OOOOOOOh I was imagining a giant meatball 
It is both noun and adjective.
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you can write a song about it 
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Got a bit of practice in today. It’s been quite choppy lately, thanks to insomnia and heat; even on a good day, by the time it’s cool it’s properly night time (even if the sun has only barely bothered going away) and I’m knackered.
I did a few songs this afternoon, strumming with a pick since it wasn’t too late at night and I fumbled it hard! Too long without doing pick strumming. I also did Country Roads at full speed and it burned like a mofo so the shoulder is still quite cranky at me. 
That said, it eased up after a few minutes, and I’m getting faster and less sloppy with the F barre chord. <-(that bar is pretty low, though.)
I had a crack at an Oasis song that I’d never heard before called Little by Little, and played What’s Up for the first time in a while. I’m quite out of practice with this stuff so there was no singing and playing, just trying to wrangle the pick. My coordination is shot at the moment but it’s not exclusive to guitar by any means.
I also practiced the two I was practicing almost exclusively for a while there, and they’re quite good now! It’s really only a couple of finicky bits where you need to be precise that I’m fumbling. For the Silent Night I still occasionally lift my third finger instead of the pinky when stepping down through the opening chord, and there’s a barred triad with a hammer-on that is troublesome still.
I also had a crack at playing along with the song for Cherry Wine a while ago and realised there were a couple of differences to the tab I’d been using, and I was able to incorporate them pretty decently this evening, and the notes were in general ringing out pretty cleanly even though I was going faster. Once I’ve got those changes under my fingers I’ll have a go at playing with the track again, but I’m going to space out my practice as I had hit a plateau doing those two songs so much.
Gotta learn a new fingerpicking chord progression, too, so that’s a new thing on the list.
I wish I could jump ahead to already knowing the fretboard without thinking about it, so I could take the chords straight from my head to the instrument every time I get an idea bouncing around in my head. I’d like to just hum a thing and get to playing it. One day.
We’ve had some lovely cool nights the past couple of days, but there’s another heatwave this week with Wednesday predicted to be 43°C, so probably not too much guitar practice will be getting done. Apparently all these heatwaves are because Western Australia hasn’t had a cyclone season this summer, and honestly how dare they.
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Glad to see you back 
Summers hits hard , there s no way you can play with 43° 
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I can’t wait for spring and summer, although reading this let me modest and satisfied with the weather here …
a few years ago, during the heat, with even 40+ golfers in this country, local television channels showed images of skating trips … so here’s something for you 
take a virtual dip…pffffff good luck …
Or try this one
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Thanks Rogier!
I feel like I’m built for a different planet. The heat in summer wears me down but in winter I’m a frozen lump! This all comes together and creates a person who is fated to whinge. 
I do think I would just die if I fell in that ice water, though. Don’t know how people do ice baths!
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they run quickly inside the sauna after
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Ha ha I
shaking with laughter…yes just the thought of it kills me a little 
The Netherlands will be good for you…less extremes the weather, but still we are known that there is always something to complain about the weather 
(no idea why, because in other countries I’ve been to it wasn’t much different, but okay)
I’m now looking forward to complaining about the heat again 
For now I’m just going to give the heating an extra boost here 
Greetings 
(just for in a cup )
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I have a group of friends and we meet up all year round, every 2 weeks, 6:30am, for an outdoor dip. It’s brutal in winter 
The thing is we do it as a social thing. There’s always coffee and cake afterwards and we have a laugh about the stupidity of it all! I’m better adjusted to that than I am 40+ degrees 
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@roger_holland
Well I’m currently in Lanzarote where it is a lovely 25c. Unfortunately we go back to Scotland at the weekend where it is a wet 5C!
No guitar shops here. This is the best I could do.
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Hi Gordon @sairfingers
Wow Lanzarote …you have had and still have some nice days … 25c is a perfect day on those Islands
Well, that looks like Uuuhhh well maybe children are reading along…So uhhh make a fire under that…grab your real guitar and play songs by the campfire…
Greetings and I think that we (both Constance and I) are very jealous…so enjoy for 2 extra 
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We’ve had a cool change! It got up to 44° yesterday, but it went from 38° to 28° and a cool breeze started at like 11:30 last night, so I opened everything up and finally went to bed at two. And now we have four days with highs in the twenties nights going back to being in the teens.
It was so blissful to have that cool air I felt emotional about it. 
On the plus side, I’ll definitely be able to hold my guitar and practice! On the minus side, it is no longer too hot to exercise so I gotta get my tush moving again…
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Seem to be getting back to guitar again. I’m catching up on forum stuff, too. My fingers have a hard time keeping a callous so having almost a week off from guitar amidst having fewer days playing than not, and they got too squidgy to do pull-offs properly. The hammer-ons are also a bit iffy, but I’ve already seen improvement from where I was when I left off, despite that, so that’s pretty cool! I find myself wanting to already have a repertoire of fingerstyle stuff to play when I’m feeling a certain kind of way, so that it’s almost meditative, or comforting, like watching a show you’ve seen a hundred times. Cherry Wine is getting there, I’m a bit sloppy but able to mostly play at speed now, although the C/G chord in the ninth fret is cramped and still a gamble if it’ll work for me.
I did pretty well this evening with it and considered posting a video of my progress, since I’ve come so far along, but ultimately decided to wait until I could sing it and play it at the same time, and I didn’t have a massive, freshly squeezed pimple dead-centre of my chin.
Priorities, you know.
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Glad to hear you’re starting to have more fun with the guitar again!
That’s exactly what helped me relaxing when I was stressed, had a bad day or whatever.
But for me, that rather didn’t come so much from having learned fingerstyle songs, but more from having practiced patterns.
Like practicing the bass side. And then, slowly adding one of the three high note fingers, or all three in some rhythm, first so that it’s easy until I got that down, and slowly getting to more complex patterns over time.
Like first playing on the same beat as the bass, then between the bass notes, and using more or faster notes. I once posted what lessons I did, I think I’ll write something up in my own learning log soon.
But, to conclude… If you practice that over time, you can almost play anything with the three melody fingers and it will sound pretty much good anyway because you play chord notes and it will be more and more musical and feel natural over time.
Learning a couple of basic fingerstyle patterns (so they’re automatic) is on my list of things to do. Once I’m fully back in the swing of things I’m gonna get the pattern down for the one we were working on; last I left off, besides some barre chord issues, I was getting the hang of it! And I did try noodling fingerstyle the other day, with the capo on, and although it wasn’t really informed by much knowledge besides some chord shapes, my plucking mostly worked out to sound okay, although there wasn’t any pattern to it.
Also, I can’t believe I haven’t thought to check out your learning log…
Well… 
I thought a few times about creating one, but was too lazy yet. But it won’t be long until there is one. 
For that fingerpicking, I am really glad how over time it slowly felt more natural and easy.
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Alrighty, my singing and playing sort of came together for the first time this evening, so here’s my first “full speed” (I think, no metronome) run-through of Cherry Wine with me singing.
It’s at the bottom of my range, which means the lowest note feels like I’m gargling, and I don’t really have any power or much control of my voice at that end of my range so it’s quite quiet and pretty much all throat. Gotta work on that.
Trying it full speed highlights the finger placement issues I’m still having with it, and the current squidginess of my fingers is still affecting the hammer-ons / pull-offs. But I’m noticing I can use a bit of a lighter touch to get the strings to ring out so hopefully that fixes up soon.
Gotta figure out what new thing to start on, soon! Everything helps with everything else so it never feels like a waste. I was going to check out Blackbird, it says it’s a grade 6 song and it moves around on the fretboard a lot, so I’m not sure. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of challenge when I looked at it the other day, but I’ll have another look when I’m in an intrepid sort of mood.
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Awesome! 
With respect to how long you’re into the guitar, it’s great how good you’re at tackling quite difficult songs! And then you sing so well at the same time, even if you say it’s the bottom of your range, it sounds really nice!
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