Got to study some serious guitar

Hi everyone! Thank you for reading the “study plan”. Would love to know how you learn and master guitar, working on the apparent weaknesses and becoming a better guitarist! =)

Was playing guitar together with grand piano yesterday and I failed xD

I think I am going speed run Justin Grade 4 & 5, restudy the major scale, improvisation and some triads. Then try to visualize it on DADGAD tuning. (This was what happened yesterday, people asking me to jam with piano and my guitar happened to be in DADGAD T.T)

Then need to pick up some percussive techniques from fingerstyle guitarist (even Kotaro Oshio does teach that), have been ignoring this for a while :sob:

Most importantly, able to get the groove feels going and become a better performer with a crowd :heart:

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I looked at some of your videos. You are really cool imho! :+1: I don’t think this will apply to you, you seem almost pro, but maybe others can benefit from it or get inspired.

No matter if I start learn something new or already somewhat skilled, I use the same kind of approach. This goes with Guitar also and I seriously doubt my approach will change much over time.

As totally new to something, I want to get a roughly overview. How does it function. Is there a theory behind, how does that roughly work.
Next just get a feel for what and how and so on.

Then I try to get a sense on what to adopt and what to reject. That can save me a lot of trouble and time later, so I don’t have to unlearn a lot of bad habits, in order to get back on track.

As I progress, I start extract the key points, the crucial points as in overall, but also specific on the route I want to go, if more than one available. With guitar it seem like countless routes. :wink:

I always try my best to combine study and practice. They help each other. Also improve and refine one skill that is already pretty ok, can spill over, have a positive ripple effect on other areas, though being careful not to end up, only being able to do one thing really good. Can be a tricky balance at times.

As said, I try to find the crucial points. Al Di Meola gives here one of those crucial points. For me all 36 minutes are worth listening to. But the crucial point IMHO, is at 12:11, that section. So since I feel and see it as a keypoint, a crucial point, I put extra effort into getting good at it, perfecting it, refining it. It’s about rythm. Justin also very much emphasize this point. - 12:11 for Al Di Meola talking about rythm

PS. Edit. One more crucial point I have discovered, was from one of the Classical Nerds. If I have a point in a piece, where the chord shift doesn’t work or I have a lot of trouble exactly there, then he said, try look a chord or two back. See if the chord shift can be improved, by taking the chord before the problem chord, a bit different, so it becomes more easy to make the shift, to prepare for the next chord. He said it sometimes can be helpful to look two chords back and already there change the hand position, to ease the shift two chords later. Even as a total beginner I find that extremely helpful.

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Thank you so much Kim! The link you have shared definitely fills the missing part in my upcoming focus! The study of time feels definitely would be so powerful. Like the fingerstyle songs I am going to learn have so much syncopation going on lol. And going to have proper and better syncopation in my future song, too :sparkling_heart:

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Yes, thank-you, Kim. The Al Di Meola clip comprised what I am sure will be the best 36 minutes of my day. What a treat!

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Thanks for sharing that video Kim - have watched the smaller clip from 12:11 and appreciate the message on ‘the centring of time’. Will watch the whole thing later.

I like the idea of tracing backwards from a problem area. Guessing Justin’s 1 minute changes are based on the principle of isolating sticky bits and making sure we can fluidly arrive and leave each chord. It makes sense that once the approach is applied to a piece of music where the pace of change is faster that incremental changes to series of hand position of notes/chords could have a big impact.

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