I'm Yours

 This is my first blog post since the pitch, which was a lot of fun in my opinion. It was really cool to see how everyone’s projects were coming along. The Hach center seemed to be a good location too. I brought Sawyer’s guitar and played the four songs I knew how to play the whole time. Yes, I played four songs, not three, as I learned how to play Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd pretty much the day before the pitch. The song includes three chords and a couple of non-chord notes, so it was pretty easy to learn. I’m finding that the more chords that I learn how to play, the easier it is to play a wide variety of songs. I just look up the chords to the songs that I want to play on the internet, and I can usually just sit down and play them, which is pretty cool. I definitely still have not met my goal, but people got to ask me how I was doing, and I said that I was making progress.

For the pitch, I created a big tri-panel poster that showed my progress so far, all of the songs that I could play, and a QR code that was a link to this blog! This was definitely a good idea, but I wish that I had had some other way of getting people to visit my blog. Anyways, Mrs. Hechlik was going around taking pictures of everyone in front of their presentations, and she got and action shot of me playing the guitar. Here it is!

Since the pitch, my brother changed the strings of his guitar so it sounds a lot more crisp and clear than it used to. Under normal circumstances, this would have made me want to practice even more, however I have been extremely busy lately with a new job and a class that helps me study for the ACT (I'm retaking it), so it was sort of difficult to get the normal amount of practicing in. What practicing I did do was late at night in my basement. Nevertheless, I did manage to continue to make progress.

After the pitch, I upgraded my chord repertoire. I learned how to play an e minor and a b minor. This helped me learn to play I’m Yours by Jason Mraz. Again, the more chords that I learn, the more I’m able to just look up chords to a song and be able to play it. That’s a total of five songs that I know how to play (Ring of Fire, Hurt, Let it Be, Sweet Home Alabama, and I’m Yours).

There are some chords that are really hard for me to play which require me to put one finger down across all of the strings at once. This is usually only required for songs in a strange key, but it still hinders me when these chords come up. Sawyer is thinking about getting something called a capo, which is sort of like a bag clip but for the guitar. This will hold all of the strings down on a certain fret to make these chords easier to play. I’ve heard that you can make your own out of a pencil though. We’ll see.

Hayden