Week 2, Joey didn’t disappoint. As a fan of rock and roll, Joey wasted no time teaching me songs I like and got me playing exactly what I was hoping to play. Both lessons we started with the basics.

For the second lesson, he gave me two songs to work on, Seven Nation Army and Ironman. We also worked more on how I’m holding the guitar and posture – making sure nothing else is supporting the guitar but me. And just like my first lesson, my futile attempts at playing the new songs were atrocious! Thank God for homework… after a few days at home, I got those songs down too.

The great thing is that with the short amount of time I’ve been playing, I’m already teaching others the songs I’ve learned. The lessons are easy and make sense and it was easy to teach my brother how to play.

-Ben
 

It’s Thursday evening. The kids are in bed. My husband’s at church worship practice. I have the evening to myself. What do I do?

I grab something to drink, the remote and my guitar. I plop down on the couch and turn on reruns of something. I pick up the guitar- no pick for now- and I strum:

Am7…G…Am7…G…Am7…G

When I started guitar 3 months ago I knew it would be difficult. I assumed getting the chords to sound clear would be hard. (It is.) I assumed strum patterns would take practice. (It’s not so bad.) I assumed keeping an even tempo would take years of practice. (Stupid metronome.) But I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get my fingers from one chord to the next! It is so frustrating to sit down with a song I can play mostly well only to have to slow it down to half time just to get one transition.

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Hi my name is Ben McDonald. I’m 30 years old and just started taking guitar lessons at Jammin’ Music Studios with Joey Archer.

I’m amazed at how little I knew about playing guitar. I knew it would be tough but, wow! I was holding the pic wrong, the way I was holding the guitar was wrong, and of course as soon as he said “ok, your turn”, I totally botched the chords/song he was trying to teach me.

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