It is 3 weeks from today that I start to learn the guitar… it is getting close now!

I’ve had the guitar for what, 2 months now? So it’ll be 2 and a half months by the time I start using it, hopefully nothing will be out of tune etc with it by the time I use it. Having it in storage by a window in winter is probably not the best idea… but it doesn’t seem to be warping so it should be ok.

Unfortunately that is the best spot to fit it in, the case gets in the way anywhere else. I have a dehumidifier near it to stop any excess moisture getting to it, and the case seems to protect it from any extreme cold (it is lined with a furry material).

I’ve been watching this video recently: http://www.bukisa.com/videos/64464_how-to-play-acoustic-guitar-fingerpicking

Which I think looks really simple, yet sounds very haunting, I’d love to be able to play that soon after starting to learn. The only difficult thing is he assumes you know those chords… which of course I have no clue about! I know that is where you put your fingers on the… fretboard? But I would have no idea where to put my fingers so I’d have to Google it.

I have avoided watching any of the course yet, and even avoiding attempting the stuff in the video above (I’ve tried plucking the strings he said but without using the chords he gives then it doesn’t sound very good), the only thing I have done really is get it out every week or so to check it hasn’t warped and that it still sounds ok.

I have been looking to get a course on how to setup your guitar properly, I think at the moment that is probably overkill as there is no point setting it up properly until you can actually play it, plus you would hope it was setup ok when they sent it to me so I am passing on that for now.

I also looked at a chord book the other day which was advertised on the acoustic guitar magazine website, I didn’t realise there were so many! That is a huge book – that kind of scared me…

But hopefully I can get playing something by the end of the first week, so that will be 7 hours of learning and practicing which obviously if you weren’t doing an hour a day like me then you could get all that done easily in one weekend. I don’t know if that is wildly optimistic or not, I don’t want to be able to play much, just a little tune like the one in the video above would keep me happy.

That is what this experiment is about though, finding out exactly how long it takes the average person to learn different things, so when you come to learn the guitar you can see how long it took me to get to a certain stage and see if you are willing to put in that amount of hours to get the same result. I think most people will actually learn a lot faster than me, and I am intentionally limiting myself, at least at first, to one hour a day, someone could put in a lot more hours than me and hopefully learn a lot quicker.

Whatever the result then it will be a fun experiment, and hopefully I’ll learn to love the guitar and can get years of enjoyment out of learning and playing.

Or of course I could get really frustrated and the final video on this site will be me smashing my guitar to pieces… it could go either way at the moment!

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