Hello from Berlin, Germany

[andreasweber]

Hi all and a hello from close to Berlin, Germany, practically right behind the city sign. I am Andreas, 58 years old and let's say, something somewhat unexpected happened throughout the last year. When I was 19, I bought a bass guitar and fiddled around with it for quite a while, but since I didn't pay attention to musical education at school, it didn't bring me anywhere. About a year ago, I picked up the bass again and had it seen through and set up again properly, and I started learning to play it. I am yet very far from being a serious player, but it caught me. Initially I had wanted to play guitar, but smart as I am, I figured that with 4 instead of 6 strings, the bass would be 1/3 easier to learn
Only a couple of days ago, I bought myself a beautiful guitar and this is how I did land here, because I figured that at some point between now and death I would want to be capable of playing Stephen Stills' "Find the cost of freedom". It is so much different these days with being offered to learn almost anything, the Internet being such a treasure of knowledge (apart from many other things).
However, the bass shall not be jealous, but these days I'm actually quite thrilled by the guitar. And I am curious, where the journey is heading at.
Cheers, Andreas

[TGNeil]

Hi Andreas,

Welcome to TG! Find The Cost Of Freedom is a great song to work on, and not too difficult once you get the hang of focused strumming- aiming for one or two strings rather than hitting them all. Keep us posted on your progress.

Neil

[andreasweber]

Hi Neil

Thank you for your encouragement. I'm trying to progress on my skills every evening if possible at least for a bit of time. Not very surprisingly my fingertips on the fretting hand are burning and I had to learn how painfully cutting a 1st and 2nd steel string can be in the beginning and how dense the allocation of a fretboard is. Hence everything is going quite slow, I figure it makes more sense to adopt a decent technique right from the start rather than speed. What has surprised me though is that so far I feel more comfortable with plucking than using a pick. It appears to me that with a pick I have less "feedback" from the string in terms of how hard or gentle to pluck it.
You are doing a wonderful job with the way you explain and step through a song. Since I'm all new here, I expected something like a first steps tutorial, which is why I have started with the Strumming Essentials - A Beginner's Blueprint Course. I don't know if it is the concept of the site rather to explain techniques within a song lesson and not so much as a standalone specific technique lesson, but I believe I will discover all thes things on proceeding.
Thank you so much for your fantastic work teaching and your wonderful playing.

Kind regards, Andreas