My Fingers Hurt

Many many years ago, after my brother and I completed few years of basic musical studies, it was time for us to choose a musical instrument to learn. I chose the accordion, my main reason being to uncover the secrets of the bass-side keys. Strange as it may seem, being driven by curiosity and being indifferent to subjective aesthetic preferences is still who I am, mostly. My brother, on the other hand, chose the guitar. We experimented switching a few times but we never really cared to teach each other the intricacies of each one's musical instrument.

Funny thing is, the reason this blog was started is my brother letting me have a go at his guitar recently and jokingly daring me to outperform him in a musical duel. Even if that session was short, it was then that I had the idea of using something I had no real knowledge of as a "mental stimulant". Add regularity to that and you get this blog. It's ironic how my brother has been consistently denying to help me have a guitar lesson as a novelty for this blog.

That is, until today. He finally agreed to give me a 1-hour lesson in playing guitar and I jumped at the opportunity. So, here I am, after completing it, my left hand index finger numb and hurting with each keystroke it is used on.

First thing he did was tell me which fingers are used and how. He made me do a little exercise for a while to get used to the idea:

Next, I did a fairly similar exercise, only for the left hand:

Soon, after that, I began playing the first song I was to learn, Sur le pont d' Avignon . It took quite a bit of time but after a while I was able to play it well enough:

After that, my brother didn't seem to be certain on what we should be doing next. He tried to teach me a technique to play a note with just the left hand. After I failed again and again he decided that it was too early for that. Then, he made me do an exercise to stretch the fingers, which was somewhat painful. After I failed to make any real progress with that, he grabbed the guitar and played a song of his own. After that, he took out one of his old books and he started teaching me to play a second song, Der Weihnachtsmann. Unfortunately, the time was up long before I could play it well.

I enjoyed playing the guitar, it's a neat instrument, if a bit painful at times. I guess you get used to it. I also began to understand how the exercises and the songs made me better in playing the instrument in general, not only the specific exercise. It's one thing knowing that in theory and a completely different thing experiencing it in action. It's very difficult to notice it in higher levels of practising something. So, the fact that I was new to this helped in identifying the procedure.