I am becoming accustomed to my new lifestyle. Living alone I have longer strands of uninterrupted moments, and this leads to more focused attention on whatever task is at hand. I have been practicing guitar 1-2 hours a day, my fingers have toughened up quickly after a one month layoff. I have also noticed another jump in progress.
A few weeks ago I decided to buy a cord which hooks up the ipod/computer to the amp. I am not sure why I did not do this earlier, because it is great to have the guitar sound and the backup music emit from the same source (also a nice sound when playing movies from the computer). I have the laptop set up on a small stand next to the amp, and when I want to practice to backing tracks I link to YouTube and jam away (I forgot to mention that I can connect to the city wifi from my apt., but the signal is choppy so it does not work all the time).
Yesterday I wanted to jam to backing tracks but could not get a steady internet signal so I plugged in the ipod and put it on shuffle. For most of the songs I was able to find the appropriate notes/scales and play along easily enough. What surprised me was the ability to play along with any style of song, rather than just blues. But even more than that, I found myself playing without having to over analyze what I was doing - it felt like speaking or writing - After 13 months of practice I had finally reached the point where playing the guitar felt somewhat natural and easy. I felt a comfort with the pentatonic scale which had been missing, I was able to mesh all the patterns along the frets so that it felt like one big pattern, at least for the bottom 3 strings. The coordination between fretting and picking hand had also improved, the two working together without over thinking everything. Consequently the speed increased, which made the notes begin to sound like music. The vibrato was also sounding better, although that still needs a lot of work.
I was reminded of the day I learned to read - sitting in front of the tv watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon (I was 4 or 5 years old), I was able to read the credits at the end of the cartoon - it was a beautiful feeling as I was able to string the words together with speed and clarity to understand the meaning behind the symbols. Having reached the first plateau of the guitar quest makes me excited, and makes me want to practice longer and harder.
