Getting Some Pluck

Songs I am butchering this week:

• "Edelweiss" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein


• "Goodnight, My Someone" by Meredith Wilson

I have already waxed nostalgic here about my mom playing "Edelweiss" on her guitar for me when I was a youngster. So, you won't be surprised that "Edelweiss" is one of the first tabs I hunted down.

I found this lovely chord arrangement almost immediately, but obviously playing block chords wasn't cutting it. I tried arpeggios—that's playing the notes of each chord one string at a time—but my rhythm was pretty odd. So, my mom taught me a lovely pattern where you arpeggiate (how's that for a back formation?) up and down the chord in a soothing, lullaby rhythm. It's pretty and very easy with practice.

Anyway, I've been having fun with that, but lately, our son's favorite lullaby is "Good Night, My Someone" from The Music Man (more on this family favorite and others here). He sings along with the chorus, and it's just adorable. Also, when his Buzz Lightyear toy needs a nap, he tells him "sweet dreams," which he must have learned from this song.

Obviously, I needed to learn the accompaniment for this song, too. Unlike with "Edelweiss," however, my Google search for free chords or tabs came up empty. I did, however, find a whole page devoted to MIDI forms of songs from The Music Man. I'm allergic to MIDI music, so I didn't listen to any, but I think I'm going to have nightmares about the Mario Brothers playing little e-trombones for a long time anyway.

After the search came up empty, I did the unthinkable. I took my guitar by the neck and decided to pluck it out for myself. Using chords that I know—namely, G, D, C, an F, and a few D7s—and mom's magic arpeggio rhythm, I banged out a pretty decent approximation. Sure, this song is made for the piano, and my rendition can sound a little too heavy on the rhythm when it needs to feel quiet, but I'm going to call it a preliminary success anyway. I'm also a few hours of practice away from making the bridge of the song sound natural, but the basic chords are there.

I know that this is still Guitar 101— I mean, most of the people I know who play guitar can noodle around until they find any tune you request—but for me, this feels like Guitar 102. I'm not saying I can play requests—unless you ask for one of the seven songs I know—but at least if someone exiled me to a desert island with my guitar, I wouldn't be tempted to turn it into a six-stringed bow to hunt wildlife. Instead, I could spend my eternity plucking out all of the songs that I know and whittling the tabs onto coconut leaves. Woo-hoo!

Fun fact! Did you know that if you speed up "Good Night, My Someone," you get "76 Trombones"? Tell your friends!

Changing My Tune

Oh, joy of joys! My sister-in-law and fellow guitar novice introduced me to the greatest invention ever over the weekend: The Intellitouch PT2 guitar tuner.

This delightful device hooks onto the guitar neck and literally checks your sound for good vibrations. If the string is tuned properly, you get six pointy arrows of jubilation on an electronic display. If not, you lose arrow points, which indicates which way and how much you should turn your peg.

The upshot? Fewer tears and faster tuning times. And because you're essentially tuning by sight, you can guarantee that your A string sings a sweet 440 Hz in the noisiest of rooms.

Of course, I share my mother's healthy skepticism of electronic tuning, and I feel like a slacker for not sticking to the tuning-by-ear method, no matter how miserable it's been lately. But the e-tuning demo my sister-in-law gave was very convincing. Her guitar sounded beautiful—as did her excellent rendition of Green Day's "Time of Your Life." I'm counting the days until my own magic tuning machine arrives. "The Wheels on the Bus" will never have sounded better!

Taking Five ... Days, That Is

After dinner at the hotel lodge in Jasper, Alberta, as our family meandered back to our rooms along the lake last week, my father-in-law turned to me and asked, "Did you bring your guitar?"

I thought about the thousands of tiny toys and socks we had stuffed into every crevice of every bag and laughed out loud. "No," I admitted. "It's about the only thing we didn't bring." My father-in-law laughed but had the good grace not to look relieved.

When packing up for last week's family vacation in the beautiful Canadian Rockies, I never once thought about hauling the guitar to the airport. What with the car seat, stroller, various backpacks, roller bags, stuffed animals, and one growing toddler, we just didn't have enough hands. It was either the guitar or my changes of clothes, if you see what I'm saying.

Not only that, but I really don't have the case for airplane flying. Sure, my guitar sarcophagus makes me feel plenty secure around the little one and the not-so-little dog, but I've seen Toy Story 2 enough times to know that what goes on behind the scenes along the luggage conveyor belt just ain't pretty. For international jaunts, I need something more durable—like Iron Man's suit, perhaps.

Days later, while checking our "oversized" stroller bag at the Calgary airport, we waited patiently in line behind three hunters who were working to clear their igloos full of bear meat, hides, and skulls—not to mention their cases of bows and arrows. Just when we thought the entertainment couldn't be better, a youngish guy rolled up behind us with what looked like a Picasso sculpture of a gleaming refrigerator. A double-take revealed it to be the gigantic roller case for a bass fiddle. The thing was taller than any man in line. Between such exotic cargo, I felt pretty boring clutching a basic black bag containing a run-o'-the-mill umbrella stroller.

Even less cool was the middle-aged woman with the smart haircut who couldn't wait to fire the following salvo at the bass player: "Makes you wish you picked up the piccolo, doesn't it?"

As she proudly rounded the corner at speed-walker pace, the bass player sighed, "Yeah, I've heard that one before."

My dreadnought is perfectly puny next to the massive bass viol, but I still won't be hauling it through airports anytime soon. Of course, the week's hiatus didn't do much for my playing, although I'm happy to say that my hard-won callouses are still functional.

What with weather changes and neglect, my strings are sadly out of tune indeed, and I am out of practice. You are technically supposed to detune your guitar when you take a long break like that so that the tightened strings don't put too much tension on the neck and wreck everything, but I failed to do this what with diapers to count and tiny jeans to fold. It happens. I hope there are no dire consequences. But no matter how bad my guitar playing gets, dear lady with the smart haircut, I'm still not picking up the piccolo. So there!

"I've Got Blisters on Me Fingers!"

Ouch.

Scaling the Next Hurdle

You know that your husband loves you when he presents you with two amazing guitar books for beginners on Mother's Day. The first is The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook (more on this little slice of happiness in a later post). The second is Total Scales Techniques and Applications by Mark John Sternal.

For the beginning amateur guitarist, the Internet is awash in resources—some free, some not so free. There are plenty of would-be guitar instructors on YouTube, and plenty more touting their own systems on their personal Web sites. While I appreciate these online sources, it is awfully nice to get one's hands on a music book. Not only are they easier to read, but you don't have to worry about your screensaver kicking on in the middle of puzzling out a line of music.

Up until now, I've been finding songs I like and strumming blockily through them to my heart's content. But this is only satisfying for so long. Block chords have their place, of course, but most songs use combinations of single notes and chords to create beautiful music. The block chord route can sound a little, well, shouty, if you know what I mean.

To get out of the block chord blahs requires homework, and that's where Sternal's book comes in. Sternal's step-by-step approach to learning scales not only teaches proper technique but also familiarizes beginning guitarists with the location of the notes on the fretboard and how they relate to one another. He also has included a handy CD to demonstrate what a beautiful scale is supposed to sound like. It's very therapeutic after struggling sadly from one note to another on my own!

Sternal's approach reminds me exactly of my piano lessons growing up, during which I was taught a new scale every week and asked to play it perfectly at the next lesson. Of course, I never did. Those scales, unless they were incredibly easy C major scales, always sounded like Syssiphus on the uphill trek with his ginormous boulder: halting and sweaty. Let's just say, I didn't practice.

As on the piano, scales on the guitar are an excellent orienteering exercise. So, I am motivated to learn this new terrain of the fretboard, no matter how slow my progress. But we're talking slow. I just spent a sad 15 minutes or so laboring up the "E position C major/ Am scale or Third Position" on page 12.

Part of the struggle is the addition of the pick. I have been finger-strumming up until this point, but as the pick is so prevalent these days, I'm going to have to learn it sometime. The book recommends picking these scales, and I am. But, yikes! That little piece of plastic is slowing me all the way down. I assume it will take me two or three hours to finally master page 12. With 152 pages to go, I will probably be at this book for a long time—if not for the rest of my life. Yikes!

A note for my fellow publishing types: Sternal's self-published book (2008, revised edition) is in pretty good shape, all things considered. There are relatively few typos, which for a presumably amateur publishing effort is quite impressive. But there is one quirk that makes me laugh every time. The manual will cruise along for pages in Times New Roman then—bam!—you're in Arial. If I were to give Sternal the benefit of the doubt, I would guess this was to separate the revised content from the original content. But I think it's probably just an oversight. Also, there is something a little bit hilarious about the author pic at the end of this book of scales—Sternal appears to be all hair and tank top. My husband confesses that he nearly passed on the book because of the picture, but caved due to rave reviews online.

Thumbs Up for This Waltz

Songs I am butchering this week:

• "A Waltz for a Night" by Julie Delpy


• "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles


• "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" by the White Stripes

I am a sucker for romantic comedies. I don't like to think about the number of hours I've spent watching mediocre films in this category when I wasn't even on an airplane, nor do I care to admit how much I've enjoyed them. Let's just say that when I find one that's actually a good film, I feel more than satisfied—I feel vindicated.

Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) are two of my favorites. They probably don't belong in the "comedy" category of romance films because the humor is subtle, but it's my blog, and I'm calling them that anyway. These films are thoughtful and funny and even talkier than a Woody Allen flick—in a word, lovely.

The premise of the first film is this: An American boy (Ethan Hawke) meets a French girl (Julie Delpy) on a train, and they end up walking around Vienna all night until they have to take their separate trains home. Mostly, they talk—and it's fabulous. I don't know what magic potion Richard Linklater and Kim Krazan used when writing the script, but somehow, they created two teenagers who are not only lost and confused like the cliche demands—but they are also intelligent, interesting, and funny.

In one night, these two characters tackle every topic under the sun: religion, politics, feminism, sex, hopes, dreams, you name it. By morning, these characters find a deep connection—and the audience can't help but connect with them, too. The sequel, which is as wonderful as the first film, explores what happens to these characters ten years later, and the rumor is that there will be another film every ten years—sort of like the "Seven Up" documentary series—which I would love to see.

One of my favorite scenes in Before Sunset is when Delpy plays a waltz that she wrote for the acoustic guitar. So, last week, I sought it out on YouTube. Some kind soul has also put the tabs for the song on the Internet, but seeing Delpy play it again taught me something brand new about guitar playing. To play "A Waltz for a Night," Delpy hooks her thumb over the fretboard to hold down the low E string. This gives the waltz its bass line. I know I've seen other players do this, but I didn't really understand what they were doing—I thought they were just resting their thumbs on the guitar neck!

Anyway, I practiced it and practiced it, and now I am ridiculously addicted to playing this song with its one-two-three, one-two-rest rhythm. Of course, I still struggle with a key part of the song which involves four rapid chord changes, and so I focus on playing the oom-pah-pah part ad infinitum instead. For some reason, no one in the family has run out of the room screaming yet. Perhaps it was because I was playing it on Mother's Day?

Not only do I like the weird fingering, I also love the imperfect, candid lyrics (for example: "It was for you just a one night thing / But you were much more to me / Just so you know"). Of course, the subject matter is a one-night stand, which makes me wonder how exactly this fits with my goal to further our son's musical education. As I was singing the telling line: "One night with you little Jesse / Is worth a thousand with anybody" last night, I couldn't help wondering if I shouldn't be working on a thumb-hookable arrangement of "Old MacDonald" instead!

Pulling Strings

Confession: I restrung the guitar about 10 days ago and was too afraid to play it for a week! Seriously, I couldn't even look at the case without imagining something horrible happening in there, like the guitar neck snapping in two from the tension, strings sproinging out every which way, or bridge pins shooting into my face. At night, I dreamed of the attack of the Killer Guitar with its sharp, stringy teeth.

Finally, my itchy fingers got the better of me. I unsnapped the case, cautiously lifted the lid an inch, flinched, and finally pushed it all the way open. All six strings were intact, and the guitar looked good as new. Phew! After tuning it and tuning it and tuning it some more, I can say we are friends again. I also like the new strings, which are thicker and—forgive my lack of proper jargon here—louder than the factory strings. Now, I just wish I could play something besides block chords.

The restringing process itself was rather educational. Things you should not do:

• Pop your bridge pin into your sound hole. If this happens, I recommend skipping the suicidal thoughts and going straight for a pencil with a piece of Scotch tape attached to the eraser. If you're good at those tilt games with ball bearings, so much the better. Roll that pin into position and lower your rescue pencil. (NOTE: If you accidentally fling the pin outside of your guitar, you will probably need a bigger pencil.)


• Slice open your hand on a new string like a sissy. Those things are sharp—cat-claw sharp. Just don't do it. No one wants to see you bleed all over your guitar, unless maybe you're Jack White. But you're not. At least, I'm not.


• Get all cocky when you finally get the strings on the guitar, like, two hours later. You know that big dog cage at the foot of your bed? Still there. So, don't start walking around holding your guitar aloft like it's the frickin' Ark of the Covenant until you've checked the foot path between you and your case. You may not use your toes to play the guitar like this guy, but you still need them to walk your guitar to its case, now don't you?