From A&D to A&E

I've finally achieved my 1 chord change per second goal for my A and D chords! Cue the fireworks! Now it's time to move on to the dreaded E chord. I've been avoiding this chord because I find it a bit more difficult to transition to. Also the strings that make up this chord are thicker and hurt my finger tips the most. However, now that my calluses are forming, it's been less painful to practice :)

It's supposed to be a beautiful weekend so I'll have to try my best not to get distracted and get some chord change exercises in. TGIF!

Pumped Up Kicks

I've had Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" in my head all weekend long while I was on vacation. So, today after practicing the Beatles' "Love Me Do" a few times, I went on You Tube to see if I could find an easy tutorial on how to play "Pumped Up Kicks". I stumbled upon this version from You Tube guitar guru, Marty. The riff was simple enough to learn but then he went into the chords and I got lost. I'm still only on the D, A, and E chords and his version of the song includes the Eminor, G, D, and A chords. Eminor was easy enough to learn, but the G chord should be called the OMG chord.. haha, get it? Yeeeeeah cheesy guitar joke, I know ;P Anyhoo, I've bookmarked the tutorial on my web browser so that I can give it another whirl once I get there.

On another note, look at my fingers in all their skin-peeling, abused glory!

The picture quality may not be great, but believe me they look like they're on a one-way trip to callus-town.

Continuing with Chord Changes

More chord change exercises today. My fingers are still getting beaten up every time I practice, but I can feel the calluses forming! Someone with more hand-eye coordination would have far surpassed me by now in terms of progress. Ah well. Anyway, my D and A chord changes are improving (I think? At least that's what James tells me..) but I haven't really worked on changing to the E chord yet because it's a bit more difficult for me and it requires me to press even harder down on those darn steel strings!

To put my chord changes to the test, I've been trying to play the chorus of the Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do". It's still very choppy sounding but at least it sort of sounds like the it haha. I've placed an order for the song book from Justin Guitar so that I can practice some more songs but it looks like it's going to take a while to get here. I suppose this will allow me plenty of time to perfect this Beatles song until it arrives. Meanwhile, I've been using the sample page from his website. You can see him play it here. It really is a simple song and a really good one to practice the D&A chord changes :)