Late night guitar practices

15Nov08

Even after when we bought our guitars I remained a game addict. The latest MMO being Perfect World International. Call me WOLS maybe, the game’s publicity did caught my attention during some of the IT shows, but I did not pay too much attention to it then as it was a Chinese-based and themed game. Along came the EN version that ran on Malaysian servers, and then came PW Intl.

I must say that I was amazed by their level of character customization because we players have the capability to virtually edit every part of the facial features for our avatar. Being a sucker for aesthetics, I spent some 2 hours on customizing my character before entering the game. The addiction lasted slightly more than a week, which I played to like 3.30 a.m. on a daily basis. Effectively saying, my newly-bought guitar sat there untouched for more than a week. The occasional chord practices were short-lived, only taking place while waiting for my notebook to boot up, and then off to Perfect World once the game client is up and running. By then our first guitar lesson was already over, and I’m not really facinated by playing the guitar. After all, the first lesson consisted of nothing but guitar basics and tablatures. That was also the time when me and Danny learned our basic chords G, Em, C and D.

We need to have our tuners ready for the 2nd lesson, and so Danny and I made a trip down Bras Basah Complex to get a better-looking guitar case and my tuner, for Danny already has one chromatic tuner. We both bought Warwick Rockbags from Swee Lee. I couldn’t recall how much the guitar cases were, but they priced at around $40++.

Being a hobby slut, Danny was ranting about how much this new hobby costed him. A quick breakdown for me it would be $130++ for my acoustic guitar+stand+default lousy case, $90 for the pop guitar course, $40++ for the Warwick Rockbag; $260 spent on something intangible at that point of time. IMO, the price to pay for a new hobby was a bit steep, because I have absolutely no idea if I could sustain the interest in it, no music background unlike Danny, plus I never pictured myself playing one before.

For our second guitar lesson, we were taught a basic 2-beat strumming pattern in the hopes that we could strum and sing along the 4-chord song, Apologise by One Republic. I’m constantly irritated by fret buzzes; I have problems with the D chord. At least the lesson was not all about chords. Chords Am and E were mentioned in lesson 2, so I suppose we need to know them by the 3rd lesson? Straight after the lesson I went home and attempted on the strum-and-sing stuff. I guess that was when my interest grew.

I listened to mostly Chinese songs, and so I could only hum along to the tunes to [Apologize]. Did a search on Chinese songs and managed to get the chords for Jay’s 晴天; a simple 4 to 5-chord song. Been practicing on the tabs and chords since then. I uninstalled and deleted Perfect World.

“DON’T COME AND TALK COCK” came the immediate unquestioned reply from Danny in one of our MSN conversations when I told him that I has deleted my games off my notebook. Nobody believed me initially, not even Brendan.

Danny’s guitar strings snapped, and so the next day I went to Yamaha and bought a pack for standby too. I did not feel comfortable with the pick I’ve chosen when I first bought the guitar. It was too rigid, and so I went back to Yamaha the following day to get 2 more different picks for experimental use. I felt more okay with 1 of the Jim Dunlop picks I’ve bought, and so I was happily strumming away even at late at night. From around 11 p.m. I would continue practicing without picks, with echoes and sound kept to minimal. By the way my fingernails are cursed. They will not thrive past 3mm in length, which makes it ideal for late night practices.

T.B.C.

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