My First Week With The Finlayson D1-G Acoustic Guitar

Following advice, I've done my best to keep the fingernails of my left hand as short as possible to help with pressing the stings on the fretboard. I've also been practicing as much as possible, usually until my fingers get too sore. My fingertips are going through the process of developing calluses, which is a good thing as it makes playing much less painful. Having my fingernails this short and subjecting the fingertips to the pain of pressing thin steel wire onto frets causes a weard tingly feeling which last for ages, but I am assured it will go away after a few weeks. I'm only managing to get in about half an hour playing a day.

While the fingers of my left hand are becoming 'seasoned' I've been looking at videos on YouTube to give me ideas on what to do with my right hand, other than just strum.

The pain and tingling feeling in my left hand doesn't bother me, in fact I welcome it as I know it will pass and I will be able to play for longer. Finding video to show me a few trick to do with my right hand makes learning to play more fun and adds another layer of interest.

For most of this first week of learning I was kind of wondering if I made a mstake with the guitar choice as holding it felt a bit uncomfortable, but I think it was just a case of getting comfortable with it.

Overall it's been a fairly good week, I've not pushed myself too much as I didn't want to damage my fingers, also I've managed to learn a couple of chords and a couple of variations, such as E major and minor, A major and minor and A7.

Over the coming weeks my aim is to learn a couple more easy beginner chords and then practice switching from one chord to the next quickly and smoothly.

So that's been my first week learning to play guitar, something they say anyone can play.

I'll leave you with this video of Tommy Emmanuel playing Classical Gas, and as an absolute beginner I watched this video and was totally gobsmacked and amazed at his playing abilities. Watching his left hand throw some seemingly impossible looking shapes and fly up and down that fretboard makes me think I'll never be able to play like that, but that's OK, I'll settle for 1/10 of his abilities right now.

Finlayson D-1G - My Brand New Guitar

Armed with plectrums in our pockets my friend and I went shopping today - I got my first guitar! It's a standard dreadnought style acoustic guitar, but I spent a bit more and got a better quality construction, with better materials and the result is a great sounding instrument. Instead of a laminated spruce front, the Finlayson D-1G has a solid spruce front. It also comes supplied with a hard case.

I went to a shop called Guitar Guitar which has a branch near where I live. I spent a bit more than I planned due to the available stock in the shop. I was looking to spend about £50 less but they either had a cheapish one which you could see was not constructed as well as the one I bought, or the next cheapest one was at the maximum of what I was willing to spend. In fact there was another guitar that we looked at that was a cut-away electric-acoustic, but to be honest it didn't sound a good and I feel I did not need this style of guitar - not for now anyway.

I sneaked this short video on my mobile of my friend playing about with the Finlayson D-1G guitar so I could put it here for you to see.

When the shop assistant came back through with with my new guitar from the stock room, he came through carrying this huge black guitar case. Personally I think it's ugly and would feel happier if came with a better looking soft case, but I suppose that having the hard case will protect it better and I should be happy about that.



Courtesy of GuitarGuitar this the image of my Finlayson D-1G Dreadnought shaped acoustic guitar.



Heading home I was invited back to my friends house for a cup of tea and to show off my new guitar. I got my cup of tea and let Tim tune it in. Once it was was tuned in it still took about 40 minutes before I could get my hands on it. I think he like it.

I was then given a few finger exercises to do and reminded that learning to play the guitar is a painful thing to do and it certainly is. The thing I know I'm defiantly going to struggle with is getting my left hand and fingers to do what look like impossible contortions. Some chords seem easy and some look like there's no way in hell am I going get my hand in that shape to play it. Even with the easiest of chords my fingers keep touching strings they are not suppose to.

My mission now is to learn two or three easy beginner chords. It seem simple enough but its going to hurt like hell and I need to keep my finger nails really.