Do you have any idea how long I've needed a guitar book? I can't get anywhere without it! It's so hard to watch a DVD that isn't even the whole thing, and actually expect to learn something!!! At least now I have sheet music, songs to play, and fingering charts. Okay, so I haven't played a lot yet, but that's only because I don't really have much time.I've always wanted to play an instrument, and when I got my flute, I was really happy. I always liked the sound of the flute. What I didn't realize was that there are two different kinds of flutes. One of them has holes in the keys, the other doesn't. The one with holes in the keys is the real and true flute. The other one is just for beginners.
So I got good at the flute, the best in the class actually. Then I went to Africa where I couldn't play at all, and when I came back, my school wouldn't let me back in. So I started homeschooling. But let me tell you, it's hard to teach yourself how to play the flute well. Especially because I hadn't played in almost a year. I was also getting kind of bored. And my flute was kinda messed up and I wasn't allowed to go get it fixed, mostly because it would cost a lot of money. The flute had dents, scratches, and some of the keys were kind of messed up. And let's just say that some necessary pieces were falling off. Not pieces that couldn't be put back, but it's kind of tedious when you have to keep replacing things.
So then we went and bought the guitar. Like I said in my other post, it came with an almost useless DVD, so I couldn't learn a lot from that. And the DVD was for electric guitar, not acoustic, although most of the notes are the same. But it didn't teach me notes or songs, only chords. Ugh.
This book was given to me by my mom's German friend. It originally came with a disk, but I don't care, just so long as I have the book. It starts out, like all instrumental books, with finger placements, starter tips, and in a guitar's case, tuning. Then it moves on into first string notes. So you play a bit with those, and once you can switch between them all with ease, then you go to second string notes, and so on. After the first couple strings you get songs to play. One of them is Ode to Joy. I never realized that you can play almost every note on only the first, second, and third frets. Wow.
The thing about guitars is that they are so easy to take care of. All you need to do is wipe them down with a dry cloth every now and then, and when the strings break, get new ones. And I'm pretty sure that the strings are quite cheap. You need almost nothing to play a guitar except your hands and a place to put it when you're done, and a good guitar doesn't cost all that much. And when you're trying to play a song on hearing alone, at least you can sing the song while you play it, unlike woodwinds.
Music is a wonderful thing. There are so many variations of it, you can use simple household objects to play it, and best of all, when you learn how to play it, you can do many things with what you know. I like being able to play notes that express how I feel. I think everyone should at least know what beautiful music sounds like.
