Pulling my Hair Out

In my first post, I mentioned that I was going to try to write instrumental bluegrass songs, but the muses aren't helping me with that. Perhaps that idea boxed me in too much. Maybe it makes more sense for me to just sit down with my guitar and see what comes out. The only problem is that I'm so rusty from not having played much since graduation from high school that I don't feel I have the skills to create yet. So maybe I need to lower the bar a bit and just work on getting better.

At the school I teach at, it seems like every other student plays the guitar. Despite these students having played for only a few years, most of them play much better than me. One of them asked if I'd sponsor a guitar club, and I realized that this would amount to free guitar lessons for me, so I said yes. God knows, I need some help with my guitar playing. We've started meeting every Tuesday morning at 7:30, and after two meetings I have some good material to practice.

Currently, I'm working on learning Little Martha by the Allman Brothers. It's a nice two guitar instrumental that isn't supposed to be too difficult. I thought I had learned both parts well enough to record myself on Garage Band, but there's something about seeing the red record button on my computer and hearing my guitar through the headphones that makes me mess up every time. Hence the picture of me pulling my hair out. I'd like to have some product to show from this effort, so I'm going to keep plugging away at getting a recording of the final song. After far too many takes, I finally have 46 seconds of audio, although the final 18 seconds only have the second guitar part. With Spring Break in a week, maybe I'll have time to finish learning this song. If you want to hear a poorly played and unfinished version of Little Martha, click here.