I spent the entire fall and winter of 1974 locked in my room with a borrowed guitar and the three chords my friend Carol Dunham had taught me to play. I sat for hours in the center of my bed, laboriously positioning my fingers on the fretboard to make first a G chord, and then a C.
All my bags are packed...
(G chord. C chord.)
I'm ready to go...
(G chord. C chord.)
I'm standing here...
(G chord. C chord.)
Outside your door..
(G chord. C chord.)
I hate to wake you up to say...
(G chord. C chord.)
...goodbye.
(D chord.)
My mother still cannot abide that song.*
I learned every other chord I know with the help of a Mel Bay chord chart--evidence that there is truly nothing more powerful than the persistence of a fourteen year old girl.
If you were too busy at the disco roller rink or babysitting or hanging out at the mall, you may think you missed your chance to be a girl guitar player. But that's not necessarily so.
You can learn chords with the help of your iPhone (or iTouch) via Curious Brain's free TouchChord Application:
* Practice chords on a 1:1 virtual fretboard, with strings and fret dimensions like those of a real guitar. Develop the muscle memory to play these chords on a real guitar.
* Learn chords hand-picked by an expert guitarist, within sequences that help you combine chords for jamming, writing, and inspiration.
* See a skilled guitarist's hand on each chord, so you know exactly how to hold your hand comfortably on the guitar neck.
* Zoom out on each chord to quickly understand where to put your hand on the fretboard.
* Tap the info button to learn about each sequence, and for inspiration, watch a pro play it.
* Hear a high-quality audio recording of each chord.
If you were too busy at the disco roller rink or babysitting or hanging out at the mall, you may think you missed your chance to be a girl guitar player. But that's not necessarily so.
You can learn chords with the help of your iPhone (or iTouch) via Curious Brain's free TouchChord Application:
* Practice chords on a 1:1 virtual fretboard, with strings and fret dimensions like those of a real guitar. Develop the muscle memory to play these chords on a real guitar.
* Learn chords hand-picked by an expert guitarist, within sequences that help you combine chords for jamming, writing, and inspiration.
* See a skilled guitarist's hand on each chord, so you know exactly how to hold your hand comfortably on the guitar neck.
* Zoom out on each chord to quickly understand where to put your hand on the fretboard.
* Tap the info button to learn about each sequence, and for inspiration, watch a pro play it.
* Hear a high-quality audio recording of each chord.
TouchChords Free has four sequences. E Blues (blues in the key of E), Meow Power (indie-type chords), Little Hands (for kids with hands too small to span the guitar neck) and my favorite: Doobalicious--"laid-back, smooth, and funky 70's style."
See the Demo Video and download the app here.
*Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver and Kenneth Browder, 1967.
via SwissMiss Twitter feed.
4 comments:
Crazy. I'm just waiting for the day we see an iPhone squeeze out a hamburger.
I also learned to play the guitar when I was 14. Smelly Cat was my first song. =P
I must've been too busy ironing my hair, repositioning the thumbtacks around my Robert Plant poster, and writing really bad poems. Never learned the guitar.
I've still got that Peter, Paul, and Mary album somewhere. Where HAVE all the flowers gone? Just askin.
Oh, Monda, that's too bad, since what most of us were doing was putting our bad poetry to music.
I still play guitar! Have 3 electric and 1 acoustic, in fact. Rock on!
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