I introduced myself about a year ago, but have been mostly lurking and reading the forum ever since, so decided that it might be about time to start my own learning log in order to feel a little more connected to the community and hopefully feel more confident to share my playing and progress.
I’ll start with a brief re-introduction: I’m Erika, I live in Southern California, and I picked up a new guitar as a 40th birthday present for myself last year (pictured below). I’ve always had an interest in learning, and even dabbled in trying to learn in my mid-20s (on the early days of JustinGuitar), but I could never find the motivation to stick with it. Then I turned 40 and decided to give it another go. I guess I had a moment of realization that I didn’t want never learning to play to be one of those things I regret when I get older.
I do have a musical background: I played flute and then saxophone from the age of 13 through my early twenties. I played in a jazz band in high school and even started with a music major in college, but it was too much classical music and I eventually transferred to the film program, which is the industry I work in now.
Fast forward to last year, when I bought my guitar and signed up for JustinGuitar. I moved pretty quickly through the first beginner lessons, and was surprised at how much of the beginner chords I remembered from my earlier attempts to learn to play. But after a few months, I started to hit a wall again. I saw a few folks on here talking about taking private lessons in conjunction with JG, so I decided to give that a try. I found a teacher in my area and started taking private lessons in July. That has been a huge help, and finally gotten me past my blocks.
I kind of realized that I was holding myself back from moving into Grade 2 because I was worried I hadn’t learned everything well enough, but I was also getting bored with the songs I felt I could play with only the knowledge I’d gained in Grade 1. My teacher had me learning bar chords pretty quickly, so I realized I could probably move ahead in JG to Grade 2 as well. Plus, I started going through some of the music theory lessons. My teacher has also been helping me to learn to play songs by ear which has been very fun and probably the most motivating of all.
About a month ago, I started increasing my daily practice time to closer to an hour a day, because I was finding that 20 minutes of time wasn’t really enough to feel like I was progressing week to week in my private lessons. Sometimes I split it up into a few 20 minute chunks, though. Here’s my current practice routine:
-spider walk & other finger exercises
-scales (C major and G major)
-chord perfect and 1-minute chord changes (this changes depending on what songs I’m currently working on or what I feel needs the most work)
-strumming practice
-songs & improv practice
The songs I’m working on at the moment:
Bob Dylan “Rolling Stone”
Beatles “Here Comes the Sun”
Beatles “Daytripper”
Dusty Springfield “Son of a Preacher Man”
I guess that about wraps it up for now. I’m hoping to update this learning log monthly with my progress. I’d like to record myself playing and share it, but I’m not feeling that any of my songs are quite at the point where I feel comfortable sharing them. I’m thinking about getting an input device if I can find a good price on Black Friday, though, so maybe I will get up the courage to share something in December. Oh, and here is the promised photo of my guitar.
Thanks for reading!
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I don’t know a ton about all the different guitars yet but I’m learning and figured I’ll try to get the playing under my fingers before I start collecting too many fun guitars. I do think I want an acoustic before too long, though, too. 