As I mentioned before, I am a guitarist. Not by profession (yet) but I've been playing since August 2020, when I got my first guitar- the East Coast D1 that is on the right side of my amp.
It. Is. A beast. It can't be plugged into an amp, but then again it doesn't really need to be- give it a fresh set of strings and you could probably hear it through a relatively thick brick wall! This is probably due to the fact that it has a big body, that might look too big for me, but I actually find it extremely comfortable to play. It has a larger fretboard and I can hit exactly the strings I need without buzzing. Barre chords aren't as tough because the strings are easier to depress. Also, since it's my first guitar, I'll always love it best, even if I had a Fender, or a Yamaha.
My electro-acoustic, 3/4 size guitar has some great features too. It can be plugged into my Marshall amp, and if you mess with the settings you can get some amazing sounds, not to mention the fact that I never need to crank up the volume to anything above a quarter of what my Marshall is capable of.
If I put the Marshall on full volume in a residential area, it would shatter all the windows of every house and I'd be arrested for causing a destructive disturbance.
I suspect the volume probably has a range of about 15 miles.
But I've never tried it for fear of permanent damage to my hearing, so that's just speculation...
But enough about my equipment- am I actually any good at playing a guitar? Well, I like to think I am. I've practiced for many, many hours, learning all the basic chords (Em, Am, A, E, C, D, G, etc.). If a song is made up of basic chords, I can definitely play it, and I'll probably throw in some fingerstyle playing to spice it up a bit. I've been learning pentatonic theory, have become gradually better at creating my own riffs, and I can play the riff at the beginning of 'Redemption Songs' as well as the actual song after it.
Barre chords, however, presented a large problem for many months.
I'm glad to say I can now play the dreaded F chord and its siblings, Fm and Fmaj7, but only in the past few weeks. I won't document the whole struggle, but the problem was that I didn't have enough strength in my left index finger. I knew the finger position, but couldn't hold it. I'm sorry to say that there is no easy way out and you simply have to keep practicing, however terrible it sounds, until one day you find that you can suddenly hold the chord. I was determined last week that I'd learn the F chord, and I did, by spending a total of over 10 hours trying!
That has made the other barre chords much easier. I'm taking Bm, the Professor Moriarty (if you're a Sherlock Holmes fan) of guitar playing, down next. It is The Root Of All Evil.
But sounds so good...
Stay tuned to see if I succeed!