Deiussum's (Dan's) Learning Log

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I’ve got a list in my head of things I want to improve or learn, but I haven’t ever formally written it out. Normally I would put something like this in a note taking app, but since there is a place here for it, why not make it public! :slight_smile:

I’m not quite sure how I want to format this yet, so I’ll just start out with a dump of the list I have in my head and figure out the formatting later.

Warning: This has gotten kind of big and I don’t expect anyone to read through it all. I think it has helped me to try and break things down a bit, though.

Current Goals

  1. Be able to play Dust in the Wind by Kansas better. I’ve got a few problem areas to work on that I’ll probably detail more below.
  2. Learn to play and sing Even if it Breaks Your Heart by the Eli Young Band.
  3. Learn to play and sing Stand by Me. I’d like to be able to sing along to Fast Car and Blackbird, but I need to start out with something simpler. :slight_smile:
  4. Clean up a few spots in When I’m Gone by 3 Doors Down. Especially the solo.
  5. Get better at using my looper pedal. I struggle with improvising, and I think this will help. I love listening to what people with more experience than myself can do with a looper and I’d like to eventually do something similar.
  6. It’s not specifically guitar related, but I’d like to work on getting better at finger drumming. I picked up a 16 pad Midi controller and have fun with trying to use that to put together some simple drum tracks to play guitar to. It’s more fun than trying to program them, and I feel like it would be a fun way to try and improve my sense of rhythm.
  7. Continue the music theory course and the Grade 2 course. I sort of paused on those a bit while I was working on a couple things I got the opportunity to play for some people at work during an all-team meeting

Current Gear

Guitars
  • Squier strat - Black & White
  • Epiphone Les Paul Standard - Cherry Sunburst
  • Ibanez Acoustic - Emerald
Amps
  • Yamaha THR5
  • Boss Katana 50 - Gen 3
Other
  • Akai MPD218 Midi pad controller
  • Boss RC-1 Looper pedal
  • Boss SD-1 Overdrive pedal
  • Donner Ultimate Comp mini pedal
  • Donner Tutti Love Delay pedal
  • Donner Yellow Fall Chorus pedal
  • Donner Harmonic Square Octave pedal
  • Donner Power Supply
  • OneOdio Pro-10 over the ear headphones

Current Song Book

Songs I can play from memory
  • Blackbird - The Beatles
  • Just Got to Be - The Black Keys
  • When I’m Gone - 3 Doors Down
  • Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

Disclaimer: I can play Fast Car along with the original recording, but if I’m only playing guitar, I haven’t memorized how many times I have to play the same 2 measures over and over. I really need to work on memorizing the lyrics and trying to sing along with this one. I love the song, but the guitar part without the lyrics gets a bit repetitive…

Songs I am currently working on
  • Dust in the Wind - Kansas (Finger picking)
  • Even if it Breaks your Heart - Eli Young Band (Chords + Lyrics)
  • Stand by Me - Ben E. King (Chords + Lyrics)
Songs I sometimes partially play for fun
  • 18 and Life - Skid Row
  • Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
  • Tighten Up - The Black Keys
  • I Got Mine - The Black Keys
  • Paint it Black - The Rolling Stones
  • The Joker - Steve Miller Band
  • My Girl - The Temptations
  • I Walk the Line - Johnny Cash
  • Breaking the Law - Judas Priest
  • Down on the Corner - Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Some Nights - F.U.N.

Current challenges

Dust in the Wind

First off, I’ve been trying to work on this song because I’m really enjoying learning some finger picking style songs. I’ve got a couple other simpler finger picking songs down fairly well. This one has been a challenge, but it’s been fun to play the parts that I am able to play.

For reference, the tab I started from is the Guitar 1 part found on Songster.

Most of my problem areas here stem from some tricky chord shapes and changes to/from those shapes. I’ve been practicing some of these chord shapes and changes basically using the chord perfect techniques and the 1 min changes routines. I haven’t formally timed or counted the changes, though, so I should probably start trying to do that.

Edit: Going to change this section to track the different sections as outlined in Richard’s amazing material for the song. Might make it easier to break things down and track my progress for each individual part.

Also, I love that I am starting to see some of the chord names for the crazier chords and I want to get more familiar with the names. I can even see why some of them are named as they are. This is part of the reason I really want to get to the chord part of the music theory courses.

Main Riff
Progression: | C | Cmaj7 | Cadd9 | C | Asus2 | Asus4 | Am | Asus2 | Cadd9 | C | Cmaj7 | Cadd9 | Am | Asus2 | Asus4 | Am G/B |

This part I feel like I’ve got done fairly well. There is still some practice to do on it, but I can hit it fairly consistently. In the past my biggest hurdle was the transition from the C-shaped chords to the Am-shaped cords and back as I would sometimes end up muting strings or misplacing my fingers.

Verses
Progression: | C | G/B | Am | Am | G | Dm7 | Am | Am |

This part I also mostly have down but needs some work. I still have issues at times shifting to the Dm7. My 2nd finger tends to mute the B string a bit. Needs work.

Chorus Part A
Progression: | D/F# | G | Am | Am/G | D/F# | G | Am | Am G/B |

This is the scary part for me. It felt impossible when I first started, but now feels difficult, but doable. The worst part for me is the Am/G, which I may just play as an Am until I can get it down a bit better. I need to try practicing the D/F# fingering presented by Richard here as that may help. I still feel like I’m twisting my fingers into pretzels here, but I’ve got plenty to work on with this part.

Chorus Part B/Instrumental
Progression: | D/F# | G | Am | Am/G | D/F# | G | Amadd9 | Amadd9 | G/A | G/A | F(b5)/A | F(b5)/A | F6 | F6 |

This is the part with the even crazier chord names. My old nemesis the Am/G and D/F# are in here too. The Amadd9 | G/A | F(b5)/A | F6 parts cause me a bit of a headache too. Especially the Amadd9 → G/A. The G/A → F(b5)/A isn’t bad because it is just shifting the whole shape down a couple frets. Swapping fingers on that Amadd9 → G/A is still a bit tricky for me and I have to do it nice and slow.

Outro
Progression: ||: Am | Asus2 | Asus4 :||

This part is going pretty well for me. Once I get settled into the Am shape, I could just sit there forever. The Songsterr tab for this seems to be slightly different. It looks like probably the same basic chords, but instead of using the G string, it throws in the high E string. I’m not going to do that. I updated my Guitar Pro file to just do the easier progression. Maybe someday I’ll go back and do some analysis on how the Songsterr version differs, but for now I am more than satisfied with out this one sounds. :slight_smile:

Even if it Breaks Your Heart

The first challenge is trying to pick a chord progression to use here. There are a couple I’ve found and I just need to spend a little time trying them out to see what works best for me.

Stand by Me

The chords for this are pretty straight forward, but I haven’t tried singing yet. I the lyrics aren’t always lining up with the chord changes, so that might not be as straight forward as I had hoped. I haven’t really attempted to sing any of it yet while playing, though, so we’ll see how it goes.

Summary

I think that is plenty to start with. I should probably re-visit the practice log I started putting together on the website and throw some of these into there for a bit more structured practice sessions.

1 Like
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Dan, have you seen Richard’s fantastic fingerstyle live clubs? I’m sure especially # 15 and this one here can help https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/vintage-club-17-fingerstyle-with-dust-in-the-wind-cla-069

Welcome to the community btw. Hadn’t said that yet :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks Nicole! I have not seen those yet. Will be checking those out now, though. :slight_smile:

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Just finished watching Vintage Club #17, and it was great! A lot of it was already similar to what I’ve already been doing, but I learned several things.

  1. This actually provided chord names for a bunch of the chords I wasn’t familiar with. :slight_smile: I’ll need to go back and plug those chords into my original post and maybe add them to my GP8 tab file.
  2. I like the way the G/B and D/F# were fingered here. It’s different than how I’ve been fingering it. I think I had tried the D/F# this way and my pinky didn’t want to cooperate, but it feels a little easier when I try it now. I think this song has helped my pinky strength a bit.
  3. The outro he goes over is different from the way Songsterr has it charted, but I don’t always completely trust Songsterr’s charts. Richard’s way is basically just continuing what has already been done previously in the song and I think RS+ may have charted it that way as well.

I should probably try and make a video of my current ability to play this song so I can compare my progress later…

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Never tried the original RS and had a bad experience with RS+ on Android, it just wouldn’t start… I know, UG has tab that they claim to be “original”. Richard’s “Dusty Wind”-version sounds perfect to me though :slightly_smiling_face:

Hmm … I usually play D/F# as thumbover. Gotta go back to check how Richard suggests to play it here what a lovely chord. The same goes to G/B.

Looking forward to that. Learning Logs are a great place for this :slightly_smiling_face:

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Meant to come back and reply to this yesterday and then forgot to. :slight_smile:

I played the original RS and RS2014 a lot and got used to how it charted a lot of songs. When I started trying to go mostly from tab I would look up some of those songs on UG and Songsterr and find all sorts of things that just did not feel right after playing those songs in RS. :slight_smile:

I never really tried using RS+ on the phone as I had a couple of Rocksmith cables I could use to plug into the computer. I can see how the phone integration could be a bit trickier, though.

Richard basically takes the Am shape and moves the 2nd finger up to the fret on the big E string, and moves the pinky over to the B string for the D/F#. Seems like that method would make the transition a bit smoother and sets you up for the little G that comes next. It’s kind of similar for the G/B. I will have to practice those a bit, though. I’ve actually gotten decent at the G/B transitions using my first finger on the A string, but I want to give Richard’s method a go as well.

Thanks. Going to try and record something this weekend for it. Just need to try and find a good recording setup I like. I can record audio and video separate easily enough and join them together later, but I’d like to be able to get it all recorded in one shot. Also, would like to get a real audio interface at some point. I’m just using the one on my THR5 mini amp at the moment, so I don’t really have a great way to record vocals and guitar atm. I am nowhere near ready to sing and play this, but it would be nice to make a few comments on my video for the various sections.

For my first progress video, I may just go simple and record it all with my phone and let it pick up my amp sound naturally. :slight_smile:

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Aah… sounds like quite a stretch. Might take some time for me to get used to it. It’s interesting though, since the D/F# versions Justin introduced here https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/essential-slash-chords-bg-1401 are a bit different. Just goes to show that there is always more than approach or solution.

Strictly speaking, neither am I :grinning: I can still play and sing it somehow, if ignore all the slash chords and allow myself to be very clearly below target speed and to play sloppily inprecise. I actually showed a few bars of the intro to my in person guitar teacher, and his comment was: It does sound muddied, I cannot hear clearly enough what you are playing. So I probably should go back to some simpler patterns first.

This will do just fine :slightly_smiling_face:

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Here’s an initial progress video of Dust in the Wind.

3 Likes
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I tried something a little different for the 1 min changes yesterday. In the past, I sometimes find that when concentrating on the chord changes, I lose track of my count, which then causes me to stumble a bit trying to remember where I was at. When I tried the app, I found that it will try to track the count for you, but I noticed that sometimes it didn’t seem to count some of the strums even when they were pretty good. That in itself became a bit distracting.

This time I setup a new project in Reaper to use specifically for 1 min changes. I set it to 60 BPM and then set a region of 15 measures (1 min). Now I can select that region, turn on the punch in/out recording and just focus on the actual chord changes while it records. Once I’m done, I just go back and count the changes.

I was a little surprised at how well I actually did. It felt better than it did other times I was switching between these chords. I don’t have actual numbers from before, but I’m fairly happy with these starting numbers. The Am/G → D/F# needs the most work, but I thought the other changes would be a lot lower. The Am → Am/G surprised me the most. My pinky was feeling a lot better making that stretch. Guess my past practice on it has paid off. Now I just need to actually pull these off while playing Dust in the Wind… :slight_smile:

  • Am → D/F# - 48
  • Am → Am/G - 59
  • Am/G → D/F# - 30

I also spent a little time looking at some Grade 1 songs to pull into my practice. I wanted something with simple strumming and fairly simple lyrics that I could work on singing and playing at the same time for goal #3. I think I’m going to go with Stand by Me.

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I was reminded of another song I had started on learning a few years ago, but then put aside when other things got in the way. Even if it Breaks Your Heart by the Eli Young Band. I think I’m going to throw that back into my learning rotation and try and work on singing and playing at the same time with it. Justin doesn’t have any lessons on it, but there are a couple other videos from people I don’t watch so much, and there are a couple different sets of chords on Ultimate Guitar. I’ll just have to figure out what version I like best. :slight_smile:

I also started continuing going through some of the Grade 2 lessons, and the Theory lessons. I could probably just jump to the intermediate lessons, but I want to make sure I’ve got a strong base, so I still want to watch all the earlier lessons to pick up tips on things I could improve on.

I got over 60 on most of the 1 minute changes I was working on, so will probably start swapping those out for some of the other changes I still have trouble with in Dust in the Wind, and any I might have trouble with in Even if It Breaks Your Heart. Also started on memorizing how to piece all the parts together for Dust in the Wind.

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I’ve started working on learning Even if it Breaks Your Heart. I chose a fairly simple chord progression that sounds close enough to me.

Intro/Verse: Am → G → C → F → C → G
Chorus: (F → C → Am → G) x3 → F → C → G → C

The nice part about this chord progression is that I get to firm up my F-chord and can also try and work on the weak-finger G chord, which transitions nicely back and forth from the C.

Going to work through Justin’s 10-step process for playing and singing at the same time. Starting with writing down all the steps so I can reference them easier. :slight_smile: I think the first step was to listen to the song 10x. I’ve listened to it way more than that. but don’t mind listening to it more while trying to focus on the chord changes a bit more.

Still also working on Dust in the Wind but didn’t focus on it quite as much while I work through some of the initial learning of Even if it Breaks Your Heart.

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Decided to record another progress video for Dust in the Wind. Partly to play with some different recording setups. Still have a lot of work to do on it. Mostly around the G → Dm7 change. I think I’ve got most of the progression mostly memorized, but there are occasional pauses here as I try to remember what comes next.

This is played on the acoustic this time. The acoustic pre-amp is connected to my Volt 2 AI and then combined with my USB mic using Reaper, then to OBS for recording audio and video at the same time.

Also continuing to practice playing and singing Even if it Breaks Your Heart. It’s slowly progressing. I’m not exactly using Justin’s 10 step process to sing and play at the same time but am using some of the concepts from that as a general guideline. I’m planning to pick up an XLR mic at some point and waiting to try and record that with vocals until then.

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