Well That Was Anticlimactic

So, not a whole lot happened yesterday. We went shopping (no incident there), and even walked to the train station. I didn't have my phone and I didn't need my phone. I felt no need to be texting anyone or checking my email while I was walking, even though that's something I'll do out of habit. The biggest thing for me was the instinctively checking to make sure my phone was in my pocket-- which obviously it wasn't. Basically, I'm just really paranoid about losing it. The times I was wishing I had it were to listen to music, and to jot down a note. We were sitting on the bus when a song came on and I thought, "wow, this would be great for Open Mic Night"-- only I couldn't figure out the song, nor could I write it down, since I didn't have my phone.

So other than that, no big issue. And really, I didn't even play my guitar or read all that much yesterday. The time I did grab my guitar out was in the evening, past quiet hours, with a couple friends in the lounge. We were decorating a poster, and Dave was talking about how he hadn't played in a while, so I went to grab Carmine (my guitar, for those of you who don't know). We had a pretty cool discussion about different playing styles, and I discovered that he's way more into finger picking than me. He started playing the melodies for Sweet Home Alabama, and a bunch of other songs: Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, everything that I had started to learn on the violin in middle school. It was actually pretty interesting; he said that finger picking was way easier for him than strumming, which was a pretty big revelation for me. He said for him, it's easier to keep track of two hands, rather than two fingers. So, if he can keep his fingers in the same position, and pluck the strings in a certain order, that's what works for him. With me, it's totally the opposite-- my plucking hand is much harder for me to keep track of, but I'm fine (now) at changing chords. Maybe it has something to do with the way I started off: I worked really hard at changing chords in the beginning.

So, I guess the point is that different people have different preferences. For me, picking will take a lot more brain power to learn. For Dave, the chords are too much to keep track of at once. My brain focuses on the chord hand, his on the strumming/picking hand. In the end though, the best part was exchanging ideas. He showed me a really easy picking song (Time, Hootie and the Blowfish), which I can also use to practice hammering on (placing your finger on the string after you've plucked it). I told him that the way I started practicing chords was keeping two finger planted, so you only had two more to keep track of.

Basically, it's all about experimenting, and finding out what works for you.

-Kal