Well, I have to be honest – I had a really rocky start to my #learningproject. I started out with the Rockstar Academy lessons, which are slow and steady. However, Lesson 1 taught the parts of a guitar, the chords C and G, and some strumming exercises. I got through it, but even though my head knew what to do, my fingers hurt! Now I remember why I never learned how to play before, guitar is hard!
I was deflated. Why did I pick guitar? I could have picked something so much easier than this. A hundred things ran through my mind. And… I stalled. I didn’t have much motivation to practice and a mountain of lessons didn’t seem surmountable. But, I figured, ANY learning project is going to have some hurdles, setbacks and times when you are just unmotivated. So I figured I better jump back in and DO THIS!
I needed a little motivation, so I skipped ahead to lesson 3, which introduced E, D and A chords and suggested strumming these and adding in C and G, which I remembered but wanted to see the fingering. Rather than flipping back to lesson 1, I skipped over to Google and easily found a Guitar Chord image. It’s handy to have in front of me when I am trying to play a song and learn the chords.
Woohoo, now that I knew what my fingers were supposed to do, I wanted to try to play something. I abandoned the lessons for the day and googled easy guitar songs, settling on this site. I figured Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison wasn’t too hard, too fast and I could sing along!
It was a pretty rocky rendition, since there are lots of chord changes, but hey, it’s a song! After feeling pretty bummed, I am actually believing that I will be able to learn the guitar well enough to enjoy it!
So, stay tuned for my next video, where I will actually reveal my progress.
In the meantime, do you have any tricks to overcome lack of motivation? How do you jump start yourself?
Amie Reid 