B-Minor

I've been learning the guitar now for, maybe, 2 months or so, getting better and better all the time, but certainly not playing at all well.

No, I think that will take many, many months - I never knew there was so much to coordinate! If I have my left hand doing the correct things for the chords, then my right can't strum properly. If I manage to get both of these hands working together, you can bet that I'm not singing, because when I open my mouth, my hands pretty well forget what they're doing.

My favorite songs to massacre - I mean play - are an eclectic mix: Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," Van Morrisson's "The Star of the County Down."

One of the first I tried, "Worst Day Since Yesterday" by Flogging Molly, I hadn't attempted in a few weeks because of the dreaded B-minor which, if you've never played guitar before, is what we professionals would describe as really, really hard to do. (If you want to hear it, go to my "favorites" sidebar and click the Flogging Molly link.)

But today I was fooling around on the guitar, and I decided to have a go just for the heck of it. Previously, the damn B-minor always sounded like the opposite of music - sort of like a scary, blunted hissing sound that might have come from someone rubbing the soles of two dirty shoes together.

But today, it sounded like it was supposed to! It took me a long time to line my fingers up to play the chord, but my they've finally strenghtened up enough to hold a B-minor. I'm proud of myself, I can tell you!

And so it seems that I have made some progress on the guitar. I'll report back when Luke no longer assures me in his most patient voice, "Mom, you can take the pauses out of this song."