What a busy week I've had. There's been too many thing happening, not all good, that's been keeping me from playing as much as I would have liked.
At the beginning of the week I a practise session with my friend and he showed me a few more things such as a part of Otis Reading's Dock of the bay, using a power cord, which starts off with my index finger on the 6 string of the 3rd fret, my 3rd finger on the 5th sting of the 5th fret and my 4th finger (pinkie) on the 4th sting of the 5th fret - then slide that whole shape up to the 7th fret and so on. It's difficult but I love practising it.
I was shown a couple of other song beginnings but to be honest it was too much to take in at the time as my kids were running around distracting me.
During all this time I've had with my guitar I often wondered if the action was too high. The action is the distance the strings are from the frets, which is typically measured at the 12th fret. Anyhow, I wanted to know how to lower the action so once again I headed off to YouTube and watched a couple of videos.
Against the advice of my friend, I loosened all the strings and lifted out the bridge, took about a 1.5 - 2 millimetres off the bottom and put it all back together again. Please note, if this is something you are thinking of doing, get the job done by a professional. I could have easily taken too much off making the bridge too small, and ruined my guitar. I probably was lucky - I fancied my chances of not making a mistake. It could have gone wrong. Don't do it.
Thankfully the guitar still plays fine after butchering the bridge and I can notice that the stings are closer to the frets. It has made a bit of a difference but not much. That will come with practice and perhaps some more practice after that.
One of the other setbacks this week involved me jarring an old fracture injury in my left wrist which makes my practising painful and some of the chords that I could almost hit become that bit more difficult.
At the beginning of the week I a practise session with my friend and he showed me a few more things such as a part of Otis Reading's Dock of the bay, using a power cord, which starts off with my index finger on the 6 string of the 3rd fret, my 3rd finger on the 5th sting of the 5th fret and my 4th finger (pinkie) on the 4th sting of the 5th fret - then slide that whole shape up to the 7th fret and so on. It's difficult but I love practising it.
I was shown a couple of other song beginnings but to be honest it was too much to take in at the time as my kids were running around distracting me.
During all this time I've had with my guitar I often wondered if the action was too high. The action is the distance the strings are from the frets, which is typically measured at the 12th fret. Anyhow, I wanted to know how to lower the action so once again I headed off to YouTube and watched a couple of videos.
Against the advice of my friend, I loosened all the strings and lifted out the bridge, took about a 1.5 - 2 millimetres off the bottom and put it all back together again. Please note, if this is something you are thinking of doing, get the job done by a professional. I could have easily taken too much off making the bridge too small, and ruined my guitar. I probably was lucky - I fancied my chances of not making a mistake. It could have gone wrong. Don't do it.
Thankfully the guitar still plays fine after butchering the bridge and I can notice that the stings are closer to the frets. It has made a bit of a difference but not much. That will come with practice and perhaps some more practice after that.
One of the other setbacks this week involved me jarring an old fracture injury in my left wrist which makes my practising painful and some of the chords that I could almost hit become that bit more difficult.
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