Updating here. I’ve been working more on barre chords and push rhythm chord changes.
Posted a couple songs to the AVOYP section of the community.
These two songs (“The Drugs Don’t Work” and “Fields of Gold”) I have here I learned from the JG song lessons. They have versions of the simpler F chord and then also times where you can use the full F barre shape. They also have a chord change “push” at times in the song so that was something I wanted to practice as well.
I initially found the F barre shape with the capo on the 2nd fret to be more accessible (which I believe is officially a G chord with a barre on the 3rd fret) although I practiced both this and the full F barre chord a bunch.
There are some songs with the B minor barre shape which I’m going to work on next.
September 2025. I’m cross posting to AVOYP. I continue to practice slower songs with more accessible barre chord transitions to work on getting those to be smoother. I can play “Wild Horses” along with the record pretty decently now. It still sounds a bit jerky to me when I’m playing and singing alone - that transition to the B minor is a little delayed and I royally screw it up still about 25% of the time. Positives are that I’m finding singing and playing together coming a bit more natural as I’m doing it more and more.
I got inspired to pick back up with the JG Grade 2 modules. I’ve been enjoying the Module 12 - rock module. Power chords seem pretty simple but to get them clean and moving between them is still pretty challenging for me!
Been absolutely loving diving back into the Nirvana unplugged show - been semi obsessed with it for the last couple of weeks.
Really enjoyed Nirvana’s Meat Puppet covers from the show - as well as the above song and “Man who sold the world” (Bowie cover) I’ve been working on the guitar parts for “Oh Me” which is a great song by the Meat Puppets that Kurt covers so beautifully with the Meat Puppets on guitars in the show.
Wrapped up JG Beginner’s Module 12 with the last two Nirvana unplugged covers linked here above. I had done a massive deep dive back into Nirvana and Kurt Cobain in the latter part of 2025. The biography on Kurt “Heavier than heaven” is very good. Also watched a couple of documentaries on Nirvana which were interesting, “Montage of heck” was engaging and disturbing.
Beginning this new year I figure it’s a good time to set some guitar goals. I’ve been playing now for about 3-years and made some pretty good progress. I think some of the areas I"m really lacking still are being able to play the guitar more by “feel” - I’m still very focused on watching my fretting hand. I’d like to play more relaxed and not looking at my guitar.
I’d also like to put some more focus in on music theory - specifically understanding the musical key, scales, improvising - how song structure using the Roman numerals (I, ii, iii etc.) works, being more comfortable picking out individual notes, having more familiarity with what notes I’m actually playing, ear training, and being able to play with other people.
I took my first in person guitar lesson recently and I would like to do that maybe once per month to get some in person feedback.