A blog NOT about weight loss? Whaaa???

Okay, so if you are my friend on facebook, you know I've been taking guitar lessons the past few weeks (God bless Groupon and their 50%-ish off guitar lessons with Greg Arney). Turns out Greg couldn't take me, so he passed me off to George Woods (who by the way, doesn't update twitter, or his blog, or his calendar...but once you get to know him, that doesn't surprise you). It was quite possibly the best thing that Greg could have done for me.

I was a *little* disappointed because I had google-stalked the hell out of done my due diligence and researched Greg and knew NOTHING about George. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a good fit, and if you know me at ALL, you know I like to have all my duckies in a row. Way in advance. I was FREAKING OUT a little nervous.

So, my first lesson, I start learning MINOR chords (wha? I know!!) and by the end I felt like a freakin' rockstar. Okay, so I'm still, five weeks later, not even close to rockstar status, but I felt like I was going to learn SO much. Plus, George's suave "I'm so cool people take photos of me putting on a tie" headshots won't tell you this, but he's fucking hilarious. He's totally cool with my weird-quirky nerd sense of humor, and he also has no problem telling me to "shut the fuck up" (which, I thought about for a while: I don't think anyone has ever told me that to my face before). It's refreshing. For the record: that is not me giving you carte blanche to tell me to shut the fuck up.

I'm not a good student. I'm a book-learner and I don't like to do things if I don't do it right the first time. I'm a quiet guitar player. I don't want George (or anyone) to hear the pinging because my damn left pinky won't man up and put enough pressure on the string to make a proper sound. I'm nervous to play in front of anyone (EPIC stage fright), but aside from the occasional "shut the fuck up and play", he's really patient with me. He thinks I'm a fast learner and is really supportive, which, of course, makes the student-me feel awesome (until, of course, I massive fail the scale he JUST teaches me). My fingers don't always do what my brain says and that's frustrating to me, and then I nearly sever the tips of my fingers practicing so much because I want it to be right before I stop. I'm a terrible student, actually. But I try hard, and I really do want to learn.

So far I've learned some minor chords, Ain't No Sunshine (if you don't mind the pinging) and some funky scale that I don't remember the name of (we'll call this one a work in progress...it involves my left pinky in several places and we all know that's a source of frustration for me). I'm also learning Seabreeze by Tyrone Wells (which might be my most favoritest song of all time). It's got a ton of chords in it I don't know, but I'm not too horrible at the intro at the moment (and I get to use a capo!).

On a similar note, I have learned that if you're looking for guitar tabs and the guitar tabs have the wrong lyrics, chances are the tabs are wrong. I'm glad I know enough to figure that out before I learned the whole song wrong (because some guy named Feng blew up all the guitar tab sites with the WRONG tabs for Seabreeze). I ended up finding an old Youtube Video of Tyrone teaching people how to play Seabreeze. So, this spatially inept girl is learning by mimicking. I'm sure it'll be so easy. :-/

I just wanted to post something happy and positive, because honestly, right now, these lessons are what I REALLY look forward to these days. Although, I wonder if I could apply to be a sponsor child..."For only $xxx per month, you too can help sponsor a fledgling guitar player"...