I am Nadine from Germany. I live near Düsseldorf and have been a member at justinguitar.com for already a few years, but I rarely used the community (or forum earlier) until now.
Also (or maybe because of that?) my guitar journey so far has been a bit on-off. I am trying to change that, and become more constant in what I practise, to make some solid progress.
So now, I did set some goals for the remainder of 2022, and I started to use the practise assistant on the website.
My goal for 2022: Have a least 5 songs in my “campfire” category!
Reason: I can play quite a few songs like “halfway”, but not a single one really well. I want to change that.
So I selected a few songs which I like and which have different areas of focus (fingerstyle, changing to barre chords quickly, power chords, 8th note strumming…)
In the end, I might maybe also record myself and post it in the AVOYP section, or maybe even participate in an Open Mic here one day??
I own 3 guitars, 2 acoustic ones of which one has a pickup, and one Electric (which is technically owned by my son, but he never plays it). I also have got some recording equipment already, but I hardly have any experience with that yet (apart from trying it out, not liking my own performance, and throwing it in the corner )…
Looking around here, I get the impression that it is a great community. I’m looking forward to getting to know you all!
Greetings,
Nadine
(If my English is not perfect, sorry, I am German. )
Herzlich willkommen Nadine,
Ihr Englisch ist mehr als in Ordnung, also keine Entschuldigung nötig…
It’s good that you step out of the shadows and even better that you learn to play complete songs,…that will take you further in many ways,…and inviting yourself to an AVOYP is a very good tool for that… …I wish you a lot of fun and a nice learning curve…
Greetings,Rogier
As Roger says, good to see you stepping out of the shadows. You list some good objectives and goals, realistic and reachable. Lots of good folk here to help you achieve them, so make use of members knowledge and experience when you need advice.
Hi Nadine, welcome to the community. I’m of German origin and have many relatives in Germany, got the chance to visit in 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve noticed some players in my time who are really good at various riffs and such but if you ask them to play a song they can’t play any songs all the way through.
When I first learned to play 10 years ago I made sure I focused on learning one song all the way through. Soon it became 2 and now many more. I always tried when practicing my songs to not only play them all the way through but also work out how to start and finish each song.
Many times when I was first learning, I’d play a song till I made a mistake and then start over, but more recently I’ve noticed because I always play a song all the way through that mistakes no longer throw me the way they used to. I think that’s because I now am well and truly in the flow of completing my songs always. Hope this helps you see that for some of us there’s an advantage in playing the songs all the way through.
Welcome to the community, Nadine! I’m glad you found and joined us here. Back when there was the old forum I never participated, but with this new community I have been (I think one reason at least was there was less “startup friction” with this - an account was already created for me just by fact of having a justinguitar login, whereas with the old forum one needed to create an account specifically. Might seem silly, but it’s true (for me ))
I really resonated with your intro. At first I hadn’t really “learned” any songs either. But recently I’ve been more focusing on that, so that I can at least play a few songs all the way through.
And I think the practice assistance is wonderful! It’s really one of the “hidden gems” of Justin’s site.
thank you all for the warm welcome and the kind words!
I find that doing a few days of the practice assistant already makes a huge difference. From the songs I am learning now perfectly for my campfire category, I picked the things which are still difficult for me and popped them into practice items. There are chord changes which I find difficult (B7 is not my friend… ), or fingerstyle which needs to become more consistent, or strumming patters, or switching between strumming patterns and/or fingerstyle… I do these for 1-3 minutes, apart from practising the whole song, and I already made good progress.
I really should have done that earlier!
Hallo “Nachbarin” !
And a warm Welcome to the community .
My focus at the moment is also to memorize 5 camp fire songs. Knowing songs only partly doesn’t really make much sense .
I wish you lots of fun along your guitar journey
Welcome to the community. Like the Toten Hosen song. “es ist egal woher du kommst…bleib heute abend hier wenn du mit uns feiern willst.” I used to live in Germany near Kaiserslautern so I have been to Dusseldorf before.
A lot of us here have tried and failed at guitar. They key is don’t give up just try again. My playing was nothing good at all when I started, furchtbar, but with Justin Guitar his teaching methods are fantastic. The community here is really supportive. I suggest to take your journey one step at a time and enjoy your progress. Record yourself and eventually try to perform in front of others. I sing and play and do it in front of people. My strumming is basic for now, but I will get better. I did a recent performance in Hollywood in front of a small group. Guess what, nobody covered their ears and a few said thank you for playing. It helps to build your confidence. At the least, just record yourself and keep it private so you can see your progress. I love that you are setting goals for yourself. That is the way to go. I’ve posted songs here in English and one in Spanish. Hopefully will post etwas auf Deutsch soon. My favorite from my time in Germany was “Alles Aus Liebe” by Die Toten Hosen. That song is completely in the key of C so easy to play but lot of changes and fancy arpeggios. Best of luck and Ich wunsche viel vergnugen.
Hallo Nadin. Herzliche Willkommen, meine Name ist Ken, ich komme aus England, ich wohne aber Zeit 40 Jahre
In Deutschland, in der Nähe von Mönchengladbach.
Hello Nadine welkomm your Englisch is Verry good, Rock on.
I do feel you! I’ve just started in these past months this changing process and it definetely pays off! For me it has always been like not feeling “skilled enough” to do a whole song and I always got stuck at single mistakes. But people don’t really care about mistakes you know, it took a while for me to understand this and learn to keep on the playing to the end of the song.
I’ m sure being part of this Community will help each one of us to grow together
my problem is not that I stop because of mistakes, it’s more like that all songs which I would like to be able to play still contain something which doesn’t work for me yet, like a chord change which takes me to long, or a strumming pattern which I did not automate enough yet and therefore can’t sing to it…
Ok, I did not count the very basic beginner songs with only a few chords. I can play through them with simple strumming (one/two/four downstrums per bar) easily. But I don’t consider these as “songs which I can play”. I want to do more than that.
I am also looking forward to growing in this community.
I also like “Alles aus Liebe” by “Die Toten Hosen”! This song was popular when I was a teenager, and I remember a situation in a youth hostel where a friend and I were rocking to it on our beds, playing air guitar to it…
That’s funny. I have a story for when that song came out too. I am walking in the Pflaumen Baum in Kaiserslautern and the first girl I see looks at me and says “No English”. I had not said a word and then immediately started singing the song word for word pausing every now and then to say “no English” and continuing to the end. My friends of course could not stop laughing. Years later I looked up the guitar tab and it is mostly C-Am-F-G and E. Someday I will post my version of the song now that I have songs in English and Spanish already here lol.
Hello Nadine, welcome to the community.
Once the fundamentals are there the best way, the most fun way, to consolidate and become a better player is to learn songs, learn songs, learn songs. You are doing it so bravo.
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), or fingerstyle which needs to become more consistent, or strumming patters, or switching between strumming patterns and/or fingerstyle… I do these for 1-3 minutes, apart from practising the whole song, and I already made good progress.
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