First Steps

I have always loved music. When I was about 13 years old, I found two cassettes in my oldest brothers dresser drawer after he moved out. The first was AC/DC, Back in Black. I had listened to this album a thousand times sitting in Brian Green's basement playing Blades of Steel and Nintendo Baseball. The second was Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, Texas Flood. I had never heard anything like it before. I remember thinking " I wonder how many people have to play their guitars at the same time for it to sound like that?" LOL! The first tape I ever bought with my own money was far less illustrious. It was Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know it's True". I bought it with my birthday money and opened it in the K-Mart parking lot with the pocket knife I had got for Christmas just a week earlier, resulting in 20 stitches, permanent nerve damage to the index finger on my left hand, and the pain of forever knowing that my first independent music choice was Milli Vanilli :(

All that to say, that in January of 2010, I had a love for music, a heart full of crazy emotions, a new guitar and amp and no freaking idea what I was doing. I've always been a pretty methodical and analytical guy, so I started planning my guitar learning. I had spent a few years in choir and musical theater in high school, so I had a basic working knowledge of music. Don't get me wrong, I still can't "read" music, beyond "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" and "FACE", but I understood rythem, melody, harmony, and the difference between individual notes and chords.

 I think the first thing I learned was the E bar chord. Unbeknown to me, this chord shape would be the foundation for about 90% of everything I would play in the next year. If you haven't learned the E bar chord yet, it looks something like this:

 e:--0
B:--0
G:--1
D:--2
A:--2
E:--0

Of course this assumes you know how to read tablature. If not, here is a quick explanation. Each line on the tab represents a string on your guitar, like this:

high e: ------------------------
        B: -----------------------
        G: -----------------------
        D: -----------------------
        A: -----------------------
Low E:-------------------------

Each number represents a fret. In the E bar tab above, the 1 on the G string indicates G string, first fret. The 2 on the D string represents the D string, second fret, and the 2 on the A string represents A string, second fret. The 0's indicate that you strum those strings open, or without pressing down at any fret.

Here's a word to the wise...... play this chord with your middle, ring and pinkie fingers. I know it sucks. You haven't used your pinkie for anything except making that stupid "Dr. Evil" face whenever anyone says "One Million Dollars". But trust me, it will make everything else going forward a million times easier. To be specific, middle finger on 1st fret, G string, ring finger on 2nd fret D string, pinkie finger on 2nd fret A string. I can't stress  this enough. It sucks, will probably sound like crap at first, and your pinkie and wrist will hurt like a mother after a couple of days, but you are creating muscle memory. This is a term I learned as a tactical firearms instructor. The more times you repeat a movement, the more efficient your motor units (nerves, muscles, etc) become at performing those movements. Think of swimming. If you learned to swim as a kid, you may not go swimming for twenty years, but as soon as you hit the water, your body knows exactly what to do, ergo, muscle memory. Every time you do it the wrong way, you are creating what is called a "Training Scar". A training scar is when you teach yourself to do something the wrong way, and have to break bad habits to learn good ones. One of the keys to quickly learning and growing in skill is to avoid as many training scars as possible.

This brings me to THE foundational training principle. A quote I heard one time was "slow is smooth, smooth is fast". Whenever you are learning something new, go ridiculously slow. Again, I know it sucks, but if you want to hit those chord changes, or rip those solos one day at break neck speed, you have to train your fingers. Some research says that you have to repeat a motion at least a thousand times before it becomes instinctive, or something you can do without consciously thinking about it. The old saying goes "practice makes perfect". Well, that's half true. In reality,"perfect practice makes perfect."

Remember killer, "slow is smooth, smooth is fast".

B