Little Breakthroughs

I love little breakthroughs. Little breakthroughs are what makes the world go 'round.

Now, I understand about major breakthroughs in science and technology (and plenty of other fields) that have shaped and shifted our thinking, and in many cases, turned our way of doing things on its head. The difference between a major and a little breakthrough being that major breakthroughs affect a mass population; little breakthroughs affect pretty much me exclusively and happen when I'm trying to learn something new. It's that feeling when something finally 'clicks.'

Yesterday I had not one, but two(!) little breakthroughs on the guitar. First, I learned how to mute strings. My way is to put the side of my strumming hand on the strings to get the click sound. This doesn't always perfectly - if part of my hand misses, I'll get this half-mute, half-open cacophonous mess that requires me to stop and redo. I know some people that mute with their left hand and I have no doubt that in some cases this is probably the preferred method, but for now, the only thing I'm muting with my left hand is the F chord.

My other little breakthrough was that I figured out the "proper" (I use that word loosely. I'm basically teaching myself [with the help of some friends and youtube], so 'proper' could just as easily be substituted with 'way more comfortable.') way of positioning my left hand around the neck. Here's what I figured out: Cognitively, it makes sense to form a chord where your fingers are perpendicular to the strings. Physically, that doesn't work so well. I'm trying to strum a C, trying to figure out why I keep muting certain strings, strumming strumming strumming, and then I shift my fingers from a 90 degree angle to a 45 degree angle. Each string rings clearly! My thumb, which used to push against the back of the neck (as if I was giving a thumbprint biometric), now (the entire length of which, including the fleshy part of my palm) rests parallel to the neck. Brilliant!

I tried it with (fake) F, D, Am. Everything sounds better! And it's far easier to change chords now too, I feel as though my fingers don't have to move as far, for some reason. I tried sliding up and down the neck, also with clearer and faster results. Sweet! I'm now slightly better at the same 5 songs I've been trying to learn for the past 2 weeks -- which makes me think that someday I will get it; I will be able to play to tempo without having to stop at every 4th chord change. Little breakthroughs are little motivations.

Making Stuff

I knit. I sew. I paint, I needlepoint, and I take photographs. I even built a bookshelf once. I'm not listing this to boast or brag, but I do think it's very clever indeed to have the ability to make stuff.

I feel that the addition of each craft gets easier to figure out, based on knowing that each is simply made up of a few basic parts (with endless manipulations and variations). For example, I began my craft career sewing. All garments are made from some modification of 5 basic pattern pieces -- skirt front and back, bodice front and back, sleeve. Having made enough garments by the time I picked up a pair of knitting needles, I understood shaping, drape, and construction. Knitting itself is made up of 2 stitches -- knit and purl. Photography is just the effect of manipulating light -- aperture, shutter speed, film speed, color temperature. And so on and so forth.

So it's with this building-block, I-can-figure-it-out mentality that I'm going to learn to play the guitar. This is how I see it: per the Craft Yarn Council of America, there are 38 million knitters and crocheters in this country (equivalent to the entire population of Poland). According to a questionable internet source, 65% of Americans know how to play the guitar -- or about 195 million people. If that many people (not accounting for the billions more scattered around the globe) have been able to figure it out, I'm sure I can too. After all, I make stuff. :)