21 chords and a manicure

I went for my first guitar class in late November 2009. After deducting all the times I missed my class due to the month long break I took to spend CNY back home, a number of weekends I fell sick, another few that I went away on road trips and overseas trips and such, I would say I've been learning the guitar for about six months.

I can now strum a few simple three or four chord songs: Stand By Me, Every Breath You Take, Birthday song; pick a few simple songs: 月亮代表我的心, House of the Rising Sun, Unchained Melody, Flightless Bird, American Mouth, intro to 爱我别走 and part of the intro to Nothing Else Matters.

There are still a lot of songs I hope to learn but my teacher always say "Don't rush into learning too many songs at once. Keep focusing on the basic fundamentals and you'll never go wrong.".

And so my homework for weeks now has been to play the chromatic scale up and down at a speed of 100bpm and to learn the first set of 21 chords such that I can play all of them fluently and can string any number of random chords together to compose any song of my wish: the C, D, E, F, G, A, B major chords, minor chords and seventh chords. This is tough. I am having the most difficulty with all the B and F chords and the Cm chord. The positionings of the fingers are just impossible!

I also got to go through a fifteen minute session on 'How to trim and file your nails to enhance your guitar playing' and was tasked to go buy a girlie nail file and buffer set to start practising. To think I have been so proud all my life to proclaim "Nah! I don't ever do manicures. It's too girlie!", I'm actually starting to really get into it religiously for the love of playing the guitar.