For the past couple of years I’ve thought of taking up the guitar. I played guitar a bit when I was a teenager, but haven’t touched one in 50 years.
My Mother has dementia and as such I have a higher chance of developing it too. Learning a musical instrument is said to help fight off the disease and is my main reason for getting a guitar.
So, with all that said, after looking at many guitar options, I purchased a starter kit from Fender. Fender calls it the Affinity Series® Stratocaster® HSS Pack.
It’s a beginner kit so it basically comes with everything you need to get started with the electric guitar. The guitar it’s self is a Fender Stratocaster set up like Jeff Beck had his. It has two single coil pickups & one humbucker pickup at the bridge.
So the kit shows up by FedEx on 01/21/2025 late in the afternoon. It was bitter cold outside so I let the packaging warm up before getting all the bits and pieces unboxed.
As anyone who takes up the guitar will tell you, it’s brutal on your fingers the first few weeks. So I’ve been going very slow and easy.
I got the bright idea to setup this old Casio keyboard we have had since the kids were little. It took the best part of a day to get it back into working order, and to find and modify a 9 volt power supply for it.
So now I practice with the guitar until my fingers hurt and then I switch to the keyboard to work on learning how to read music. It’s been a long time since high school band!
I’m also reading about Music Theory and Ear Training. The weather this winter has been pretty bad, and all of this has turned out to be a pleasant distraction.
I don’t have any time frame or goals for all of this, as the learning aspect is the main thing about the whole adventure.
There is a wealth of online guitar training and the kit also came with 3 months of free training from Fender. At the present, it looks like I’m all set for the foreseeable future.