Weeknotes 109 - Humble-brag

Humble-brag: my left hand has become so calloused from playing guitar that the fingers are no longer conductive enough to use on a touch screen.
A friend let me borrow a few guitar pedals, including a tuner. I’d been using a tuning app which uses the phone mic to check the frequency. That was OK for my acoustic guitar but using with the electric has been a faff. The pedal lets me tune the guitar both silently and very accurately. It kind of blew my mind just how useful I found it.
Two things have been bothering me about my electric guitar. One was the huge distance between the fretboard and the strings, much higher than on my acoustic, making it harder for me to quickly and accurately change chords. The other issue was that even when the open strings were perfectly tuned, as soon as I put a capo on the 3rd fret some of them would sound awful. The further down the neck I went the worse it got. My YouTube research led me to discover that both are things I can fix on my own with just a couple of extra tools. So yesterday, armed with the newfound YouTube knowledge, some courage and the tuning pedal I managed to fix both the string height and the intonation (aka staying in tune when fretted). I feel very proud of myself because now it sounds great and is much easier to play.
Knowing how to maintain my guitar feels a bit like knowing how to maintain my bikes. I don’t actually want to do it myself, but knowing I could makes me feel more relaxed and in control. In the After I’m more likely to have it serviced by a professional though. I do it with bikes too. It’s quicker, easier, and the results are always solid.
Watching Rachelf’s progress starting from the first day with a guitar to four years of consistent practice is so inspiring. The really cool thing is seeing what’s possible to achieve even if you have a full-time job and play guitar just in your spare time. Makes me wish I’d done a better job of recording myself in the early stages.