Family New Year
We were through at my sister’s house on 2nd January. These events often (usually) end up as singalongs which serve to remind me how infrequently I play guitars these days. I usually come away with sore fingers on my left hand and the resolve to play more and get back some of the old fluency. My fingers still move to pretty much where I want them to, though not as accurately or as quickly as I would like. The only cure for this is to play more and do something that approximates to practice.
And I’ve actually been doing this. I haven’t tried anything fancy and certainly haven’t played with altered tunings: just tried to pick and strum my way through some easy-to-play tunes to remind my fingers of what they’re supposed to do.
000-15
This isn’t always easy–my fingers want to play as they used too and I have to force them to go back to basics. So no ragtime, no jigs, just straightforward chords and alternating bass picking, and old favourite songs that lead me through the basic changes in nice fat major keys.
I’m lucky with the guitars I’ve got here. When I first started playing I had an instrument with crazy high action and I didn’t know enough about guitars or strings then to make it easy on myself. My old EKO Ranger VI, when I got it around 1975 or so, was a big improvement. In retrospect I wish I’d got a Yamaha for more or less the same price, but there we are. It was on the EKO, that had decent action and a good neck, that I was able to progress to more advanced material than I could do at that time on my original instrument.
When I started work in 1983, one of the first things I did was get a better guitar–an Ovation 1311 that I still have and still play from time to time. It lasted me twenty years until I finally bought a brace of Martins in 2002/3 (I only meant to buy one, but these things happen…) And Martins, well set up and with my preferred string gauges (11-52) are a heck of a lot easier to try and relearn on.
I also have a Fender Gemini acoustic upstairs. I’m not a big fan of Fender acoustics, but this one was £25 in a charity shop window so I won’t complain.
I also seem to be staving off guitar acquisition syndrome effectively. I haven’t been without temptation. I’ve always had a hankering for a decent Gibson acoustic, but have very rarely found such a thing, at least in a price bracket I can afford. I did go into my local dealers and try a Gibson J35 just before Christmas. I’d heard good things about them, but I found it disappointing. All the demos I’ve seen have been amplified in some way, but I found its pure acoustic performance thin and unconvincing. It might have been the strings, but it’s something I’ve experienced with Gibsons before. The only exception was a custom Hummingbird I played once, which sounded like a heavenly choir, but also cost four grand.
Meantime, left hand fingers are nippy until the callouses form again.
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