Welcome to the forum and glad you are here. For several years I managed a team of workers from Bangalore India. From what I observed, Indian people do not complain and do not give up. Having said that, I know you will succeed in your journey by giving it time. My advice is to follow the course step by step and break up your practice into short sessions, like maybe 15 minutes. marathon practicing will not get you motivated in the beginning and instead will lead to frustration. Practice just fretting the notes while muting the strings with your other hand. When you strum you will near a scratching sound. Once you can play the chord scratching then play the chord with the full sound. If your fingers cannot do the full D chord, try a suspended D, which is a similar sound and takes only 2 fingers. Before you know it, you can add the third finger for the full chord. I suggest to not set fixed time periods as to when you must master a certain technique, because that can set the stage for disappointment. Don’t let age or pain in your hands stop your journey. I wish you the best of luck.
Again very useful feedback from all, much appreciated. I practiced my D and A chords before my 12 year old granddaughter today and this was the outcome: even when I wasn’t quite sure of the difference between my D and my A sounds, she could. Progress of sorts, and I am thinking that just staying with the program is the key to cracking this. Miles to go, obviously.
Thank you Jeff for all that advice: I assure you that I complain loudly, but I do not give up! At my age and from where I am lucky to be in life, I have the whole day to choose my practice times from, so that is a plus. I am not too fussed about any pain that is temporary, I just want to ensure that poor technique does not result in damage that will cause suspension of practice or constrain the ability to grow skills.
A different question: As I keep forging ahead, I suspect I will need to do this with lower dB from my efforts for the benefit of others around. What are ways to do this while still keeping progress not impeded?
Kumar, I looked again at your picture of you playing the D chord. I noticed that your middle finger is resting directly on the fret. You should have all the fingers pressing behind or between the frets to avoid buzzing off the strings. This will get easier with practice.
Yes, Steve, that finger goes there when I try to push the ring finger out, and I do frequent testing string by string for the note quality as suggested. It and I will get there with practice!
Michael, the sound levels are not an issue now of course for just chord practice, but when the strumming lessons start, I suspect it may be. I will look at the site you have linked, and I am sure that use of mutes under the strings may be one method - I have seen such quite cheap on Amazon.
I am even mulling over getting an electric guitar about 6 months down the line and using that with a head phone wired to a small headphone amp plugged in directly. I would think that skills can move back and forth between acoustic and electric without needing too much practice.
Try one out at a local store. The neck is not as wide, and that can put your fingers off target a little. I move between very different electric necks with only a moment of adjustment needed.
You can still hear an electric unplugged, it is very quiet however. With a headset, you hear every little mistake.
Kumar, you can wrap your hands around neck of the guitar and the strings of the guitar to mute the strings when you are practicing strumming to mute the sound of the strum. Justin suggests doing that for all new strumming patterns since it lets you focus on the strumming and not worrying about the fretting hand. Since you are playing a nylon guitar you will probably be strumming with your thumb or finger, so you can strum softer when you are playing chords.
I am not sure where you read 6-8 weeks. I did see in Grade 2 module 8 that Justin says that it would take at least 2 weeks to complete each module, but if you only practiced 4 days per week it might take 3 to 4 weeks for each module. That is what I had used as my guideline for grades 2 and 3.
On last bit of advice. If you need some help with stretching the fingers for chords, look at the discussion for the Beginner Finger Stretches in Module 4 on the website. I added some tips in the discussion:
Quicker progress than I thought at the start, with D and A chords becoming familiar enough to start the one minute chord changes, where I am presently at 14-15 a minute. When I do the perfect chord rechecks there still are errors in placement that need correction at times and more importantly I am not all the way there to getting the thumb be in the correct areas. But all till now suggests that if I keep working systematically, guitar up to a somewhat capable amateur level will not be beyond me.
One thing that is probably an outcome of nylon strings is that my fingers don’t hurt as much, a good thing. But this also means that callus needed for precise finger placement will take more time to form, a not so good thing.
Long way to go on getting fingers to spread out and learn independence.
Once again, all inputs so far from the community are much appreciated.
Hello Kumar.
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That is plenty to be going on with. It is a vast community space so if you need help as you find your way around just ask.
Cheers. Richard
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