Hello, Bonjour From France

Hello,

I've always wanted to play the guitar but only recently decided to jump into it. I did about 8 years of classical piano when I was a teen, so I know musical theory, but I really did not know much about the guitar; For the record, when I started to do some music, I wanted to play the guitar, but in France (yes, I'm French, but I lived in the UK for 5 years and did loads of travels around the world personally and professionally, so i feel more comfortable in an international community than a French on) you couldn't do that in the "conservatoire" until you were 14, and there really not other workaround at that time (it was, **sigh* quite a long time ago). So I started on the piano but it was quite an investment (for myself and the family) and I did/could not change that for a while.

After that, other requirements (studies, work and family in that order) took over the music. But I now have some time available and still the same desire. So I decided to do what I always wanted, bought a few books, did some research (and found this site), tried a few guitars, bought myself a nice Fender and amp and tried a few things.

Now I feel it's time to introduce myself and possibly ask for some advice. Basically, due to other constraints, I can dedicate around half an hour per day to the guitar during work days, twice that and more for week-end days.

I have already tried a few lessons, in particular

• The "absolute beginner" series by Andrew (great job, btw), as well as the mandatory "smoke on the water" (love this one)
• The Chord series by Ivan (really nice too)
• Strumming and Arpeggios by Muris (Really melodic and inspiring, great for exercising, although some re hard at start, in particular barred chords)
• And a few others from books...

I have made a series of daily exercises from all these, and I feel I am steadily improving, which is nice.

I think I'm really hooked now, the only difficult thing is choosing where to go with all the lessons on this site, starting from this nice area.

There are only two things which worry me, really, which is getting stuck on something too hard (and that should be avoidable seeing the variety of lessons), and making a "mistake". The kind of mistake that I have in mind are the usual ones for a learning curve, including starting bad habits that would be hard to correct later, or forgetting to train some kind of skill that would be hard to integrate at a later stage.

Obviously, there are areas in which it's easier to progress faster for me, but I would not like to forget things or to learn too fast something wrong, so any advice would be appreciated.

Ash, a.k.a. Philippe

P.S.: Oh yes, one of the only difficulty that I have really is using the Anglo-saxon notes (A, B, C, etc.) instead of the latin/french ones (Do, Re, Mi, etc.). I did all my piano using the latter and I can really visualise these, whereas i'm still lost about the other ones, which I'm still learning by rote. I expect that will pass, as I learned to juggle multiple currencies, but that is still ahead of me...