A look back at 2025.
I feel like this year has pushed me past one plateau and onto another climb.
It all started last year though - with BLIM. The course opened my eyes to the progress I could make if I set myself specific goals, followed a plan, and put more hours into the guitar. When the course ended, I had enough momentum and motivation to set myself twin goals for the year - repeat BLIM so I consolidated what I had learnt, and start and finish Grade 4. Thats what I focused on for the first few months.
Near the end of BLIM, I was fortunate enough to win a 1:1 lesson with Justin. That took place in April, and no surprise, I got great advice on structuring my practice routine towards these goals, and several tips on technique, theory and learning to improvise solos.
In August, I attended my first Justin Guitar Workshop! Each morning featured lessons in theory, musicality, singing, playing in a band and guitar techniques and concepts (alt tunings, thirds…). In the afternoons we were randomly assigned to a band, and tasked with agreeing a song we all wanted to play, figuring out complimentary parts, rehearsing them and then performing in front of the class at the end of the day. What started off as “utterly nerve wracking”, especially when I signed up to sign and play a song solo, somehow ended with “wow we just played two songs at the restaurant”, and more recently, Community Open Mic’s in August and November!
BLIM and the workshop led to closer connections with several people in the community, and some of us meet over Zoom calls to compare notes, talk guitar, ask questions etc. Two of my new friends live close enough to meet up in person and jam, and we are working on four songs for a January meetup! Videos may be shared if things go reasonably well and everyone’s comfortable doing so…
A few thoughts and self-reflections:
- I wish I had overcome my fear of singing earlier. Learning to play and sing a song has led to a deeper understanding of the song, as well as ideas for adapting songs for a solo performer situation.
- Strumming along to songs with the app was a lot of fun the last few years, but learning to play them on my own or with other humans has made me pay much closer attention to what makes each song different, and the specific techniques needed to play them. For example, the rhythm of the Day Tripper riff, the use of bass runs to link chords in Sweet Virginia, the triad riff in End of the Line, and how the interplay between palm muted hits on the bass note and strums on the thin strings makes While My Guitar Gently Weeps sound a lot more like the original!
- Even after several months of barre chord practice, I still accumulate tension in my fretting hand, which makes changes harder and tires me out. I’ve started five minutes of “as relaxed as I can be, release pressure, release tension, then move to the next chord” practice. Hope that helps.
- Forearm angle wrist angle, finger position, where exactly I make contact with the fretboard really matters for barre chords and melodic lines and legato picking and vibrato.
- And I need to make sure I reach the right finger angle and position each time I move my hand/fingers, else rolls and slides are harder, and vibrato quality suffers.
- Bending is a lot better than a year ago. Bend vibrato and quick bends and bends as part of triplets will stay on the todo list.
- My sense of time has improved, eg I can mix chords and licks or shuffle and licks in a E major blues and stay on time more often than not.
- Fartlek Subdivisions helped with fretting/picking hand coordination and general rhythm awareness. I need to make time for Strumming SoS in '26.
- But I don’t always remember where I’m in the changes. Which makes it hard to play a two measure turnaround and I resort to the old 1-7-5-5 more often than I want to.
- Blues licks/ vocabulary gave me a lot of phrases to fall back on… Major scale improvs are noticeably harder without these building blocks. I tend to pick a melody line and play around with it, not sure how long that will last!
Gear acquired this year:
- My first tube amp (Blues Junior)
- Boss RC-5 Looper (drum tracks are a nice change to playing over a metronome)
- Cordoba Mini-Bass
- Les Paul Standard
Plans for 2026:
- Solo Acoustic Blues
- Grade 5 (and maybe a folk song or two)
- Strumming SoS and Justin’s Rhythm Workbook
- 4 Open Mics (or more if I can swing it)
- Learn some Rock songs ahead of Rock Immersion
- Just Keep BLIM’ing
keep jamming over songs in different keys, gospel slides, 9th chords, so much more to get under my fingers!