[Johnny Raw]

I said I'd like to write a blog type thing about my progress and some were supportive so here we go.

I will keep updating this thread so that anyone interested can click, if they're not, well....

Back story is buying an old Yamaha acoustic on eBay (FG 401) about seven or eight years ago (much alcohol has passed my lips since so not really sure on that) but made the mistake of trying to learn online, quickly lost confidence that I was doing anything right so decided to book lessons immediately.

Being Irish, years later is as 'immediately' as I get so here I am, giving it another go.

This all started when I spotted a great deal on a Yamaha APX 500 that some guitar fiend on a football forum I'm on had posted a link to (it's a massive board and folk there post about anything and everything). Mrs Raw and I were halfway through a bottle of bubbles (that's another story) when I saw the post but I'm fairly sure this had nothing to do with my deciding it was too good a deal to miss, anyway, out came my phone and the purchase was about to be made.... "John, you already have a guitar that you can't play, why are you buying another one?"

"Well, erm....it's because this is a different one to what I have. Oh and it's semi electric so this will be much better than that second hand one I bought. Oh and erm....Ah, I just like the look of it and every other guitar head on the site is banging on about what a good deal it is."

Mrs Raw is pretty laid back, knows me like the back of her hand so asked to have a look at it. There was a choice of three colours, natural, black and a blue. She decided that despite my preferring the black, the blue 'looked nicer'.

I bought the blue one.

I think I realised that the only way I could justify it was if I finally bit the bullet and booked some lessons.

Two weeks later, I was sourcing a local tutor and spotted on a website that they do couples lessons, so as Mrs Raw loves music as much as myself (keyboards is her thing) and we now had two guitars, I thought she may as well learn as well. She wasn't interested but I may have inadvertently given her the impression that I'd already booked and paid for our first lesson, so she agreed to give it a lash.

Tutor is amazing, obviously good at what he does, was a bit surprised when he asked me to put my (rather large) hands against his and exclaimed "Oh, what I could do with those hands"...

We both left the first lesson absolutely buzzing!

First chords we were on were E minor and D6. He's teaching us using America's Horse With No Name, a song we both love.

We've since had a second lesson, update to follow.