roo - you lucky bugger, can I carry your bags to Europe? I really hope Joe tours down here with Chickenfoot, alone, hell anybody. My brother bought me "Legendary Guitar Licks" DVD for Xmas, the one by Danny Gill - I put it on the other night and it confirmed there is no way I could ever learn a Satch song for about 10 years......I turned it off.

Chelle - by now hopefully your sis is in recovery, and on the mend permanently, must be an aura of good vibes floating round her at the moment from T2Jers, Joe, everyone.

Skippy Girl,

Latest teaching for kids here, not sure if it's worldwide thinking, is to learn lead guitar (or "note" playing) before chords.

It makes sense really, chords require control over every finger to cleanly fret the notes and bridge neatly over others because you're playing more than one string.

I learnt chords first and it's good for simple "koom-by-ya" style songs, but it can be very frustrating (as you've found) with complex chords.

My boy started learning guitar recently and he's 8. He can play the first melody line to "Ten Words" and learnt it in one sitting. If you pick something like that you get enourmous satisfaction from hearing the melody and learning more fingering techniques but only with one or 2 fingers at a time.

If you look at the tab book for "Always" (the first satch song I learnt), and ten words, and many others, there are recognisable melodies that are not difficult to learn fairly rapidly. That is great fun. Then, every time you play them, you improve your feeling, style, method, etc... And can flip through other material spotting easier sections of melodies you like and learning them.

Give that a go, especially Ten Words, let me know how that goes.

Be prepared to hit a brick wall when you get to the "tricky" bits in each song though! :) It will take a while to start learning the method of doing the faster bits with bends and stretches, etc when you hit them.

kitch56 Next Monday 7.48 pm

YAY! My sister is finally out of surgery! The doc said everything went well, and the tumor came out easily. She'll be in recovery for another 2 hours or so until my sister can see her again. She might be able to come home Saturday. She's cut from the top of her head down to above her ear, so that's going to take a while to heal, as well as her skull fusing back together. Ouch! Sorry if that was to much detail...

Thank you all so much for all your prayers and good thoughts.

Michelle - just been catching up on a zillion pages. I wanted to send good vibes to you and your Sis and all your family. Sounds like everything has gone really well so here's some more support from this side of the pond for a speedy recovery

Joe - hi, your timing is perfect as always. If you haven't already you really should check out the numerous cool vids of you that Cheese linked to a couple of days ago.... good stuff from the 80's

ChickenPA or ChickenUK/Europe - hmmm, decisions decisions! I'm sure I read a month back that there were going to be UK arena gigs too.... anyway, count me in peeps. Do I need to hire the (fan) tour bus now?

Michelle - great news!

Roo - you must be psychic! Driving into work today I listened to Super Colossal and got to Ten Words and I thought "I might have a go at that, bit gnarly in the middle but otherwise might be doable"!!! I must have channeled you.

I also thought about my strategy for the goal ( 1 Satch Song in 1 Year) and thought maybe I should just go to trying to learn one and keep building up.

I enjoy the chords (was reading about sus chords last night, they look cool) and want to strum cool songs but I didn't think I had to wait to learn that before I tried picking something out.

I am so sad I can't join the group of T2Jers who will see Chickenfoot in the UK or Europe, maybe I could call one of you at one of the gigs to hear the show over the phone if you have a skype phone? Other than that I need a miracle.

Hi Joe,

Dweezel Zappa gave you and Yngwie a tribute by inserting your names in the song Billy the Mountain or was it A Mountain Named Billy? Anyway, it was a super concert last night at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. It warmed my heart to see/hear my Steve laughing so hard he almost fell out of his seat! Man, the vibe in the place was so warm--great music with 8 other musicians on stage with Dweezel! The highlight was the Billy the Mountain song--30 minutes long and so humorously done!