@Connor McTighe done and added, https://gigwidget.vercel.app/shared/song/bc96bd98-c045-451d-87d7-1b23a17131d3

@Steve Hornstein there's just something about Gertrude. 🤙🏽

@Victor Penniman wow! I love that! I had a black acoustic I'd named Morrigan, but Boudicca!!! ❤️

@Billy T Scrapper that's kind of my zone lol

@Ronald Parada thanks, man! That means a lot!

I've gotten a lot of mileage from the Pumping Nylon books, for both classical guitar and for ukulele. Mostly left-hand exercises, walking the frets and such. I'm looking for a decent clawhammer book, and something on Travis Picking hymns. 🤔

I found a book, a Carcassi guitar method book published in 1886. I was in a situation where I had time, and I needed to occupy both my hands and my mind, and I had known the basics of reading music from elementary school but forgot most of it. So I was learning to read music, learning to play guitar, and in the evenings I'd attend jams with a few others and learn more about chords and strum styles. My goal, originally, was to learn classical guitar so I could serenade my wife on our back balcony of a summer evening, sitting in the star-glider and listening to the crickets and music... She's now my ex-wife and she *hates* classical guitar. That was in 2009. In 2014, I picked up my first uke, and in 2016 my first mandolin. I play them all both strum-style and finger-style, depending on the occasion - but now, rather than play for someone, I generally play for me. Others can enjoy, and others can request - but I play to satisfy a crave of my own.

I was in a situation where my entire life had crashed down around me. I had time, and my wife and I agreed that if the situation was what it was, I **had** to use that time to improve myself. So I did, with all kinds of classes and self-guided education, pushing myself in all areas. Physically, mentally, emotionally, professionally... I was rewriting who I fundamentally was. And my one selfish surprise, I decided I was teaching myself classical guitar. I saw my wife and I, after we came out the other side of all that, sitting on our balcony on a star-glider, watching the sun set as I played quiet classical guitar to serenade her. Welp, she's now my ex-wife. Not because she didn't like classical guitar, though that definitely didn't help. 🤣 But yeah, I found a Carcassi method book from the 1880s, and spent a couple solid hours every day, six days a week, learning to read sheet, arpeggios, scales, runs, keys and transposition... That was the formal side. Evenings, there were a dozen or so of us getting together regularly to play more casual, popular music. So sitting around in a jam. Less about precise finger styling and more about chord shapes, transitions, playing with others, and learning to play and sing at the same time. That all started in 2008, and nowadays I play out pretty much wherever I go. For me, mostly.