Wednesday, December 1, 2010

It happens

Barre chord notation in classical music uses r...Image via Wikipedia
A couple of months ago (even after which I find my acoustic guitar playing abilities tending to zero) a junior colleague called me on my cell on a sunny Sunday. He had started learning the guitar just then and had too optimistic an expectation of my progress, begun as I had in the January of this year. He told me how difficult it was even to get the most basic finger positions right for the chords and asked me whether it was this tough an endeavour for everyone.
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I could have told him that I had struggled just to play the seven notes of a octave for two whole months. I should have told him that my guitar teacher, a very patient man by any standards was compelled to chastise me for my dismal lack of progress despite being quietly appreciative of my tireless but frequently fruitless efforts. If I had said that it looks like it'd take me 10 years to generate any kind of sound from the B and F barre chords before I could look any further, I wouldn't be telling a lie. The progress in guitar playing capability that some guys and gals had made starting at the same time and batch as me put me to shame and put my physical co-ordination abilities firmly at par with the abilities of a whale having to run a complete marathon on dry land. If I were a truly honest man, I would have said that if I can be so bad at it and still keep at it, anyone should be able to achieve much more satisfaction and success than I had in the past 10 months.
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What I did instead was to make a patronizing clucking sound and make this sagacious statement "Just relax, man! It happens with beginners!"
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