I’ve been practicing every day for five weeks and I’m getting discouraged. I’d really appreciate any advice or feedback. My issues:
1. My chord change speeds are getting slower.
A/D: I started at 24 changes per minute, and my best is 35. Most of the time I’m around 27–29 now.
A/E: I started at 32 and have gotten up to 46, but I usually land around 40–43 now.
E/D: I started at 25, got up to 35, but mostly I’m around 29–31 now.
I thought I would gradually get better, but I barely made any progress and seem to be backtracking somehow. Overall, it feels physically impossible to go faster. I have to look at the fretboard to place my fingers, then look back at the strings to strum, which slows me down.
2. Finger grooves.
I’m practicing Old Time Rock and Roll with a metronome, (very slowly!), but my strumming doesn’t sound good at all.
I noticed that when I start my practice sessions with perfect chords, my chords sound clean when I pick individual strings. But eventually, after moving on to chord changes and attempting to play a song, I seem to get a groove/indent in my index finger, and then I feel like I have to press harder and harder and/or press down at a different part of the tip of my finger to keep the notes from buzzing. (I printed out a string action ruler and followed some instructions online to see if my action was too high, but it seemed like it was a normal height.)
If anyone has tips for either improving chord change speed or fixing the strumming/pressure issue, I’d really appreciate it.
The answer is in the question, you’re 5 weeks in. After an initial spurt of progress you’ve hit a plateau. Totally normal trajectory for a beginner, we’ve all been there. The fingers will harden up, just need more time. Chord changes will get faster, just need more time.
You need to measure progress at a greater interval, eg measure chord changes once a month. Another idea is to take a video once a month, just for your own reference so you can see the progress for yourself.
Yep 100%. In my 15th year of playing, accomplished intermediate player with good confidence. Yet I have days, some times a string of days where I feel I’ve regressed heaps. Can’t explain why.
Just as tony says above. Its why so many give up in the 1st year of playing. It really isn’t a straight forward instrument to learn, but its amazing all the same. Ive found the after the 1st couple of months there arnt so much major breakthroughs but i realise the the thing ive be working on for a while i can now do. It becomes a gradual process. B7 cord took ages to play well and without losing rhythm. Still early days for me as well. Dont give up and think years to learn not weeks/months. Thats what makes it interesting!
Thinking you are backtracking is a really common occurrence when learning a new skill.
Read about the “Conscious Competence” learning model - when you start out you don’t realise the mistakes you are making. As you get better you start to notice them - you are not getting worse, you are getting better, but it doesn’t feel like that
Take a day off every now and then. If I remember correctly, Justin advises to start out with 4 days a week. And don’t practice for too long, 20-30 min a day is enough at this point.
Have you tried playing the strings without looking at them during the chord perfect exercises? You will have to learn to do this.
Also, if you’re looking first if your fingering is correct and then whether you strum the right strings, you’re not doing the one minute changes exercise as intended - you’re actually doing one minute perfect changes (which you will encounter later on in your journey). At this point, those changes don’t all need to ring out clearly and be strummed correctly - most of them have to be ok-ish. Also, it’s no big deal if by accident you strum the 5th string when playing the D-chord e.g. - no one will notice, it won’t sound awful. You might go a little bit easier on yourself.
This is normal. Your fingertips are still soft and squishy. As you discovered, after a bit of playing, you will get a groove in your finger tip. Because of this you will have to press harder to push the string against the fret to make it ring clearly, which in turn will cause your fingertip to spread out, which enhances your chances of muting adjacent strings. Over time, you will develop calluses, making your fingertips harder, which will solve this problem. In the meantime: once you reach the point of ‘can’t play cleanly’, give it a break. Don’t start messing with your finger position and don’t teach yourself to press harder than (normally) necessary. Give it time, it will come.
And in general: make sure you don’t get bored. If you feel you’ve been at the same stage for ages, add something new, whether it’s a new song (maybe an easy one to build confidence) or the next module in the lesson plan, just keep the things you’re struggling with in rotation.
Please don’t don’t expect strictly linear progress… if you later look back, there will the that clear “Up” trend, but not daily or even weekly.
Now I looked at Justin’s lesson…
Is it just the 1/4 downbeats you play that Justin starts with? Because the rhythm in the intro sounds not so easy for for 5 weeks in!
I think I too got it harder with only downhits at the start. It’s easier to get strumming consistent that is a bit faster AND contains down- plus upstrums.
And I found the strumming with muted strings often helpful to improve my timing, just hit the strings without any clear notes ringing, and in a simple pattern that you can do.
So you’re taking the items apart that you’Re practicing, chords and strumming timing and put them together later again.
Whatever you do, give it patience and it’ll pay back!
You’ve already had such good advice and reassurance Dana.
I want to reiterate - for one-minute changes, which is a deliberately aritificial exercise designed to force your fretting hand to move fast, do not take any time to look at your strumming hand to check if you hit 4 or 5 or 6 strings. Just get your fretting fingers down with all haste, strike with your pick, move your fingers away to the next chord as quick as you can.
Pressing harder is never the answer and will actually create a bad habit you will then find difficult to break. Those grooves will harden, become calloused and less flesh will spread out to interfere with adjacent strings … given a little time.
Thank you for all the responses! (Apologies for the late reply. Had a hectic week, though I only missed two days of practice. )
I was definitely expecting a slight weekly gradual improvement since I’m practicing every day. Didn’t know progress is more like monthly with guitar. I will try the monthly video trick!
I didn’t know backtracking is common with learning new skills!
I looked up The Four Stages of Competence. I’m in the Conscious Incompetence stage!
I started out practicing only 10 minutes a day because my fingers tips hurt so much, but I did get to a point where I practice about 25 minutes a day and plan to stick with that because it’s managable with my schedule. I wanted to build the habit of practicing, so I’ve been consistent with it (only missed four days in 6 weeks). I understand that taking breaks can help when learning new things, but does it help when you’re mostly just trying to develop muscle memory?
I didn’t realize I was doing the one minute changes wrong! I was actually getting motion sickness this past week trying to look back and forth between the fret board and the strings. I’ll try to do chord changes without looking at the strings tonight.
I’ve been using Justin’s practice assistant tool, and added two one-minute breaks to my routine to massage my finger tips. Maybe that will help with the indent in my finger. I think it only happens to my index finger because that’s the anchor finger for the three chords I practice.
I’ve only done down strums. Up strums are in the next video I would watch. (I’m only on Grade 1, Module 3. I started practicing the minor A and E chords because I was getting bored just doing E, A, and D for so long.)
1 out of 4 beats was too slow for me. I was trying to do the actual song (two bars of A, two bars of D, two bars of E, one bar of A, and one bar of E) to the metronome at 30 – 40 beats a minute for a week, but 30 beats was too boring, and 40 beats was too hard because I’m bad at A to D changes. So I started just trying to do it at a steady beat in my head this past week (but still screw up the A to D changes a lot).
I will try not looking at the strings when I practice tonight. Was starting to get motion sickness from trying to pivot my head back and forth too quickly, so not having to do that will make the chord changes much easier and more pleasant!
Thank you for the reassurance!
Thank you for clarifying that feeling like you’ve regressed is normal even for experienced players!
I think I read somewhere that most people suck at guitar for the first 3-6 months of practicing, so I’ll try to keep in mind that it is a very gradual/slow process and I shouldn’t expect any noticable improvement for a few months.
Actually, it could help. But by all means, do keep practicing the way you’re doing if you feel it’s right. You’re not overdoing it in the sense of “I want to play at least 1h every day” - that would be way too much. You’re doing fine as far as practice time is considered.
How exactly are you playing the song? When you first start out, it’s best to only strum on the first beat, so once per bar, but to keep moving your arm up and down on the rhythm - so 4 down and up movements per bar, with only hitting the strings on the first bar. This gives you a lot more time for the chord change while you’re still keeping the rhythm. When that goes well, strum on the 1st and 3rd beat, also while maintaining the down and up movement. This gives you less time to make the change, but more then when strumming on all 4 beats.
A lot of repetitive practice without progress isn’t motivating for me, so I think I need to keep as a daily habit to force myself to do it, otherwise I will make excuses to not do it. (I mostly only have time to do it at night when I’m tired, so it would be very easy to never pick up my guitar again at this point.)
But it is getting boring and frustrating to be at the same level I started at 6 weeks ago, so it would probably help to start doing days where I watch Justin’s videos for 20-30 minutes to keep my daily guitar habit but get a break from the mindless practicing.
(I did try chord changes without looking at the strings when strumming tonight. I can only do about 10 additional chord changes, so still very slow.)
I was “playing” by strumming down on each beat.
Oh! I remember the videos about strumming on beat 1, and beat 3 & 4. I didn’t like any of the suggested practice songs from module one, so I ended up watching the video for Old Time Rock and Roll (love the song!) and was following the beginning of the video as my rhythm practice. It seems easier to me to strum each beat rather than miming strumming, especially if I don’t need to worry about hitting the right strings yet. (I tried not looking at my strumming hand tonight, and was able to do 40 bpm, though everything still sounds horrible.)
Last thing you want is getting bored. Swap some things that are going well for something new.
For now, you can take a peak at your fretting hand. Just don’t look at your fretting hand and your strumming hand.
It isn’t, really. There’s a reason why Justin tells you to start out strumming only on the first beat. Also, during the song practice, try to strum the right strings. Don’t worry if it isn’t completely right, but try. You don’t want to have to unlearn bad habits afterwards.
During the BLIM4 course Q&A (a Justin course, only available to paid subscribers of the course), Seth today was talking about his good days and bad days as a professional performer.
He used an interesting analogy that I thought might be helpful.
He talked about “Ceilings” and “Floors”, with Ceilings being his really best days, and Floors being his worst days.
When you watch his skill level as I’ve seen during his sessions, you can’t imagine what he plays is ever considered a floor.
Yet he talked about how well he notices both levels. He also encouraging said that as years have progressed, his Ceilings and Floors both keep getting higher.
