My goal was to play well enough to strum campfire songs. Now I’m sick to death of campfire songs so my goal has changed.
I want to play folk songs especially fingerstyle. I want to be able to sing along and for it to sound good. I can play some songs ok and I can sing pretty well without the guitar but when I try to do them simultaneously I’m too intensely focused on the guitar and the singing comes out sounding not that great.
A long term goal is to learn the notes on the fretboard well enough to be able to look at a musical score and play it without having to spend ages figuring out the location of the notes on the fretboard first. I feel like I should know the notes on the first frets already, I don’t know why it’s so hard to learn… If anyone has a good method I’d love to hear.
Mine is kinda unusual one. I don’t ever want to play any other people’s material.
I want to play spontaneously - 100% improvise. Kinda ambient style mostly, but not exclusively.
I don’t use a pick - finger style and strumming only.
I use looper a lot - can’t quite improvise chords and melodies at the same time - that would be nice to achieve.
When and if I ever get to retire (I’m 52 right now and still a beginner/intermediate) I would love to busk out on the streets somewhere with a little amp and a looper.
No singing for me - my voice amplified makes me cringe every time.
Hi I really found this lesson thought provoking and challenging. I am into my 2nd year on Justin Guitar and trying to practice 1 hour per day.
I am 64 years old so my long term goals need to be not that long and probably a bit smarter.
I think entertaining family and friends as a solo musician is where I would like to get to but I would also like to be able to perform a couple of classical solo’s such as Parisienne Walkways by Gary Moore and some Tony Iommi Black Sabbath riffs as they enthrall me and excite me.
Not yet piecing together what I need to get there but still enjoying the musical journey - although for my old fingers it is at times a hard slog.
Great topic Justin so now I need to go away and think about goal setting - thanks…
As part of Justin’s online theory course, he has asked us to put a post of our goals for taking theory and our years goals. So here is my stance…
Long term goals
Want to take a few songs that have melodic instrumental parts and apply those chord shapes with major and minor pentatonic scales to come up with melodic parts on the acoustical guitar. Electric will come down the road.
Am now in the process of trying to become a guitar teacher. A solid theory foundation I feel is very important to this in order to answer questions students will inevitably have.
Apply this knowledge into blues/rock guitar playing.
This years goals.
Have the music theory classes up to at least grade 4 passed and know very well.
2l Come up with lesson plan to teach “newbies only” for now. Applying and teaching basic theory with the 8 essential chords.(mid year goal)
Find a couple of students to teach. Paid or not paid is not too important. Have to start off somewhere. But if I do charge it would be cheap. But effective. Have to draw em in somehow!!(undecided until I have a lesson plan in place). More than likely nominal fee. There will be supplied materials and other bonuses I have ringing around in my brain .(mid year goal)
Have started specifically designed blues lessons by Justin.(end year goal)
My specific goal for 2024 is to be able to play Going Down Slow based on the version Duane Allman did on his anthology album.
To help me achieve that goal I need to:
Complete the Practical Music Theory course (just completed module 4)
Master the licks Duane Allman used
Learn slide guitar
In addition to the specific goals for the above I wish to extend my guitar journey by playing live at an open mic within the next year and have 15-20 songs committed to memory
How realistic are these goals?
I turn 70 next month so time is of the essence. I devote a minimum of two hours a day to practicing guitar. We will see if I can pull it off.
practising regularly so that my slow fingers become more flexible - I only started playing guitar in spring 2022 at the age of 57, and I notice that the mechanics of my hands don’t work quite as smoothly as they do in a younger person.
starting Beginner Course Grade 3 and getting as far as possible without rushing too much
completing Grade 4 of Practical Music Theory (if possible starting with Grade 5)
work at my strumming and finger picking skills …
building my song repertoire and jamming with a close friend (don’t know if I already get confident enough to participate in an Open Mic)
Well, that’s enough goals for a limited time budget - as a “not yet retired” person I’ll have to spend some time at work too
I would think that if you practice as much as two hours a day that those goals should be achievable, although I’m not familiar with the Duane Allman song so i don’t know how hard it is or what level you’re at now, but a year sounds like plenty of time. Of course playing an open mic is quite achievable, just depends on your comfort level. And 15-20 songs is only 1-2 per month. definitely do-able.
The website has a few fingerstyle chord melody arrangements that I enjoyed learning.
Greensleeves (Grade 3 Module 16)
Solo blues Lick-in’ riff (Grade 3 Module 18)
Yesterday by the Beatles.
And for Christmas : We wish you a Merry Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Auld Land Syne.
Fingerstyle arrangements are fun but they take some time to learn and I did not find many others on the website for grade 3 or 4.
After looking at the post from AlexisDuprey JG Rock Songbook Studies, I bought the JustinGuitar Rock Songbook. It has 15 beginner songs (grade 2 and 3) that are really fun to play with backing tracks. I use Moise to remove the guitar from the original song and I record mine in the track.
Check Alexis’s videos, it’s just like being part of the band. Playing and recording yourself with the backing track make it much fun. And you can show the final result to your family and it looks really professionnal.
If you don’t like rock, you can do the same thing with any songbook like the Acoustic.
My goal is to get better at strumming and find songs that fit my voice. I would like to be able to play some songs from memory. I also want to learn more chord melodies and embellishments. I get distracted by YouTube a lot and tend to jump from one song or lesson to another! I did pick up a lot of good tips though😀. The most important thing is I’m enjoying guitar playing so much! I joined a guitar group last year and that is really motivating me to get better and better!
Goals: I want to duet with David Gilmour while Roger Waters lays down the groove…wait, those two hate eachother so therefore this is an unrealistic goal.
Improvisation is one of my main goals. I look at how I can apply everything I learn to this discipline. True creative expression.
I badly needed this lesson! One of my (newly stated) goals is to have a repertoire of 25 songs I can play at gatherings. Pulling out all of my notes and papers, I found that I have worked on over 50 different songs in the past couple of years. While I can play & sing 11 of those songs all the way through, I have just ONE song that I am comfortable playing in front of friends and family. Going through this exercise prompted me to (finally) start putting together my songbook. Next step is that I’ll develop the other 10 songs I know into songs I can play in front of others. No doubt I can get to 25 songs, and using SMART goals will get me there much sooner than continuing to bounce around without goals to check my progress against. Thank you Justin.
Long goal: become a great improviser for jam sessions, spontaneous solos. My preferred style being somewhere in blues, jazz and rock.
Mid term goals:
Guitar: Get G-scale open position/2nd position/5th position to at least 100 bpm 16th notes without looking.
Understand and apply vibrato and string bending.
Play barre chords to a good level
Ear training: Learn all intervals by ear with 90%+ succes rate
Learn to recognize notes by ear with 90%+ succes rate
Theory: Truly understand the ins and outs of chord structure, learn the theory behind motives and other improvisation theory
Short term goals:
Guitar: Practice G scale, practice finger control fretting hand, practice strumming the correct string consistently without looking, practice improvising over backing tracks/great songs.
Ear training: keep going over the intervals one by one
Theory: understand how to make 7 chords all over the neck
I want to become a Fingerstyle solo guitar player. I am doing some songs already but I’m finding it difficult to establish medium term goals. Having a suggested learning pathway would be very useful for me.
Denis I usually don’t recommend other teachers on Justin’s forum but seeing how Justin doesn’t have a beginner to advanced finger style course I’ll make an exception.
Chris has free lessons and paid courses from beginner to advanced https://sixstringfingerpicking.com/songs/
I’ve completed the fingerstyle beginners course and currently working my way through the fingerstyle intermediate course albeit I’ve stopped at the moment to focus on BLIM. They kind of went hand in hand with Justin’s course as like most fingerstyle courses they expect you to already have good solid foundations.
My goal is to become a competent fingerstyle guitar player. I really enjoyed the lesson on playing Greensleaves. I want to get more guitar tabs to enable me to be able to play a large number of tunes using fingerstyle.
so my goal has changed.
