so I finally got a guitar
Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:04 pm
After years of resistance, I helped a friend move, and spotted a guitar he'll never play (he's an inveterate buyer of toys he'll never use). He turned me down, and 6 months later when I was helping a mutual friend move, he changed his mind. So now I have a $500 guitar for 200 bucks. And I need to learn to play it.
To start with, I've turned to the songbooks I already own which have chord diagrams at hand. A Dubliners songbook, the Stan Rogers songbook, and the Songs and Dances of Ireland and Scotland (The yellow books, if you know them)
Some of the diagrams have Os above some but not all of the open strings. Others have the same fingerings and the same name, but have no Os. Others have Xes on some open strings. None have both Xes and Os.
So how should I interpret these? Hit the Os but avoid the Xes? Ignore both and strum all 6? Wait until I've got the fingering nailed before I work on skip-string strumming patterns?
To start with, I've turned to the songbooks I already own which have chord diagrams at hand. A Dubliners songbook, the Stan Rogers songbook, and the Songs and Dances of Ireland and Scotland (The yellow books, if you know them)
Some of the diagrams have Os above some but not all of the open strings. Others have the same fingerings and the same name, but have no Os. Others have Xes on some open strings. None have both Xes and Os.
So how should I interpret these? Hit the Os but avoid the Xes? Ignore both and strum all 6? Wait until I've got the fingering nailed before I work on skip-string strumming patterns?