@Libitina What do you mean by āmy heritageā?
This is a very interesting topic. 
Iām very impressed by all the ambitious goals that are mentioned here already. Congrats to everybody who has achieved what had been planned for this year and who made good progress on their musical journey 
My own list just contains of
#1 having fun
#2 enjoying the journey
#3 having even more fun
And guess what? Iāve achieved all three of them 
Iāve started in summer 2023, and now Iām still here (can barely believe this myself). I have played and practised nearly every single day (at least for a few minutes) - and Iām still as motivated as I had been on the very first day!
Everything is so much fun, the course, the song tutorials, the clubs, PMT ā¦ and the community, of course. There is so much to discover and enjoy on the way through the modules. JG has so much to offer, much more than I have expected or hoped for when I started my journey.
My progress is slow, but steady, and I donāt put any pressure on it and donāt want to rush through the lessons.
Iām looking forward to everything that is to come in 2025.
Thank you so much, Justin, the whole JG-team and all members of this wonderful community.
You really are incredible! See you all in 2025 
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A great topic Silvia.
#1 for me is that someone actually wanted to pay to hear me play! I still cannot quite get my head around that one 
#2 Strumming. Being able to listen to a song and get the rythum and strumming pattern without even thinking about it. In fact if I do try to think it through, it goes to pot. I now just strum to the āfeelingā of the song. it does help that 90% of the songs I play are country or traditional rock and roll, so the basis of the songs are very similar
#3 This is the one for me. If someone plays a song and gives me the initial chord progression, I can strum along to it and it does not sound bad. Several times this has happened now, even on stage, where I will be told āBy the way, we are going to do XXXX now as it will go down well. It is G,C,Dā.
I will add one more if I may, my confidence level has gone up 100% from the start of the year.
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Itās great to read of your achievements Silvia, and everyone elseās too!
For myself, since I needed some time to relax with the guitar when my mother passed away - and the guitar just gave me that, because just when I needed sitting down and doing my own thing, I fortunately had learned quite a bit along those 3 years before. But now, itās time to restart a routine and go a bit straighter forward.
achievementsā¦?
- slowly being able to play and sing at the same time - that took me quite long and I still find it a bit difficult. My singing has to improve thoughā¦
- started songwriting and it gave me great moments of joy! Iāll have to do it over and over againā¦
- Finally took part in an open mic (here, online) My performance had quite a few flaws, but I did it! And learned valuable things from it.
- (is this allowed to have a number four? ) I recently found that I could quite easily come up with chord progressions and various playing styles that donāt sound all that bad. Makes songwriting more fun!
PS. While I was lazy like I stated ealier following the lessons for a year or so, I learned many of the foundations earlier with Justin and that was a big part of my guitar abilities - Thanks a lot, Justin!
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Bravo Rogierā¦all the effort youāve putting in is giving its fruits! You also mentioned a new improved method which I can relate to a lotā¦along with becoming better players we first become better learners 
Thatās priceless Brianā¦meā¦Iām still very far from that, the best approving comment I had from my husband has been recently as I learned a couple of Justinās Blues Arrangementsā¦" ah! Youāre finally learning something fun!" 
Finding the right sound for your ear is really something I want to achieveā¦but still from the acoustic guitar 
This feels great! I sometimes can hardly believe I can actually play a guitar
Developing the ear is one of the most fulfilling aspect of learning IMHO, the process is still very slow for me but it has started!
I do hope to get there sometime in my lifetime! I guess itās something one should feel inspired to get into it.
It does! And a lot too! You can embrace the slow learning and feel satisfied and good with little andā¦well it just helps so much when you grab your guitar!
This is absolutely my favourite achievement among all the amazing ones that have been shared here!
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Thatās great to read this Michael, I can relate especially to feeling less clumsy at strumming!
ā¦which btw sounds great!!! But Iām sure you can identify ways to be happier with yourself.
Wow wow wowā¦this must feel incredible!
I think a lot of us can relate! And yes itās absolutely great! Playing and singing for your wife is even greater!
This one is immediate to the eye, Jenny, your videos are just awesome! Donāt get me wrong, also the songs are awesome but the stage presence is not something that anyone can easily develop.
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Stage presenceā¦ yes! I was in my second show this past week. My main take away was that I need to work on stage presence. Iām still so focused on playing my part that I donāt have much brain bandwidth left to remember to engage with the audience. I need to practice this so I it becomes more automatic, natural, and not a distraction from playing. Jenny @Jenndye429 is a good role model!
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Biggest achievement this year is playing six open mics and having a different set list every time. It really focused my attention on getting the songs to as high a level as possible and work on all these ālast niggly bitsā that still donāt sound so good and that just linger around when there is no performance pressure.
Along the way this year I have learned or realised three things that really helped me improve my guitar playing. All of them should have been obvious to me and have probably have been mentioned to me before but somehow they didnāt click at the time:
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a) Check if the melody of a song is inside my comfortable vocal range and if not b) transpose the song before learning it. Be radical in the transposing if necessary, and if that doesnāt help then donāt bother with learning the song.
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Look away from the fretboard and let the fingers find their way around on their own. Initially this is awkward. But I have hit the wall a couple of times this year where a chord change just wouldnāt come out clean and then I tried this out: look away and let the fingers feel their way from one chord to the next, how far to the left / right does each finger need to go, how many strings are crossed and so on. And it worked - Iām no expert on the why, but I suppose itās releated to the extra focus and attention and really slowing down the movement. I still look, not saying you shouldnāt, but it also boosts confidence when you know that you can do a chord change without having to look.
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When adding singing to fingerstyle guitar first start with singing just to the thumb movements - the base track
- ideally quarter notes - a given when travis picking but not necessarily always the case. If you canāt sing over the baseline you canāt sing when all the other fingers start joining in. It also helps getting the groove bedded down and less timing wobbles lateron (my age-old problem). I used to add singing only when I could pick the whole song using all fingers, but thatās much later in the learning process with so much more to control so itās really easy for things to go off piste. The last two travis picking songs Iāve learned this year (no video yet) I tried singing over the baseline right from the start as soon as I had the base line down and it is making a big difference, not necessarily in how long it takes to fully learn the song, but I get a deeper familiarity with the song - which in turn gives me more confidence playing it - if things go pearshape in a performance I can fall back on a simpler verions of just voice and thumb.
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Keep shredding!
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Having only started in October, 2023, itās difficult to limit them to 3, but Iāll go with these:
- Improving my rhythm. Rhythm has never come to me naturally, so Iāve practiced with a metronome for almost everything. Later I added drum loops and have dedicated time every day to focus on rhythm. I still wonāt say Iām good at it, but Iām much, much better than when I started.
- Improving my ear. I felt from the beginning that it would be important to become proficient with the language of music, specifically intervals, to recognize them when I hear them and then learn how to produce them. I began ear training even before I bought my guitar, and Iāve made different ear training exercises a part of my daily practice. I still have a long way to go, but Iāve come surprisingly far in a year.
- Improving my dexterity with the guitar. Iāve used my hands pretty much all day long for many decades - landscaping, typing, construction, dish-washingā¦ Most of those things involve more force and less precision than playing guitar, so Iāve really had to train myself to employ small, smooth, precise, gentle hand movements. Again, thereās a lot left to do, but itās amazing how much better I am now than a year ago. I truly feel like this part has been a lesson in meditation.
Honorable Mention #1: I spent most of the year looking for ways to improve ergonomics. Iāve never been comfortable in any sitting position, and I tried everything. After months of exploration, last week I got a Strandberg Boden Essential (the ācheapā one), and it is genuinely life-changing for me. Not only does the body shape allow me to hold it comfortably in a couple of positions while sitting, but the neck profile makes it incredibly easy to play. Now I feel like Iām interacting with a sensitive instrument instead of wrestling with a piece of equipment.
Honorable Mention #2: About a month ago, I completely reworked my practice routine to isolate areas where I feel like I need to improve most. I arranged it so that itās slightly different each day of the week to keep it from becoming monotonous. For topics like rhythm that I do daily, I change the activity that I do so that it differs from the one the day before. These changes have resulted in significant improvements in my playing and also made my practice time even more fun.
I guess I couldnāt really keep it to three.
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So coming up to 3 years learning now and no, that is not the 3 achievements but close! It. Defining what really is an āachievementā is difficult to for me.
That said, things that have become more apparent are:
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It is easier for me to recognise the notes on the low E and A strings and I am counting from the nut less and less.
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Learning new songs, occasionally by ear is getting much easier and quicker to master.
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Still enjoying it!
I am under no illusion that Iāll ever be an Eddie Van Helen or Jimi Hendrix but when I look back at what I have achieved, Iām close enough for me and will continue to try and get better!
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Iāve been thinking about whether I had anything to put here. But I guess my three would be:
- Being able to play any guitar at all. Started October 2023 and did not expect anything and I am now thoroughly enjoying myself.
- Learning fingerstyle. I thought that must be years away when I started, but Iāve already embarked on the fingertyle song I wanted to play most of all and am pretty decent at it.
- Feeling good enough about my playing to post an AVoYP (or any video, really). I also wouldāve guessed that was a far away thing when I started, but I had something polished enough that I was ready, (and actually kind of proud to share!), this year.
Like other people here, Iām so sure that it would be a different story if I hadnāt stumbled upon Justin Guitar. The wealth of knowledge and the camaraderie here are exactly what I needed to make it past the initial hurdle and enjoy myself, and make any headway at all without being disheartened by learning hiccups all the time.
Hereās to many years to come! 
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I am very happy with my 2024, I had a lot of fun playing guitar. In terms of achievements:
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Playing with people really improved my timing/rhythm and ear. It is far from perfect yet, but when I listen to some of my past recordings I could actually hear problems now.
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I played 4 times this year in front of 100-150 people, who were well prepared to listen guitar students - no flying bottles so far.
Those were group performances with a few guitars on stage, both acoustic and electric. I had a little bit of spotlight with some simple melodies (solos) played. I tremendously enjoyed the whole experience and it has been a perfect motivation for playing guitar. -
I learnt so much from Blues immersion class. Starting from many essays read on Blues greats, listening to some fantastic Blues JG curated playlists (BB King is my top artist on Spotify this year!) to improving significantly my technique, especially bending and vibrato. I started improvising as well, very basic things, but much better to where I was before.
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In few days there will be three years since I play guitar. I tried playing Hotel California Solo in year 2, but it was impossible. I made it a goal then to learn it before end of year 3 and I managed to do so.
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Picked up guitar playing again, found Justin Guitar and joined the Community.
I have visited the forums more or less every single day since, but I have not been participating as actively as I would have liked. But I know from previous experience that this requires a lot of social energy from me that I donāt always have a lot of, so itās not really unexpected.
I have recorded a couple of songs and shared them in AVOYP, which I hope to do more of in the future. -
Got my first steel string acoustic guitar. So far Iāve only had a classical guitar, and played everything except classical pieces on it.
Getting the steel sting also meant that I started learning playing with a pick. Turn outs, itās kinda hard. But thereās been definite progress and Iāll keep at it. -
Learned a classical piece on my classical guitar, which I have never done before.
My finger dexterity and control have always been pretty bad in general, and when I first picked up a guitar almost 30 years ago, I quickly resigned myself to strumming simple chords, as I thought that this was the most I was ever going to be able to learn. I did not have a teacher to tell me otherwise.
I think I learned the piece just before I joined Justin Guitar and it was a big part of kicking off this journey of (actually) learning to play the guitar (for real, this time).
Iām not playing it terribly well and I donāt know how much time Iāll devote to classical in the future, but this is the only thing that feels like a real achievement in my playing this year.
There has been other progress, for sure, but it mostly feels like tiny, gradual steps rather than big achievements.
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As long as you recognise those little steps as progress because thatās what learning a guitar is, a tiny bit better each day (well most days) but it adds up to something over a period of months. Maybe that classical piece doesnāt sound how you would like it to sound but maybe keep chipping away at it in the background, perhaps not as your main focus but a few minutes here and there and it will likely improve as your your guitar skills in general improve.
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Youāre right, Matt. Itās so easy to become frustrated with our perceived lack of day-to-day progress - itās important to remind ourselves that there is, in fact, progress over time.
I think I will keep coming back to the classical piece, as you suggest. Not only will it likely improve as my general skills improve, but I expect it will also work the other way: the time spend on trying to make it sound better will result in a general improvement in technique.
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That is it! And it really helps to be able to acknowledge all the small steps and improvements!
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Great topic Silvia! The first months of 2024, I felt like I was making good progress going through the grades and modules. Then I sort of became obsessed with barre chords a few months ago and couldnāt stop pushing myself to conquer them. I didnāt notice that I was achieving much as I was constantly working on consistently forming the chords and building finger strength, but looking back now I realize I have accomplished more than a little.
- I can now play E and A shaped major, minor barre chords up and down the neck, with some embellishments without much thought. Thinking back to how it was when I started, the progress with barre chords alone is worthy of at least three top achievement spots.
- I have found that I can play and sing at the same time, though the quality of my singing might be painful to some human ears. My dog Sadie doesnāt mindā¦too much.
- I am beginning to notice some progress in finger independence and can mix in some chord strumming with embellishments and riffs and have it feel fluid and in time.
I was actually feeling a bit discouraged with my progress, but looking at where I was a few months ago and where I am now, I think I might be doing ok. The journey is still fun and that keeps me going.
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I waited until tonight to list my 3.
My biggest one is important to me, so for Number 1
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Tonight up uploaded my first song to the AVOYP section. This is my number 1 accomplishment.
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I have learned to to expand my musical tastes this year. Also I have learned to respect guitarists in general regardless of the type of music.
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Sticking to my guns about singing. I try and sing almost every song thats in my register. This has provent to be much much more difficult. I will not give up.
I have really enjoied this year playing and learning. Also getting to know many of you. The the possitive enegry of this place especially in a time when things just dont seem to be going well. Thank you eveyone for the great spirit and the great attitudes.
Jason
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