"My humble opinion is that if you grit your teeth and devote the time to improving your skills on the guitar and discovering what the instrument has to offer you, you WILL have more enjoyment with it in the long run. Put in the time; it will be worth it."

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Sharon. I use the guitar primarily to accompany songs, but I have also studied classical guitar and have a small but very satisfying repertoire of classic pieces. And it can be most gratifying to stick a classic piece into a program of songs, and then hear people mutter, "Ye gods! He can actually play that thing!!"

I found that learning some classic guitar was a smooth, easy, and quick way to learn new chords, chord fingerings, and chord variations, that I could then put to use accompanying songs.

No less a person that Beethoven referred to the guitar as "an orchestra in miniature." Franz Schubert was perpetually broke, and lots of times he didn't have access to a piano, so he did a lot of his composing (including some of his songs) on the guitar that he carried around with him. The guitar is a complete musical instrument, with a huge repertoire of its own, plus it can play most lute music directly, and transcriptions from both piano and harpsichord (I have a friend who is transcribing some Chopin pieces to the guitar—Chopin sounds great on a nylon-string guitar!), along with such things as Bach cello suites.

But you don't have to aspire to such lofty heights. Fernando Sor wrote about 120 graded studies for the guitar, from dead simple to extremely difficult. Even the simplest of these studies sounds good and all of them are real music, in the sense of "etudes," not just exercises.

Practicing and learning some of this music is highly satisfying in itself, and it will aid immensely in learning new chords and chord variations (inversions, added notes, etc.), bass runs, little bits of melody or counterpoint to song melodies, and in working out song accompaniments in general.

A little concentrated practice on the guitar can yield a great deal of satisfaction for its own sake, and aid you immensely in making your song accompaniments easy and tasteful. More than just simple rhythms and block chords.

Get something like "Solo Guitar Playing, Vol. I" by Frederick Noad or "Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. I" by Aaron Schearer and give it a shot.

Don Firth

P. S. A piano is a great instrument, but a guitar is easier to carry around.