This week I decided to try something new and learn the guitar part/chords of a song just by listening to it. I decided to do it to a song that isn’t really well known and by a small band. The song is called “Slacks” by Valley if you want to check it out for yourself. At first I wanted to learn it like how I learned other songs, but there were no youtube videos or guitar tabs of it. So then I decided to try learning it on my own. I don’t know if I am playing it the original way the band plays it, but I got it on my own. It was tricky since it took me some time and also has a constant bass note you have to play. I don’t know exactly what I am going to learn next, but I usually go onto guitar tabs and look up songs I am interested in playing. There is a capo on the second fret and I played it a bit slower since I was still getting use to it. Here is a video of me playing “Slacks” down below so I hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/aMGmH5wUzVc

 I have also been working on a song harder than “Slow dancing in a burning room”. I learned probably the most difficult fingerpicking style song I have learned by far. I decided I wanted to really challenge myself and learned Hozier’s “Like real people do”. What really made learning this difficult was the constant bass i had to do on the sixth string. It made it hard to pluck other strings when it wasn’t at the same time with the bass notes. There were also a bunch on hammer ons, so that was pretty fun to mess around with too. I’m planning on learning a lot more fingerpicking songs because I really seem to enjoy playing those. But I’m trying to learn more rock songs while I’m borrowing my friend’s electric guitar. There is a video of me playing “Like real people do” down below, so i hope you enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VM0bzIe0jE

It’s been awhile since I have posted something here, but I have been practicing a lot more. My best friend happens to owns two electric guitars and an acoustic guitar So I have been practicing with those and he let me borrow one of his electrical guitars. So one of the more difficult songs I have been learning is John Mayer’s song “Slow dancing in a burning room”. It is also a fingerpicking type song. I’m going to be trying to learn more rock songs on the electric guitar later, along with other more difficult songs, but I wanted to try this song first. I Learned “Slow dancing in a burning room” was difficult for me. Its because it used sliding techniques and fingerpicking in one. It took me about 2 weeks to get it down, but I still need some improvement from it. I have a video of it too, so the link will be below, but I didn’t have an AMP to make it sound a lot louder, but i hope you enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NLT1z-m6As&feature=youtu.be

This week I learned about finger-style and found some songs for guitar that have use fingerpicking style. Finger-style is plucking the strings with your fingertips. I personally liked finger-style more than using a guitar pick and I don’t really like guitar picks. So this was a nice change. A lot of popular songs are know for using fingerpicking. Some examples are “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel, “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton, and “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber . I learned Blackbird By Paul McCartney and it was really fun and easy to learn. I’m learning more easy finger-style songs right now, but I’m eventually going to try and learn harder songs starting next week. I still haven’t figured out what harder songs I want to learn though. I also made the youtube channel and uploaded video of me playing blackbird in case anyone wants to see. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXgj3LMkM1M

This week I learned a couple of more chords. I learned Am, F, and some bar chords. The chord “Am” was pretty easy since my fingers got use to the chord shapes for the last 4 chords I talked about in my previous post, but F and the bar chords were extremely difficult for me to get use to. I also looked up different strumming patterns too and have gotten pretty good with using them while playing chords. I’m trying to learn some songs right now with bar chords though so I can get more use to them.

Next week I am going to look up finger picking songs that are easy to learn. It looks like I am going to learn Blackbird by Paul McCartney. With that I also am going to make my a youtube channel to make videos of me playing the guitar showing my progress.

This Week I learned the 4 basic chords for guitar. G, C, Em, and D. It was hard to get used to and my fingers hurt after a while. They were fun to learn though and I have been enjoying learning a new instrument.

I’m still trying to get use to my fingers being pressed on the strings and trying to learn other chords too, but they are still a work in progress. But with the chords I know, I’m going to look up some songs that use those chords.

Next week I plan on making youtube channel so I can show my progress from all of my practice from the week and it will be fun to look at when I am about a month or two in. Plus with that I have to learn strumming patterns and I am looking into fingerpicking songs. I’m probably going to buy a capo to change the key and some guitar picks too.