As some of you may know, I took one of my guitars (geez that sounds bad, let me restart…)
As some of you may know, I took my cheap-ass guitar with me during the Christmas holidays. Dragged it with me wherever I went, to annoyance of some and enjoyment of some others. Apologies to the former and blush and bow to the latter, by the way.
I played a lot. A lotlot, at that. Especially when I visited Ward and Sanne, and Sanne had a book with songs+chords. Turns out I’m still bad at playing guitar, but I do get triggered. That was the first time anyone ever tried singing to my playing — it was incredibly cool (although also really scary in a way because I was afraid to mess up playing :).
So when I came back, I figured that all this playing ought to have paid off a bit. Guitar Wednesday came, and I picked up the guitar confidently. Now, as I may or may not have mentioned, for various reasons, the guitar lessons were cancelled about 5 times in a row. And I had hardly played till the Christmas holidays. But with all the playing then, I figured I wouldn’t be in too bad a shape.
That was, until I picked up the steel-string guitar. Uh-oh. I tried to play my favourite quick-picking tune (the first few notes of GnR’s “Civil War”, basically fingerpicking Em and G), and while I had seriously improved my skill at doing so profoundly over the holidays on the cheap-ass guitar, now I found to my horror: I sucked.
We played for about an hour. I almost dropped the pick twice, I/my fingertips needed a break (talk about played it till my fingers blared…), and afterwards I still didn’t have the control I knew I should have. It was my due, dammit!
So I’ve been playing a bit more since. I’m trying to play a bit mornings and evenings, play through a couple of chords and some fingerpicking. Nothing fancy, just to get my fingers used once again to the feel of the steel strings. It’s getting better, but still nowhere near as good as the nylon strings.
Of course there is a plus side to this: this means that the converse also holds. Playing a nylon string is EEEEE-ZZZZZZ compared to playing a steel string. So next time I happen to come over carrying a guitar, rest assured: it’ll sound okay.