While not completely vanquished, I’ve got some basic chord changes down pretty good now. My fingers aren’t as handicapped as they once were, and the muscle memory is developing well, to the point that I can go to the D chord without thinking about it—a HUGE improvement. I have “Boys Better” down pretty well, and the changes are clean enough that if I miss one finger I can still fake it.

I looked for some new songs to learn, first thinking that “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here” by Weezer would be good, until I found that the main figure is all power chords. “Just What I Needed” is pretty straight-up, but there are some odd B chords in there that make life interesting. I settled last night on that song and “Radio Free Europe“, which features the tricky F# and B chords, as well as some others I’ve already learned in reverse order.

Probably the biggest thing now is just to keep practicing so that I’m not clamping down so hard on the frets, which leads me to miss notes and make playing painful. I put a good bit of time into it this past week, so I’m feeling pretty good about this afternoon’s lesson.