One of the things that seems to make playing guitar so difficult is this strange contortion of fingering known as the barre chord.
Basically, to play one of these things, you lay your index finger across the neck of the guitar, depressing all of the strings against that fret. At the same time, your other fingers are pressing strings to the board in order to get an actual chord, since all of the strings at the same fret do not a chord make. (Why??? I don't know...)
So I was goofing around with the guitar tonight. I looked up a couple of tunes by Toad the Wet Sprocket. They seemed reasonably uncomplicated, particularly Good Intentions, which is only 3 chords and a little riff. But there was one song that used barre chords.
Normally, I woulnd't even consider playing a song with barre chords, but every once in a while I get the inclination to play one and recall the badness that echoes forth form my practice amp. So I did, but this time it was different.
I had bothered to hook up the pedal this time, specifically because I wanted to test changing the master volume so I could directly connect my headphones. And of course, while I was connecting the headphones, I picked a very distorted patch/effect. So when I played the new chords, it sounded distorted, but good!
I was excited, since I've never played one of these chords before and had it sound worth listening to, so I spent a good half hour learning to play other songs with similar chords. And they sounded good. Ah, success with the guitar.
I eventually moved on to the White Stripes, which sounds much better with a modicum of distortion than Toad does. When I eventually get a cable with two male ends, I'll record something from the guitar onto the computer, and you will all see how much the distortion makes me sound like a pro!
