Guitartoo update 11/3 - 11/9

11/3 Monday.
• Practiced 15 minutes - Fingers not hurting as much, but now they feel funny.
• I watched Monday Night Football with my good friends and told my most musically talented friend about learning how to play the guitar. He asked me if I was learning how to play using nylon or steel strings. I said, “I didn’t know nylon was an option.” So I thought maybe nylon strings would be softer and easier to learn. But then I thought about learning how to ski in Western NY. Skiing on ice at Bristol Mountain (http://www.bristolmountain.com/) is much harder than skiing on the exquisite powder at Lake Tahoe Ski Resorts(http://www.visitinglaketahoe.com). So when I learned how to ski on ice, I felt like I could ski almost anything. Maybe the same mentality will carry me to become a very average guitar player.

11/4 Tuesday.
• Printed guitar chords from http://www.chordie.com/ .

o Cecilia by Paul Simon
Chords to learn C, F, G7
Difficulty = Easy

o You Are My Sunshine (Traditional)
Chords to learn A,B7,E,E7
Difficulty = Easy

o Here Comes The Sun (Traditional)
Chords to learn A,B7,C,D,D/F#,E,E7,E7sus4,G
Difficulty = Hard

• Practiced 15 minutes - Fingers not hurting as much, but now they feel funny.
• Watched the election

11/5 Wednesday.
• Traveled on business to NYC.
• No Practice
• No Lesson
• Gingerbread Spice Latte’s are back at Starbucks

11/6 Thursday.
• Practiced 15 minutes
• Starting to put chords together and it’s fun!

11/7 Friday.
• Printed new version of You are my sunshine(YAMS) using only A, D, & E chords off of Chordie
• Almost played a whole chorus of YAMS using the A, D & E Chords
• Practiced 15 minutes
• I read the Blog about my brothers trip to Afghanistan. http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/afghanistan/2373

11/8 Saturday.
• Practiced 20 minutes
• The progression of playin one chord and then moving to another chord doesn’t make sense to me yet, I think Jimmy said it takes a lot of muscle memory to be able to go from one chord to another.
• My level of respect for guitar players is going through the roof. This is hard!
• I was looking for other songs that only use the A, D, & E songs and I found The Hannukah Song (THS). Printed new version of THS using only A, D, & E chords off of http://www.ezchords.com/
• I LOVE Christmas Carols, but The Hannukah Song is so much fun, that I’m going to need to add it to my repertoire of Zero Christmas Carols that I know how to play. I’m considering to add THS as my fourth song to learn for my goal

11/9 Sunday.
• Practiced 15 minutes
• Serenaded my parents, wife and daughters with a first rendition of YAMS.
• They’re impressed that they’re finally seeing me play the guitar I’ve owned for a couple of years.
• I’m throwing around the idea of perhaps playing for my Group 6 team-mates on a future teleconference.

Guitartoo update 11/2

11/2 Sunday
The A, D, and E chords seem to be sounding a little better to me. My fingers don’t hurt as much, but the fatty part of my fingers keep hitting the wrong strings by accident. I swear, I do not have fat fingers, but this hobby is going to make me want to lose weight.

In order to provide an objective opinion for the blog, my wife claims my playing still sounds like noise. She’s pretty honest. She did say however that there were no squeaks. I had to remind her I'm practicing the guitar, not the clarinet.

My 6 month old seemed to enjoy my practice session, but not enough to finish my 15 minute segment. I'm gonna blame her age and not my performance for her reaction.

Guitartoo update 10/29 - 11/1

10/29 Wednesday.
Met with my guitar instructor Jimmy from the "Music Lovers Shoppe" for my ½ hour lesson.

• Jimmy suggested the following
  • Dropping “Here Comes The Sun” due to the level of difficulty.
  • Keeping the other two song suggestions
• What we learned today
• How to hold the guitar properly
• The names of the different strings
• Finger positioning
• How to read Guitar Chord Tabs
• How to play Chords A, D & E
• The Physiology of why my fingers hurt while playing
• How often to practice
• 2 x 15 minute practice sessions a day

My 3 year old asked how my day at guitar school went. She asked if I could play Edelweiss from “The Sound of Music” for her

10/30 Thursday
Did not practice as my fingers were really hurting.

10/31 Friday
Practiced A, D, & E Chords for about 15 minutes only since my fingers were sore.

11/1 Saturday

• Practiced A, D, & E Chords for about 30 minutes only since my fingers were still a little bit sore.
• I think I can feel calluses forming on my left hand fingers
• Used my new guitar skills to coerce my three year old to eat.
• For every bite, I would play a chord

What I plan to blog about this semester (in addition to all the assignments)

I’m going to learn how to play guitar.

That’s right. Is it a big deal? I’ll let you decide.
I played piano for a few years in elementary school and I sang in a school chorus for a few years. And of course there are my fun years playing trumpet in the middle school band.

The goal is to learn how to play the following songs

• Cecilia - Simon and Garfunkel
• You are my sunshine – The Pine Ridge Boys
• Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
• I’m not sure about the fourth - Any requests?

I’ve owned a guitar for about two years, but I’ve picked it up about 10 times total.

The big variables for me are kids, dogs, work, Boston University, Netflix and the DVR.

So Yes, I will be adding another goal to achieve by the end of TM648.

It's not on the syllabus, hopefully my performance won't be graded, but I’m going for it.

I’ll try to document my daily progress on this blog, and on a website that I hope to create during this class at http://www.guitartoo.com/

The Guitartoo Goal
Take weekly ½ hour lessons to learn 3- 4 songs to play for my audience…
A three year old and a 6 month old.

- The BU Attic Blogger

What do you think about Facebook?

I scoffed at Facebook and MySpace and the social networking sites for a long time…… but.

I'm interested in immersing myself into eCommerce and the online world.

I just set myself up on Facebook last night. Actually my wife did all the hard technical work as she was more eager than I to get me on Facebook . She loves Facebook and was tired of me asking her to look for people on Facebook. You can find me, and I promise I will accept your friend requests. I’m such a nerd!

- The BU Attic Blogger

Trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan

My brother will be traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan next week on November 1st, 2008 for work, so we’ll be praying for him to return home safely before Thanksgiving. He is a contract photographer for the NGO MercyCorps. You can see some of his beautiful work here. He’s becoming a really amazing photographer. I’ll give periodic updates about his progress during his trip.

- The BU Attic Blogger

http://www.samperphotos.com/

copyright 2008 miguel samper

More about me (A slightly more formal introduction)

I am a Clinical Site Manager for a large Clinical Research Organization supporting a large biotechnology company in California. I manage clinical Research Trials. My office is in the attic.

This is my 11th course in the MSPM program, so I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the school tunnel. I’ve also taken several courses at the BU Medical School in Clinical Research and Clinical Trials Management.

I took a few months off from BU earlier this summer when my second daughter was born, so I’m slowly trying to get back into the swing of things here on Vista.

I currently live in Rochester, NY with my wife, two daughters and two dogs. We used to live in Boston and in San Francisco, so we feel pretty bicoastal.





- The BU Attic Blogger