am finally becoming familiar with some of Dylan's songs and I first heard an acoustic version of this one back in January and just really fell in love with it.  I love the sound.  I love the bluesy feel.  I love the imagery.  In fact, it strikes such a chord with me that I have plans to speak about the song in one of my other blogs:  Digging Deeper

At any rate, I was excited to come across this video series, in which this guy goes through how to play the song.  I wanted to link it here to may sure that I can find it easily again.

And here is a copy of the version that really does it for me for your listening pleasure:

Playing While Drinking Beer? Absolutely!

Well, I took the opportunity to pick up the guitar a few times last week so that's good.  The first couple of times were a little short and uninspiring but a couple of days ago, I grabbed a beer and the guitar and sat down for around an hour and a half and it felt really good.  I think I might prefer to be drinking beer as I learn to play.  I'm not sure whether it's because I sound better when alcohol is in play or if I'm more forgiving of my amateurish playing when alcohol is in play.  Or maybe there's some other reason.  At any rate, it was definitely more enjoyable... with alcohol in play.

I've been playing "Runaway" by The National for a while so I worked on that one a bit.  I had just been playing the basic chords, but that always bores me after a while and sounds so plain so this week I worked on adding some notes between the chords as well as singing while playing.  It felt good.

I then picked up a chord sheet of "Mexican Moon" by Concrete Blonde that I had printed out back in January.  I love Concrete Blonde but that song in particular hadn't ever been one of my favorites; Still,  a friend (fellow CB fan) recommended that I start with that one because it's easy to play and sing so I went with it and started working on it but then tucked it away out of sight for a while because it began to depress me.  At any rate, I pulled the chord sheet out and worked on that one some and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.  It has a lot of the same chords as "Runaway" so it came fairly easy.  I also added some notes in between the chords that sounded good to my amateur ears.

The other song I worked on is one of my own that I am writing.  I get bored kind of easily so I thought while I'm learning some songs by bands that I like, I would use the chords I've been practicing to write songs of my own.  I've had a lot of inspiration lately so that has helped.  I didn't get very far on this but just kind of felt it out a bit.

Well, that's it for this post.

Just a little update to let everyone know that I have been working on it and it has been good for me.

 

I suppose I actually need to pick up the guitar to get started...

... I'm frankly, having trouble doing that.  Playing the guitar sort of gives me some painful thoughts right now so, yeah, I'm trying to work through it.  If I ever get some time alone (who knows when that will be) I'll push myself to do it.  WHY IS IT SO HARD?  NOT FAIR!

Pushing myself on the "Interwebs"

This blog is pretty much just a way for me to push myself a little bit to keep working on learning to play the guitar and sing.  I have several challenges:

I don't have a lot of time.  Especially time alone, which is what I'm really more comfortable with when I'm fiddling around on the guitar.  (Let's face it, at this point in time, "fiddling" is what I'm doing).

I have a lot of other endeavors that I'm trying to juggle as well.  It's a fault of mine.  I get all of these ideas and I just can't give any one of them my complete focus.  I just get to bored that way.  Sigh.

I have no one who is actively encouraging me.  I know a few other folks who are trying to learn guitar and I try to ask them how it's going because it puts a little friendly pressure on them to keep at it.  I don't have anyone really checking in with me on my progress.

So, the main purpose of this blog is to maybe give myself some incentive to keep at it.  Just knowing that this blog is out there in the cyber world (whether anyone ever looks at it or not) keeps some pressure on me to keep working on what I said I would do:  Learn to sing and play guitar.

I'm not sure how often I'll actually post here, but I intend to try to post every week or so, even if it's just a little blip about whether I even picked up the guitar or not.

Anyway, that's it for the blog opener.

If you read this, then I thank you!

JJSB