Ben's Log

Ok as promised, I’ve recorded my hacked up version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star :slight_smile:

If I’m honest, it probably took me 20 tries to get a clean-ISH run through that my current ability can muster because a lot of the things you see in this clip have all been things I’ve recently learnt / practised a little.

  1. Single string strumming and muting with little pinky and index finger. You can hear all sorts of things still ring out though :frowning:
  2. The triads are a new thing for me so the changes you can see my fingers scramble and rush to get in place and adjust and fudge my way through :slight_smile:

This is just applying things I’ve learnt so far and just having a blast playing a super simple song. When I watch it back, it still just looks like a mashed up bunch of chords and the like, I definitely want to be able strum and pick, but it’s definitely too far out of my abilities at this stage.

@theryanbamford - thanks for some of the tips, it’s the best I could do to show you what I thought of after reading your post and playing in E… although I think because all the chords are on the 1st 4th or 5th or power chords, it definitely simplified things.

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Awesome! I think this actually sounds great. It might not reflect the full song but it contains bits from the melody and I think the strumming technique you used here gives it a cool spin and makes it stand out on its own as a neat piece of creativity.

thanks… yeah just really to learn at this stage. You’re right, it’s lost the serene feel that it should have, but I think I need to develop the strum & pick skill and accuracy first haha.

Ok no clip for this update because I have nothing to really “show and tell”. More just practise work… so my routine has evolved a bit:

So in the quest for the holy grail of playing by ear I have slightly changed my routine and included some advice thats sprinkled around justin’s course.

  1. Still have not smoothed out changing to A shape and E shape… it’s getting better though. So just strumming and “playing around” while just switching between all the chords back and fourth and taking care to choose the ones I don’t normally play.
  2. I have started just strumming single chords and picking our root notes in between… usually C, A and D chord for this exercise… to help right hand accuracy for picking. It definitely has improved noticeably, but small gains which will likely take a long term investment of practise time.
  3. I have now started playing by ear but we are talking about random nursery rhymes. My steps are:
    a) I find something on youtube and just play a jingle or a riff and pause
    b) then just try play it and find notes on the guitar.
    c) then adjust the hand position after figuring out the basic notes and make a mental note of what key those notes belong to.

I don’t bother trying to perfect the tune with zero mistakes… once I can sorta play it, I move on to the next tune and rinse and repeat.
4. I’m still doing the major scales in all 5 patterns, BUT I’ve now upgraded it to play the same 5 patterns but cycle through starting at all the different root notes as a stepping stone. Because when I attempted to join them, it was too big of a leap in difficulty. Effectively if I counted right, the 5 patterns split off into 12 little sub patterns or variations so to speak.
6. Still practising Canon in D

Anyway, that’s the progress update I have - I’m pausing my dive into triads at this stage because I feel like there are better gains to be had in the exercises above first.

Cheers,

Ben

Hey All,

I really wish I had more time to compile and record so I can SEE where I’m at for progress checks. I’ve been a bit swamped lately but I am proud to report I have not cut back on practise and am thoroughly enjoying learning still!!! (thats a really good sign for me)

Anyway hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their journey.

So my update is as follows regarding my practise / accomplishments:

  1. Transitions TO the E Shape chord still needs work so I’m still doing that.
  2. I am starting to be able to play the Major scales 5 patterns starting from all root notes a lot more consistently funnily enough had an eye opening moment for me - see next line.
  3. I’ve combined 3 different practise exercises (memorising notes on the frettboard, learning triads, chord change speed / accuracy) into one - learning the relative locations of the root notes helped a LOT on this bit:
    a) Learning to play the 12 (Major) triad shapes
    b) Using my open chords plus B and F to transition to the same triads up and down the frettboard to learn the notes on the whole neck and mixing in some power chords.
  4. Been learning 3 songs still:
    a) eye of the tiger - this was my first progression into songs other than nursery rhymes by ear (can’t do the starting 16th note opening at all :/) but can play the chords and vocals which is nice…
    b) Blue Bird (just noodling by ear)
    c) canon d - still memorising at this stage, about maybe 2/3 of the way)

I really hope to do a recording soon to show what I mean on the above, but I do feel I had a couple penny drop moments in the last week.

Ben