as Justin pointed out, I think in his recent newsletter, that we should share some of our “guitar developments” I thought I give it a try. I’m going into my third year on this site and shared some soundcloud mp3s of Heart Of Gold and Fade Into You by Mazzy Star earlier last year, back when it was the old community board.
This time I tried to record my playing on video, so this is basically my “first time playing” in public. Happy to hear your inputs, as I feel a little stuck right now, or maybe my motivation is diminishing. Actually, in the past months I was more or less noodling around with no serious studying.
Hi Tim, I think you did great here and I am a bit of a Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder junkie myself you played the song well, you had a good flow and fingerpicking was really good. Heck you even sang it well! There is really not much to pick up on and I need to really be picky to think of something and without those comments you made a recording that is more than great itself.
One is that it’s bit slower than original but again I don’t find it wrong, 99.9% people wouldn’t notice and 100% of those who don’t know the song would notice too.
Second is a suggestion - when you play D-Dsus4-Dsus (so when you play with your pinky 5th fret) I would suggest a different grip to get the change smoother so your play can flow better and you don’t have to stop on it too much. I started like you on another song but I sort of found a way to make it more economic - all you do is put your first finger on G string, second on B and then you have an easier stretch with pinky to fret 5. Try it out and let me know what you think.
@adi_mrok Thank you, Adrian! And many thanks for taking the time. You’re totally right with the speed of the song. I guess I did not bother too much with that, as I wasn’t playing along with the recording.
But what did bother is the pinky situation. Thank you for the advice you gave me. I will definitely try that one later, as my methods Interrupts the flow, which is kind of annoying, haha. Thanks
That was very good Tim and thanks for sharing. You do not need to excuse your singing at all as I thought your vocals were spot on. Really good performance!
Really good playing. Eddie Vedder sure does love that travis picking, huh? And it sounds so good.
You’ve developed some great skills. If you’re in a rut, have you thought about learning different techniques, new songs, or songwriting? Noodling could lead into songwriting…
I think just by simply posting a video online so that people can actually see and/or provide feedback on your playing, will do wonders for motivation. Well that’s at least what happened to me - I had been on break from guitar for many months with no real intention of going back to it until I signed up and posted my first video on this forum around the middle of this year. Hopefully you keep pushing through that rut mate, good luck.
Hi Tim,
That was really very good. Your Travis picking was great and I loved the soft smooth vocals. My only advice is try sliding up to the note with the little finger instead of the stretch. I can’t stretch with that finger very well so I often slide to the note to keep the momentum going.
Fabulous recording, Tim, the playing, the singing, the sound quality.
For your next … I do hope there’ll be more to follow … I’d like to see you sit a little further back so we see head, shoulders and the whole guitar.
As for the lack of motivation, if you just learn and play songs for a while and enjoy that then I imagine at some point something will happen that inspires a return to more study.
@SlipperyTriple Thank you For the picking pattern: I think it is one of the basic Travis Style Fingerpicking Patterns. As I remember Justin also has some intermediate Lessons on that (I did not get that far yet), but there is also pretty good video from Paul Davids on YouTube (the legendary picking pattern), which gives a great insight (I hope it is ok to mention this here). And from there you’re pretty good to go to try around a little. For me, the hardest part while learning it was to keep my thumb movement consistent to get that alternating bass notes. Everything in between then almost comes naturally. I hope I could help
,…That was totally needless to say,…you can sing,…
you played the song well, you had a good flow and fingerpicking was really good. Heck you even sang it well! There is really not much to pick up on and I need to really be picky to think of something and without those comments you made a recording that is more than great itself.
. So well played and fantastic singing 
.
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