{"id":475,"date":"2011-06-25T09:44:48","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T14:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=475"},"modified":"2012-08-27T13:25:26","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T18:25:26","slug":"my-third-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"My Third Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On <a title=\"Taking the Plunge Into Music\" href=\"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?page_id=272\">Wednesday, June 25, 2008<\/a>, I took my first electric guitar lesson with Jim Goelitz at <a title=\"Jim Goelitz - Kagan &amp; Gaines\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kaganandgaines.com\/p-132042-james-goelitz-guitarbass-instructor.aspx\">Kagan &amp; Gaines<\/a> in Forest Park (a nearby suburb of Chicago). Except for a few gaps of a week or two, I&#8217;ve taken a lesson every week since then.<\/p>\n<p>For the first year or so, I took an hour lesson, but then cut back to 30 minutes for reasons of economy. Having a weekly lesson to prepare for has been important in helping me maintain a regular practice schedule. In the beginning I practiced 20 to 30 minutes a day&#8211;most days. More recently, I&#8217;ve tried to practice at least an hour (usually in two 30 minute segments). Sometimes I practice a total of 90 minutes, but other times I miss a day. I usually average around five hours a week and always wish I could manage more. I&#8217;m convinced that more playing time leads to more improvement.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to believe that I&#8217;ve been playing guitar for three years. In some ways, I still feel like a beginner. Given how much there is, potentially, to learn, perhaps I always will. At the same time, when I look back, I can see how much I&#8217;ve learned so far. Scales, chords, riffs, techniques or music that once seemed challenging, if not impossible, I now can play comfortably. There are always new challenges, but fortunately I love learning new things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, June 25, 2008, I took my first electric guitar lesson with Jim Goelitz at Kagan &amp; Gaines in Forest Park (a nearby suburb of Chicago). Except for a few gaps of a week or two, I&#8217;ve taken a lesson every week since then. For the first year or so, I took an hour [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,42,12],"tags":[179,15,33,60,32,112,180],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}