Tab

So far, the guitar practice is going just fine. I feel like I've gotten really good at both songs that I began with (Hurt and Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash). I can easily play an F chord now, which I was having trouble with, and I can go from chord to chord without too much trouble. Sawyer has been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd, so he's trying to teach me a couple of their songs. I'm really excited to broaden my guitar playing ability from one artist to two!

Another thing that I've been doing is trying to learn how to read tab. Tab is like a sheet of music, but it doesn't have traditional notes and key signatures like a normal sheet of music would. Instead, it shows the strings of the guitar and a bunch of numbers. The numbers mean what fret you should put your finger on at that moment. So if I wanted to play a D scale, it would look like this:

e --------2-----------------
B ------3---3---------------
G ----2-------2-------------
D --0-----------------------
A --------------------------
E --------------------------

Here the one means to put a finger on the first fret, a two means put a finger on the second fret, and so on. The zero means play the open string. It's pretty easy to read if I take the time to do it. I'm just trying to be able to sight read like I can with normal sheet music. Learning to play the violin was a little easier than the guitar because I already knew how to read sheet music, which is what the violin uses. The fact that I had professional help might have made it a little bit easier as well.

There are also a bunch of new symbols that I wouldn't usually see in normal sheet music.

p = pull off
h = hammer on
\ = slide (downward)
b = string bend
/ = slide (upward)
~ = string vibrato

I understand what most of these mean, but I've never heard of a hammer on. Sawyer will probably know.

Other than that, it's business as usual! Hopefully by next time I'll have a few more songs to play.

Hayden

Hurt

So I pretty much did nothing to do with guitar over spring break, but I did practice a little this week. I'm slowly getting better at playing Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash. The D chord is becoming easier to play from the C chord, which makes the song sound much better. I have also tried playing Hurt by Johnny Cash. I don't know why I'm playing Johnny Cash songs. They get stuck in my head a lot, so I guess that's why I like them. They're also really easy to play, so that helps. However, Hurt presents a whole new challenge to me: the F chord. Apparently Sawyer never uses F chords, so I might be on my own here. It shouldn't be that hard though. There are plenty of ways for me to figure it out. I know how to play an F chord on the piano, so if I just apply that to the guitar, I should be good to go.

Sawyer showed me how to use his electric guitar, which is pretty cool. It's really loud though, and my mom likes to take naps, so that's an issue. The acoustic guitar sounds better in my opinion. Ring of Fire doesn't really work on an electric guitar. If I could learn a Van Halen song or something like that, I think the electric guitar would work much better. I've still got a long way to go until then.

I've gotten pretty good at being able to hear a song and then play it on the piano, so I think being able to play them on the piano will help me be able to play it on the guitar.

Hopefully this week I will get good at Ring of Fire and be able to play Hurt as well. I'd like to start playing other stuff too, preferably not Johnny Cash. I'm sure my brother will help me with that.


Hayden