Why do I make plans?

I didn't get the PS booted this weekend, but did have a very long talk with a friend online.

Apart from picking the guitar up for the usual finger picking tunes I have been trying to learn well enough for me and Lynn to sing along to, I have been having intermittent follow of guitar.about.com email newsletter.

Today's email was in part about learning barre chords, and the b-minor barre I can almost get the notes to ring out cleanly (details are here).

So all I need to do is cut my fingernails on my left had a little, as they are growing a little long again, and practice a little more and I just might mangage to get the chord sounding cleanly.

Then all I need to do is make sure I know all the notes running up the A string and that is a collection of minor chords learned. Dead easy.

But for now, I think I'm going to have an early night. Or I would if it wasn't rapidly approaching 11pm again.

Rebel Rubbish

I've done another set of songs on Guitar Smith, and (for a change) completed a full set of songs and did the associated gig.
Rebel Rebel by David Bowie was one I was really looking forward to doing. I earned enough points to qualify the first time around, which is both a bonus and a shame. The bonus was I only played it once, instead of dozens of times! When I came to play this in the gig, I really messed up the opening half of the song, and as you can't restart a gig performance, I didn't get much appreciation from the virtual audience.
Mean Bitch by Toddy Porter. I really struggled with this song, although I did manage to beat the qualifier with better than 5000 points over the target. I doubt this will be a favorite of mine to play!
I Miss You by Incubus. I did play it, but can't think of how I felt about playing it at all.
Do You Remember by the Horrors. This was another challenging song for me to play, and I felt almost totally inept while playing it, but the virtual audience seemed to appreciate it.
High and Dry by Radiohead. Yes, another challenging song. The least said about how I played it the better.

The next set

I didn't make a note of the next set of songs, and have done this blog entry from memory. I have been noting down for my previous blogs how I felt as I competed each song. I think that is probably the better way to do it, but means you will have more to plough through.
Instead of playing each song until I qualify, I played through in the order that Guitar Smith wanted. This gave more variety in what I was playing, and I suspect prevented me getting fed up with not making progress. At least until the two I was really struggling with!
Guitar Smith recommends that you use the practice the techniques involved in the songs, and I have been ignoring that up to now. I'm considering actually doing the practice work before rehearsing the songs to see if it will improve and reduce the time it is taking me to qualify.
I'm getting curious what will happen in the game once I get through all the songs at the qualification level. I am hoping that there will be a harder qualifier with the songs if that happens.
I have been focussing on doing coursework for a Coursera online course I have been following this week, and have only picked the guitar up to practice some very basic tunes from the book I have been following.
I have done something different though, tonight I had a go at playing a simplified tab of The House Of The Rising Sun, and have recorded and uploaded the guitar work to SoundCloud. If you're interested, you can find it here. If you're not interested the link to follow is this one.