Clap

I'm going to try to learn this.

It's Clap by Steve Howe and it's one of the hardest things in the acoustic guitar repertoire.

I should mention at this point that I'm a truly awful guitarist. I have difficulty with the most basic barre chords. This is why I've decided to take drastic action. No time shall be wasted learning easy songs and working up to the harder ones, while secretly thinking I'm the bee's knees because I can play Scarborough Fair without looking at the strings. No, to get my technique to the point where I can play Clap, I must play Clap.

I am aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect. (In a clamshell: rank beginners don't tend to realise just how rank their beginnerness is.) Though I recognise my own utter lack of ability, I may well be failing to recognise my lack of ability to improve my ability. Even while consciously taking this very possibility into account. That would be a sort of Hofstadter's corrolary to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Or maybe it wouldn't, but there's certainly an isomorphism in there somewhere.

My progress so far? You see the point seven seconds into the video where the chords start changing rapidly, the first two being a G shape and a C shape, both at the 7th fret (hence, barre chords)? Today, I've been practising moving my pinky finger quickly from the top string to the fifth string while keeping the barre in place and trying not to accidentally mute the top string with my great fleshy palm. The other two fingers of the C shape... I'll add those later.

I might add a Clap Progress Report onto the end of a few future posts. It probably won't take up too much extra space.