Can understand why you went for that colour, man that looks cool.
Happy NGD !!
Hi Robert, happy NGD. Looking forward to hear nice notes coming of you playing it in the near future.
Awesome looking guitar. Good taste!
Beautiful guitar Robert, enjoy it. Lovely to know it’s a true one of a kind 
Can’t wait to hear her in action with you!
Thank-you all for the nice replies. I am now motivated more than ever to learn a song worthy of ‘Lady Grey’ and post in as an AVoYP. 
The addition of Lady Grey to my collection created the need to change my guitar storage. A guitar rack seemed to be the logical solution, so I went into the wood shop and pieced this together. The wood is from a red oak that was toppled in a storm. I decided to use velvet for the cushioning material on the dowels at the bottom, the T bar at the top and each peg. The T bar was made by routing a T track into a length of red oak. Each peg is mounted on a T bolt so I can move them around as needed.
Here is the completed rack in the wood shop.
The rack in use with, from left to right, Blue, Lady Grey, Blondie and the old Dorado.
7 Likes
Ever so neat, Robert, looks great.
Hi Robert, beautiful guitar stand. I see you left some room for a new acquisition(s) 
The space for new acquisitions is filling up faster than I thought would happen.
[NGD G&L Comanche]
1 Like
I have been away on an extended vacation(s). When I returned home the impending winter weather caused me to put aside chasing my dream to attend to a few weather-related realities.
Now it is time to re-immerse myself with guitar. Not only did I add a new instrument to my collection, I managed to meet a couple fine guitarists who are willing to mentor me. The journey continues . . .
1 Like
Hi Robert. Good to see you back here and finding new ways to chase the dream.
The journey took a bit of a hiatus after my last log entry. Long story short, I discovered that it is hard to say no to a longtime friend. I agreed to take on a woodworking project. The project entailed felling trees, milling the trees into boards, kiln drying the boards and then further milling the bords into tongue and groove wall and ceiling boards. Good friend is remodeling an older cottage, was taken with my basement, and wanted something similar from trees on her property. The project was finally finished on Feb. 18. The tole on my hands, elbows and shoulders was much greater than I had anticipated.
But there is no rest for the wicked…
On Feb. 25 I got together with my siblings and their spouses to celebrate my younger brother’s and my birthdays (at opposite ends of February). On the agenda for the day was getting together with my two brothers-in-law to play some guitar. Tim and Bob have been playing for 50+ years, starting back in high school. I practiced as much as my throbbing joints would handle and tried to learn the three songs we had discussed playing. I was not proficient enough with Cat’s Cradle by Harry Chapin to play it through, but I did get decent enough to play Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain by Willie Nelson (I even played the lead!) and Bobbie McGee, which became a mix of the original by Kris Kristofferson and Janis Joplin’s rendition.
What a glorious high! Bob and Tim complemented me on how far my playing has advanced from back in the day. To be honest, any modicum of being able to keep in time and make the changes would have been a huge improvement 
We vowed to get together more often and make music. We live a good distance apart so it will take some planning to get it to happen, but I am confident we will continue to meet up and play. You may recall that back in the day people would literally get up and leave the room when I picked up a guitar 
So here I am. My joints have sufficiently recovered to allow me to get back to the routine I planned to follow before taking that detour. In the near future I will get together with the local gentleman who is willing to serve as a mentor. My task for that get together is to get proficient with a pair of Beatles songs. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, which contains some difficult changes going from D to D/with C base to D/with B base to D/with A base. Definitely a challenge for the fretting hand. The other song is Norwegian Wood with the wonderful riff running throughout the song.
Who knows, perhaps sometime soon I will record those songs and a few others and post them up in the AVoYP section.
For now, it is back to practicing a couple hours a day and catching up on a ton of reading here in the community that I let slide.
Let’s hope that this time the retirement thing sticks!!
2 Likes
Hi Robert, maybe you work at your own pace in your own 
projects, but this one you took had a more demanding time pressure. Good your guitar skills allow you now to jam with your brothers-in-law. Good luck with your projects.
1 Like
Brief update and request for advice:
I have been dutifully practicing daily and am now on module 17. However, a bit of a dilemma has reared up and I need to know the best way to fix it.
Remember the old adage ‘Practice makes permanent so practice perfectly’? With that in mind, while practicing, I find myself reluctant to just plow through a song when I know I am not being precise and making mistakes. I stop at the mistake or bad chord change and play that section over and over until it seems correct.
Well, the other day I got together with the gentleman pictured above playing along with me in my sanctuary to meet up with some friends around a campfire and play some tunes. Of the seven or so songs in my current repertoire I only managed to play two all the way through. My practice routine came around to haunt me and when I made a mistake or muffed a chord change instead of playing through I just stopped. How very embarrassing!
I need to get beyond this and I need to get there soon.
Recommendations please.
3 Likes
Hi Robert,
That’s an annoying thing and it bothers me a lot too. There are also plenty of lessons where Justin says playing through and keeping time is more important than just having the perfect chords during a performance, so that’s something that’s just “just” need to be practiced 
…
Decided to play a song from start to finish every day and keep going no matter how many mistakes you make, shout out loud at the beginning, the next day in your head alone and the next day laugh the mistake away and keep going at the same pace…at least that’s what i’m telling myself to do now…good luck with that.
Just also practice playing with mistakes,it sound stupid, but truth as a…well,just truth 
Greetings
1 Like
Hi Robert, My $0.02…
As you note part of this is habit and part of it is the specific issues you may be having with the song.
When I’m first learning a song, if there are chord changes that I’m having trouble with, I use the Justin approaches of both chord perfect and OMC. If the problem is the strum pattern(s) I’m trying to use, I focus on just the pattern with muted strings and some the chords form the song.
When I practice the song, I commit to play it completely through. This helps me learn to deal with mistakes and it shows me where I’m having issues that may need more focused attention. If there aren’t any big issues to work on, I play the song completely through regularly. I eventually feel confident with it, especially because I know how to recover from the inevitable mistakes.
1 Like
Hey Robert,
You are doing the right thing but you need to practice one more thing: Playing the song throughout:
After finishing the first part of your practice (learning sections, chord changes etc.), also practice playing entire sections, then the entire song.
For e.g. say to yourself “I’ll practice Verse 1 now” or “Bridge now”, or “now the whole song”. Once you set your intention, there’s one rule: You can’t stop no matter what. Even if you completely mess up, what’s gone is gone and you try to pick up from the next bar.
Ideally, you would practice this to a metronome, but for starters, it would be easier to play along to the original. I would suggest spending the majority of your practice time for this with an external timekeeper: metronome, drum track, backing track, or original. This is because:
- You can’t cheat
- Your timing skill improves
- Sync’ing to an external time-keeper accelerates learning
Hope this helps.
1 Like
@roger_holland @nhh2oskr @elevatortrim
Thank-you for responding and proffering great advice!
I will play the songs through completely as I practice, using a metronome and backing tracks.
I can do this!
Hi Robert, I think what Justin warns about is to avoid thinking that just playing a song (or an instrumental piece) over and over is going to improve without any additional work. This additional work can vary depending of the song or piece and the guitar player. For me is a progressive perfecting, try what I want to play, identify what needs to be improved, devise how to improve it, practice what I’ve devised, try again. If a section of the whole song or piece is more difficult to play I can alternate between practicing only that part and trying the whole song or piece. So instead of stopping the whole song on the hard to play spot every time I practice, I can practice that spot alone, and later practice again the whole song or piece or at least a longer section of it.
1 Like
Hi, not sure if you know that YouTube allows you to list videos as “unlisted” so only people with the link will see them.
This is what I do with mine to limit viewing to people on here.