Learning Guitar, Day 11

Well, I got in some practice today. After reviewing the chords I know, I started learning A minor, D minor, and E minor.

A minor was pretty straight forward. Now that E major is fairly easy to me, so is A minor. E minor was even easier.

D minor gave me some trouble though, as I expected it would. The first time I tried it, my fingers simply would not stretch out onto the frets as needed. I stretched out my fingers with my other hand and tried to play, but it sounded horrible, dead and buzzing strings galore. By then I had to let go of the chord as my hand was starting to get tired of being stretched out so much. I went back to reviewing the new chords, then tried again. After a few attempts, I found I could get my fingers in close to the right spots. Now I have been told many times to make sure my fingers are curled, and I've thought they were curled enough, but a tip I got changed my mind. By turning my palm so the pinkie side is closer to the neck (mostly by bringing my elbow closer to my body), I could play all of my chords even easier. After my hand was stretched out, I found I could place my fingers perfectly for the D minor chord with that tip.

I spent most of the time reviewing both the new and the old chords, and tried switching between then a few times. Tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to it, I'll try some one minute chord changes, just to see how bad I am to start with.

On a different note, I realized today that I've been interested in learning to play the guitar for longer than I thought. I knew that last year around this time I considered getting a guitar, but I never actually did. But today I remembered back to middle school where there was a music club. They invited anyone to come join them, and they offered to teach people to play. It caught my eye, but I never actually went. Perhaps I should have...

Anyway, it's definitely going to take getting used to these new chords, but so did the major chords. I'm probably going to try and spend 7-10 days on each set of chords I learn, to make sure I get plenty of practice with them. Plus, learning new things on the guitar is what really interests me. Reviewing can be boring, but it's a necessary evil. Oh well, I know I'm making progress!