On looking, he does say this too in 2.14: “So, it’s time to stop looking like a beginner, but most important: it’s time to break a bad habit that can be really damaging later on in your guitar journey!”
yes. the earlier you work at it, even a little, it will help later on.
I struggled a great deal with accuracy on both hands. I never took time to really learn to not look. About 6 months ago, I decided that I needed to resolve the accuracy problem. I slowed WAY down, back to the beginning slow, and also decided to close my eyes and just feel where I was placing my hands. This did a lot for improving accuracy and it really didn’t set me back too far after the initial 3-4 weeks of practicing this. I still need practice, but some things that never went well now go mostly ok. I consider not looking to be a good thing to start somewhat early, but the part of not looking for me was to start to feel where on the guitar my hand was. That was the real change.
thank you. Good advice, hard to do. The two usually go together, I have found:-). Learning to drive a stick shift auto, which is the last thing of comparable difficulty I did over 50 years ago, not looking at what the hands AND feet are doing was vital to keep every one on the roads around me alive. So that was mandatory then.
Hi Kumar59
Welcome.
I think that your questions are addressing things that all of us felt in the fist modules.
At least for me, a lot of the things like the chords feeling very strange, hand and finger positions etc just came with time, but it certainly felt very strange and awkward to start with. The more you do it, the more familiar it will become.
Regarding not looking: I think that until the chords feel natural and comfortable for you to form with your hand, it’s very difficult not to look. Once it all feels more familiar then I think you might find you don’t need to look as much.
It’s important to practice and not rush ahead too much in the lessons even though it’s tempting to try what’s coming next. Be patient and take your time. To do that, I just tell myself that I’m not in a race and not trying to prove anything to anyone and that I have time and that I don’t need to hurry. I’m almost 2 years into the course and only 2 thirds of the way through grade 2. However, I have sort of digressed from the course and concentrated a lot more on playing songs (songs that are listed as grades 1, 2 and 3) than doing the lessons. I see this as a sort of consolidation of what I have learnt and several of the teachers on this forum keep saying practice songs. It’s certainly very enjoyable and I feel I’m in a good place to move forward. So take your time.
Regarding the volume of sound and not disturbing others: This is something that I had to think a lot about as I live in a small apartment with very noise sensitive neighbours. At first, I just kept imagining how completely awful my practicing would sound to other people and I didn’t want them to suffer. So I played my electric a lot unplugged (a telecaster can be quite good unplugged actually) and then I got a Fender headphone amp which sounds great. As I improved, I started playing more and more with my guitar amplified and worried less about disturbing others when it started to sound better. My neighbours have not complained (yet!)
I still play through headphones to practice power chords though as they sometimes sound a bit painful when I play them 
As someone else mentioned, for the strumming practice, you don’t need to worry about sound. Just mute the strings with your left hand and get the rhythm with your right. It’s very quiet like that and I find it quite a good sort of relaxing type exercise. Justin explains it all in his strumming course. The strumming course is well worth it.
This has become quite a long « introduce yourself » thread. You might want to start a learning log.
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Thank you Professor, all good advice. To see if my noise issues have a solution of the kind you have used, I was fooling around with an electric guitar and a headphone amp. All looked promising as a long term solution till I plugged in the little amp and wired ear buds to it - the issue is that once picked, the string/note takes a long time to decay to silence. Is this normal or is it something to do with some setting on the electric guitar?
PS: this happens even when I pick very gently, so it isn’t just vigorous picking that is the cause of this.
Totally normal. I mentioned above you’d hear everything.
Much later in lessons, Justin will go over string muting techniques. Like not looking, this is something nice to know, but also do not let it slow you down at the point you are at today. You should progress through Justin’s lessons. He knows you will have these concerns and will present corrections at a time that has felt right throughout his years of teaching.
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I thought what you meant then was that every little mistake would be clearly heard! But compared to my acoustic, the notes seem to ring forever if not muted somehow.
That is often a desired thing. You’ll get contributions from the guitar body, neck rigidity, nut material, bridge material, string weight, pickup, signal compression (if any), and amp gain.
Don’t think about it too much yet!
[quote="Prof_Thunder, post:64, topic:397188”]
It’s important to practice and not rush ahead too much in the lessons even though it’s tempting to try what’s coming next. Be patient and take your time.
[/quote]
I agree with this
I will try to explain it the way Lieven does
You re teaching your brain new informations
Each chord you learn is a brand new information for your brain
It needs time to digest it , to understand it
If you try to not look , it s another information for your brain
Too many infos at the same time will just be too much ( for a beginner ) and make it real hard to learn
Take one step at a time and follow Justin ’s lessons in the order it is given
there’s a reason why “ not looking “ is in grade 2 module 14
you need to be able to play the chords smoothly first and be confident in your strumming
Learning is not a race , its a lifetime journey !
the other problem you may encounter is badly placing your fingers and not knowing it since you re not looking
Practice makes permanent ( not perfect )
so learn to place correctly your fingers to form the chords first !
[quote="Prof_Thunder, post:64, topic:397188”]
This has become quite a long « introduce yourself » thread. You might want to start a learning log.
[/quote]
I agree with this too ^^
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I shall try not to. I will move on from this subject by a direct quote of a question I found in reddit that describes my situation as well as if I have written it:
So I’m a newbie to Electric Guitar, and technically even Acoustic guitar. My brother has an old Electric Guitar and Amp I’m trying to use and it well sounds like an electric guitar; but it doesn’t feel like one. The problem is all the notes sort of bland and mush together when playing. I’ve tried playing one note just plucking once on a decent downstroke and holding it. And it rings out for a good… 30 seconds? Why does it do this? It’s as if I’m playing piano with the sustain pedal permanently held down. It makes my guitar sound gross and yucky and icky. I don’t see a sustain option on my amp either.
As you have said most of the answers to this on Reddit referred, as you have, to string muting, which comes later in the Justin course. On its own, with no muting of any kind, the classical acoustic just sounds more precise, even when all strings are strummed. The “gross…” reference in the quote seems to me to be a hum sound hovering when more that one string is/are strummed, till they go silent and the hum too fades away. I have tried different gain/volume combinations that seem to have some effect but not as much as I would like.
Of course when played unplugged, it meets my needs of a quiet instrument perfectly.
Regarding the headphone amp, certainly electric guitars can have a lot of sustain that seems to go on forever. Be careful as well because if the headphone amp has a distortion setting that can also add a lot of sustain and the notes seem to go on and on. But many people like that about electrics.
If you do have it on a distortion setting then it’s not advisable when learning at first because it can hide your mistakes more than if you play it as a clean sound. You will hear less well whether the notes are properly fretted etc.
Yes Ian, I am using the clean channel on the amp plug; the other channel is the one with crunch or gain or whatever, that is of not much use to me. But the combination of that plug feeding an old Sony bluetooth portable speaker with an audio in jack is quite convenient and portable. Every 12 hours or so the amp plug needs two AAA batteries, but other than that it appears quite a good way to go when I don’t need to practice unplugged.
How much can one progress in the beginner course before not knowing music theory becomes a speed breaker?
Hi Kumar, Justin teaches enough basic theory in the beginning modules, so that you will not be held back at the beginning grades. You learn some basic music theory in each of the beginner grades, such as “Learning Music Notes” and the note circle in Module 5. If you look at the grade 1 and 2 PMT lessons (freely available without cost on the website), you will see that the theory that is taught in the main grade 1 and 2 lessons (modules 0 to 14) is explained in more detail. I consider grade 3 to be beginner plus or advancing beginner and introduces you to some intermediate topics. I think that you will need to learn more theory to speed up progress in the intermediate grades.
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Noted, thanks!
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Hi Kumar, welcome. Good you’re interested in the fine detail and in learning well above learning fast. I think that part of learning how to play guitar is learning how to plan and organize the practice. An important part of that for me is learning when it’s good enough for a skill to continue being practiced, when the additional time spent on it won’t add to much the improvement of the skill in the short term and moving to other exercise could be more beneficial. Justin helps you with that planning and organization at the beginning, but gradually the student is the one that has to take charge of it. You can check some learning logs in the learning log section and see how other students organize their practice or go to the chat of specific lessons, but don’t forget to do that in addition to your practice time 
. Have fun.
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Thank you, good inputs. I have started to get the hang of the learning process and how it all comes together in time. That understanding is the easy part, the hard part that makes it a journey is what it takes for that to happen! While my 12 year old granddaughter, that was casually strumming a Spanish melody after some month just gets things by doing what her teacher tells her without too much intellectualising. Probably the better way:-).
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Hello Kumar
I turn 65 tomorrow and have been playing a little over a year. Your finger tips will be tender for about three months. In the beginning it’s important to practice daily but not long. I can play for hours now, but in the beginning fifteen minuets is plenty. Our bones are old and our joints are stiff, and we are asking them to move in deferent ways. If your joints start to hurt, stop for the day. Rather than giving you a finite time to a musical milestone, I’m going to suggest keeping a log or journal of your small successes. Take your time and enjoy the journey.
Hello David, many happy returns of the day! As you have suggested, the thing to do for us old timers is to see this as a journey, because no matter what, we are not going to get to the levels of the Claptons and the Knopflers. But what this journey does is increase the enjoyment of watching these gents make music, with a keener appreciation of all they are doing. My fingers tips are not a concern, I can live with some pain there; the challenge is to get the fingers to not fly all over the place and for the left and right hands to cooperate!
Here is a tip to cure the flying fingers syndrome. Get you fingers into position, then lift them 5mm off the strings and place them down all at once, not one at a time, repeat. This will train the brain to the chord shape. Do this for all the chords you are learning, A, C, D and G.
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