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Friday, January 11, 2008

Update on the new LP

Sorry for the length of this post but I do get to the point at the end.
As some of you know I have MS (past 10 years) and because of the difficulty with co-ordination this causes I found playing very difficult and so lost interest and only picked up my acoustic now and again until eventually stopping altogether about 5 years ago.Then I got into refinishing because I still liked having guitars around me but even with 14 on walls and stands around my house, the desire to pick one up and play had vitually disappeard. In October I went into hospital for a knee operation and came out with an infection that put me back in for a month so when I finally came home I was, and still am confined to my upper floor study, so unfortunately have not had access to my workshop for 3 months! So to cheer myself up I bought a Les Paul Standard for my own 50th birthday present combined with my Christmas present (see below).

The long and short of this story is that this guitar has changed my life :) because of it's beauty and value I felt I could not justify just looking at it. So with nothing better to do I started downloading tabs and midi files and then picked a tune that I was going to learn giving myself 2 weeks to do it. I started with something simple - Smoke on the Water, which I used to be able to play with my eyes shut, but when your right hand will not work in conjunction with your left it's not so easy nor is holding on to a pick.
Because of the set up of the LP, the 60's slim neck and playabilty I found the left hand coming back quite naturally but inspite of 3 hours a day practice, strumming was proving more difficult and I kept dropping the pick. The latter I solved by getting a thumb pick. I also decided to go for tunes that were lead orientated as I could still manage pentatonic scales.I have a Gibson LP classic but with a 59 neck and a '61 reissue SG neither have I bothered to set up properly just being satisfied with having rebuilt and refinished them and so had no deisre to play them as I couldn't get a satisfying sound.
3 weeks later with the LP Standard I can now bang off Gary Moore's The Loner and Santana's Samba Pa Ti, next week it's Floyd's shine on you crazy diamond.Honestly I just can't put this guitar down :lol:everything is starting to come back and thanks to free midi file downloads, playing along with these make such a difference rather than the old days just using tabs.
Thank you Gibson for giving me a new lease of life. And thank you God for the determination, inspiration and motivation (in fact all the 'tions')

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