If there's one trait I am not proud to have, it's procrastination. Hence, the delay with any updates to my journal. Thankfully, I've managed to avoid allowing it to interfere with my practice.
Lessons are going very well. I'm quickly gaining fluent knowledge of the C Major scale, starting with low E and running through to high G. I'm finaly able to transition smoothly between notes while playing the few 3-string songs I've been practicing with, and can play all of them at 100bpm.
My fingers are also becoming quite limber. I can make my index and pinky fingers stretch across 6 frets with minimal effort; a feat I was unable to perform a month ago! I'm also experiencing less and less pain during stretching exercises.
I've extended my practice sessions to 45min every day, to allow more time for everything I'm currently learning:
15min - Stretching
15min - C major scale
15min - Songs
After that, if I'm up to it, I start fiddling around, exploring the neck, and maybe continue with the same songs. I know I need to continue pacing myself, so as to avoid burnout, but I can't help feeling a growing desire to just keep playing the more I progress. Alas, discipline is one of the fundamental aspects of classical guitar.
On a side note, I stumbled upon something that I thought was pretty fucking cool, while playing around after practice today. I was randomly plucking open strings when I plucked, in the following order, this series of notes:
E -----------------------0---------------------------0--------------------
B ----------------0----------0------------------0--------0---------------
G ---------0---------------------0---------0-----------------0-----------
D -------------------------------------------------------------------------
A -------------------------------------------------------------------------
E ----0-------------------------------0---------------------------0-------
The diagram above is called Guitar Tablature. For those of you who don't know how to read it, you start out with 6 lines (or four for bass). These correspond to the strings of the instrument. The top line is the highest pitch string, and the bottom line is the lowest pitch string. Numbers are written on the lines to show you where to fret the string with the left hand. Like standard music notation, you read from left to right to find out what order to play the notes. In the tab above, every number is 0, meaning the string is played open.
Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Metallica - at least their pre-Black album days - and have always loved their song, Nothing Else Matters. Only thing is, I've never known how to play it. It starts with an acoustic intro that involves only four notes, but I've never know what those notes were, until today. It took me a couple of seconds to notice any similarity between what I was playing and that intro, but by the time I'd played the high E and gone back down to G, I knew exactly what it was I'd discovered how to play: the intro to Nothing Else Matters! Talk about a pleasant surprise!