My first real six-string

If Bryan Adams got his first real six-string in 1969, I got mine in 2006. Yes, I bought a Guitar couple of months back. I was always crazy about guitar but never had a chance to learn. It was when Chandra went on holiday to India, I decided to buy a guitar and start learning. After some advice from a colleague and the shop guy, I bought Yamaha F310 from Sound Control.

My first six-string, it's a cigarette lighter.



Getting started - tuning the guitar
I left the office half-an-hour early that day to collect my guitar and was eager to start playing it. I came home and opened the box, it came with spare set of strings and also a beginner's DVD. The DVD was very handy and I started watching it. After the introduction, it tells you how to tune your guitar. I didn't have a tuner and I started turning the tuner of upper E string. There was a loud sound like bursting a balloon and the string was broken! Bad start...

Fixing broken string
I was disappointed but then I had a spare set of strings so I decided to put the new string. I had no clue how to do it but I thought it should be simple. I started putting the new string, pulled the string hard into the tuner and tried rotating around the tuner. But it wasn't getting tight enough. It was looking like it is going to break too so I decided to give it up for the day.

Next day
I told my colleague what happened and he went "oh no". But he told me that it is easy, just rotate around the tuner. I told I tried it... He offered me help to fix it. But I decided to give it another shot in the evening when I go home. I went home and tried to fix the broken string. I pulled the string too hard so that it is tight and then tried to rotate around the tuner and broke the spare one as well. Very bad...

Next day
I went to the Sound Control shop in the evening and told the guy who sold me the Guitar what happened. He asked me to get the Guitar so that he can fix it and also teach me to replace string. Some relief...

Next day
I went to the shop and the gentleman at the shop was kind enough to give me another spare set of strings for free. He also taught me how to replace string. I decided to buy a tuner as it makes life easy. And then I started learning the chords and tunes using the DVD. Finally...

By the time Chandra was back from her holiday, I was able to impress her a little bit with a catchy hindi tune "tujhe dekha to yeh jaana sanam".

Watch the wonderful "Hotel California".. the song that inspired me to learn guitar.