The New (time consuming) Hobby

It’s certainly been a while since I have written a blog entry. Well there is a reason for that. You see writing in blogs takes a lot of effort and quite a bite of time. It can take several hours to get a blog entry just right and if you have nothing else to do ( a common condition in the middle of a Minnesota winter) then it’s time well spent.
Flash back to late last November just after Thanksgiving:  The snow was already everywhere and you couldn’t even get out of the house to go for a walk. The sidewalks and trails were full of snow and it looked like all winter we were going to be stuck inside pacing the floors. I had to find something to do or I’d go nuts!
Then inspirations struck! I had all this time this winter, I’d learn to play a musical instrument!
So with that thought the next Jimi Hendrix, or Carlos Santana was born.  After a little research I  found myself at the local guitar center looking for a guitar. The research had lead me to believe I should start with a middle of the road acoustics guitar.  It seem that really cheap guitars are harder to play. So after a discussion with the sales folk I left the store with A Yamaha S720 all wood acoustic you see on the right, and all the associated accessories required to be a professional guitarist by late summer. It was a several hundred dollars for the whole arrangement, so I wasn’t out much if  this didn’t work out.
I worked at his pretty hard practicing an hour a day and sometimes on weekends for 5 or 6 hours. As it turns out I had to revise my estimate of being a professional guitarist by late summer. This guitar playing thing is really hard! Pressing on the strings to obtain the right tones on the fret board takes a lot of pressure and reeks havoc on you fingers. So in the beginning its hard to practice for more than a hour or two.
After two months I had worked my way through the first beginners book on guitar and could peck out Jingle Bells and part of Dueling banjos, but I was having a good time. I was hooked!  I was almost a guitar store groupie.  The Guitar Center where I bough my guitar has a policy that you can return or upgrade your guitar within 2 months of purchase for any reason. Late in January I took them up on the offer of an upgrade and brought home a very nice carbon fiber “RainSong” acoustic electric guitar.
http://www.rainsong.com/
The “RainSong” can plug into an amplifier and is a fine guitar, but upped the ante on the cost of this little hobby of mine. Along the way I have learned a lot about guitars, and music. Guitars are very different and produce a very different sound. Some music works better on one guitar than another. I have a couple of songs I’m working on that sound good on the acoustic guitar, and if I continue to practice hard maybe in a year the songs will sound the way they are suppose to.  Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix don’t have to worry for a while.