December 18, 2025. First things first. My guitar was out of tune when I sat down to play, so I tuned it with the Fender tuning app. Have to say, however, I'm lovin' playing and learning the guitar. I've been playing for about a year and I'm making good progress. Now I'm learning Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day." - a fun song! The stumming pattern I'm using for the chorus is: "D, UD, UD, UD, U," but there are rhythm changes in the verse. I found a really good teacher online, and my process is that I watch the demo, then play along through the play-throughs and pausing to practice the tricky parts. It all takes time., but I want to start making guitar vids to document and share my journey with guitar enthusiasts of all levels.
There's also a really tricky chord change from A to B7. In this song, there's also a 12-bar blues section: A, A7, D, and E. Have to honest here: I don't entirely hear the difference between A and A7: A7's supposed to be bluesy, but playing chords with every string seems to produce different results then strumming more or less strings. That's the limitation of how I'm learning, since there isn't one on one coaching just yet. (I'm being a cheapskate - I will invest in this at a certain point.) There's also a cool blues shuffle riff that I really struggled with, but I'm finally getting the hang of it. Playing slow as molasses, then gradually picking up the pace helps with a lot of this. My goal is to play the entire song at tempo, and I'm nearly there. More to come!