The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

I got a guitar for Christmas from Kathy two years ago. I had never picked up a guitar before then, but I've been trying to teach myself how to play a bit since I got it. I must say I really enjoy it. For the first two weeks all I had to show for myself was incredibly numb fingers. It hurt a lot at first, but then I got over it.

After that I picked up a few songs, at first I only played Dave Matthews songs for a few reasons. Obviously I'm a big DMB fan, but it goes a bit beyond that. DMB songs aren't made up entirely of chords that repeat themselves over and over. At the same time, a lot of them are easy enough to play for a beginning player (on a simplified level).

The songs that are just chords are retarded to just play for yourself. You can learn them in about two minutes and there's not really much fun in it. If you were going to play them for someone, then it's worthwhile, but not challenging.

I'm trying to learn songs that are moderately complicated without being incredibly hard. I don't think I'll ever be a good guitar player because I only play for myself. Also I'm basically trying to teach myself, which is probably not the most effective way. Also I don't use a pick. I play basically everything by finger picking, which I find much more efficient since each finger gets a string rather than moving the pick all over the place. The thing is that there's not much that really rocks when you finger pick. I can play the riff to Sweet Child Of Mine but it's almost got a classical feel on my acoustic when I finger pick it.

Anyhow, for the past couple days I've been learning "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas. Those type of songs with the interminable chord plucking are the songs I like to play because they sound really good when I play them by myself. This one is coming along relatively well.

It was about two years before I learned how to play one entire song. For most songs I would just learn the riff, which was enough for me. Most songs eventually go into a bridge or chorus or both and I usually never learned those. I guess that's kindof funny.

At this point I can play moderately impressive pieces of a lot of good songs - Norwegian Wood, Satellite, Jessica (Allman Brothers, also sounds interesting when I finger pick it), Crash Into Me, Landslide, #34, Your Body is a Wonderland, Mr. Tambourine Man, Love of a Lifetime (I can play most of that, actually. It sounds pretty cool.), and on and on.

The list of songs I can play all the way through is much shorter. At this point it consists of Yesterday, Rocky Raccoon, Dust In The Wind, and We're Going to Be Friends. There might be one or two others I'm forgetting. Yesterday and Dust in The Wind I can't play consistently enough for anyone to sing along to, so I won't be putting on a concert any time soon.

The only song I can play and sing all the way through is "We're Going to be Friends" by the White Stripes. That's the song from the beginning of Napoleon Dynamite, if that helps you out any. In general I can't play and sing, but I'm getting a little better.

I wish I could play some Led Zeppelin songs, but most of them are too complicated. For the one I know of that's not too complicated, "That's the Way", you have to retune the guitar to play it. I can play a kindof ghetto Stairway, but that doesn't count. I can play the cool piece of "Fool in the Rain", but it's only like one or two bars.