After blogging about viewing a video on Chi Mai – Ennio Morricone, I printed out the tabs for the song and tried playing it for the first time on guitar but with little success. It sounded better on piano! I only got as far as the first set of twelve notes in that one measure. I gave playing this piece.
Then I resurrected some old songs from the guitar – a book of classics and photo copies from my guitar class during high school. I opened up the book of classics and randomly saw an easy piece on page 58: `Valse` by F. Carulli. This one I managed to use this as a warm-up and within 15 minutes, I played it well enough to record (for later).
Then I flipped through more pages and found `Sarabande` by Archangelo Corelli. I only got to the first of two sections or eight measures of sixteen in total. My fingers were beginning to stain from the old strings made out of wires and not nylon! There were dents on the tips of my left fingers, too!
I tried another piece called `Andantino` by Fernando Sor but only got through the first eight to twelve measures. After being bored with classics, I tried simple pieces, most of which are played on the first three to four frets.
The chords I know by heart are the `majors` – A, C, D, E, F, G and some `minors` – D, A, E. But I had to take a peek at the chords used in the songs as wells as the suggested strum. Amazing Grace, Tom Dooley, Down In The Valley, Five Hundred Miles are some songs we played in high school.
I started a mock jam with California Dreamin by plucking the melody and incorporating the suggested strum to the following chords: Am, G, F, G, Bm7, E, E7 and Dm. But my fingers are TOO SHORT to press the strings hard enough for a clear enough tune.
No one would believe I play two stringed instruments until a live demonstration. Hah!
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