I'm having WAY more fun than learning an Instrument Should Allow!

Ok, I admit it. I've played the basic strum for a while as I outlined in my original plan. But, frankly, I'm already board. I've found that it does not take very long and I can have a song down now. And, well, the song sound kind of boaring. So I finally decided I needed to raise the bar a bit. There's probably some music teacher out there some where who knows that I'm doing this way to early. Especailly if I'm not even sure that what I've learned so far sounds good, or is correct. It sounds good to me, but I'm a LONG way from an expert. I've only played songs in my "Simplified LDS Hymns" book. And the only other person that has heard me play is my Dad and I didn't sing for him. I just played the harmony. He was ambivolent... But then again, he always is about everything.

Any way, like it or not I decided to move on. But to what? I checked out the advice of our Mr. Terwilligar Jones on YouTube. Yet another, perfect pitched, former expert guitar player taking up the autoharp as a "beginner". He seemed to indicate that learning the auto harp followed these steps:

1. Get a chromatic autoharp
2. Learn how to tune it using an electronic tuner
3. After you've tuned it, chuck it in the trash and get a VERY, VERY fancy, possibly custom made diatonic autoharp.
4. Jam with a bluegrass band
5. Lean to pinch and strum your "dog"
6. Pinch out 70 - 100 scales every day like you've already been doing it for a year and a half

Although my "dog" Tiggy did really enjoyed my pinching out a tune on his back, according to Mr. Jones I'm well past due to chuck my harp in the trash and buy a very fancy, custom made diatonic harp. Problem is, I really love my harp! I think its the coolest harp around! (...and I'm right.) So chucking it is out of the question. (That and I can't afford a custom diatonic.) So it looked like the next step was to pinch out scales. But as I began my first ackward steps at pinching a scale, I realized that I had only been learning and using the very basic strum. I knew there were others. So I decided I needed to learn other, more complicated strums before moving on.

My Internet research on the subject lead me back to the same old instruction books, none under $25. On Amazon.com they had a preview of one of the books and it talked about using a thumb pick and two finger picks. (So does Mr. Jones by the way.) One finger pick on the pointer finger and one on the middle finger. I was just debating if I should contact my x-wife and have her send all my old autoharp books or just buy a new one, when I realized that I had seen some free guitar lessons on the web! They would have strums! So I checked it out and sure enough they did. On lesson 2, part 5 he shows the first strum. So that's where I'm starting. He has other strums along the way, and it's good to look over the instructions he has on fingering chords on the guitar. It reminds me how blessed I am to be just pressing chord bars instead of knotting up my fingers trying to make the chords like our guitar friends.

This strum is a little harder, but I'm having a blast going back to the same songs I've done before and trying this strum on them. That, and trying to keep up with the metronome at the same time! The only problem is that I've started putting off laundary and anything else I can to have more time to practice when I get home from work! This is GREAT! Who knew strumming could be so much fun!