A new challenge - to learn to play the guitar.

Now I've had a guitar hanging on the wall for the past 20 years or so and during the early stages of the lock-down my youngest son who was home from Uni' and on ferlough from his part-time job asked if he could have a 'play'.  So I duly took it off the wall tuned it's ancient strings and gave him a printout of some basic chords.  When his ferlough came to an end and he went back to Wales the guitar was loitering against the wall and I decided to pick it up and see how it was sounding.  It was quite obvious that  the machine heads (tuners) were past there best as of course were the strings.  I quite enjoyed playing around with the guitar so starting looking at perhaps buying a more modern instrument and a few weeks later bought an Ibanez electric  from Sound Unlimited in Plymouth and although it was probably the cheapest thing in the shop, the service was superb, full set-up and new set of strings fitted.  I was also interested in a Fender Practice amp, which they didn't have in stock but were on order, so going above and beyond, they loaned me a different amp to get me going - superb service.

So what about the old guitar, well after a few weeks I decided not to hang it back on the wall so put on a set of Wilkinson tuners and a friend took it away to dress & condition the fretboard prior to re-stringing.  Now this is an old 'cheap' guitar and the new tuners and strings are probably worth more than the guitar itself!  Add to this it has no truss rod (used to adjust the straightness of the neck) a high action (distance of the strings from the fretboard) a very wide flat (by modern standards) fretboard, which was also mildly 'S' shaped along its length and it is never going to be an easy instrument to play, but it actually does sound very nice.  So it is still getting the occasional outing and of course it makes going back to the electric a real pleasure.

At the same time all this was going on a new Meetup Group for guitar player popped up with a free four week beginners course - via Zoom.  So I joined that to add some structure to my learning - many thanks to Thomas & Fiona at The Guitar Social for an entertaining introduction to the world of guitar playing.  This is going to be an ongoing challenge as; I've no real talent, lack any sense of rhythm and think I may be tone deaf!  Only time  and lots of practice will tell...