First Attempts at Playing the Guitar

Very exciting news: J bought me a guitar! It is blue and beautiful, with nylon strings so I don't hurt my fingers. I didn't know that learning to play the guitar hurt your fingers, so good thing J was the one who went out and bought it. It was sort of an early anniversary present, and sort of just because I've been talking about learning to play the guitar for years without actually doing anything about it. In my defense, however, we have been rather absorbed in moving countries and such.

Anyway, J bought me a guitar, so now I'm going to learn to play it. My first discovery upon receiving this wonderful present was that, for a musical person, I know astonishingly little about guitars. I pulled it out of the case, held it up, and started to strum, when J informed me that I was holding it backwards. Oops. Then I decided to tune it with this awesome digital tuner J got me, and discovered that I don't know what note each string is supposed to play. Having surmounted that barrier (thank you, Internet), I proceeded to twist the first knob back and forth for several frustrated minutes with no change in the digital tuner's reading of E flat, before realizing that I was turning the knob for the wrong string. Off to a great start! Just to add insult to injury, I learned later that they are actually called tuners, not knobs. I find it a very sad predicament to not even possess the vocabulary to describe how utterly ignorant you are. 

Not to worry, however, the saving grace of starting at absolute zero is that upward progression tends to feel rapid, at least at first. Once the guitar was tuned, I popped in the Teach Yourself Classical Guitar DVD that had come with it, and started learning. At the end of my first session, I could play two chords (although I have trouble remembering which one is which) and can pluck a simple tune that the (quite odd) man on the DVD taught me. Also - and I am much more proud of this bit - I figured out how to pluck Mary Had A Little Lamb all by myself! Yay! 

Then, added to my excitement about new guitar knowledge, J found a store in New Plymouth that sells Dr. Pepper and bought me a whole case of it! I don't know if I've whined about this yet, but on the rare occasions that I drink pop, it absolutely must be Dr. Pepper, but they don't have it in NZ! Or rather, they have it, but only at one or two stores in each town, and never in restaurants! Anyway, that is the long way of saying that I am thrilled to be able to indulge in the occasional Dr. Pepper, now that I have them available at home.

In conclusion, here I am, looking almost like I might be able to play the guitar someday, and like I will definitely be enjoying that Dr. Pepper right away!