Just read through your learning log after watching your AVOYP. Sounds like you’re at an exciting part of the guitar journey, having loads of fun. It all just gets better from here if you keep practicing the way you are.
You know the solution to this one, right? You need more guitars 
Being guitar-less is awful, I even hate it when going away on holiday.
I have been having loads of fun since starting grade 2! I’m excited to get my F variations more operational since there are so many songs I’ve glanced at and put off because of it.
I agree, vacationing without it was also very sad! I have begun dreaming about what I’d want to upgrade to or add once I’ve got a more solid skill set. It’s pretty fun to window shop online. Luckily, being a lefty, I think GAS is a bit less of a liability for me since my local (tiny) shop only had right-handed ones when I was in for my setup.
I am thinking maybe after reaching some target milestone (TBD what benchmark exactly), I’ll have to make a pilgrimage to Southpaw Guitars in Houston, TX, which sells only lefty instruments (~200 lefty guitars under one roof!!)
I did a similar thing to keep the GAS at bay, set a few songs that were above my ability to play as goals and worked towards that.
Hm, I had been considering picking a certain number of cumulative practice hours, but that’s an interesting idea too 
I’ve surpassed 100* practice hours since my grand restarting of the guitar journey with Justin last fall! I’m certainly no natural, but I’m happy with my progress, and after 5+ months of playing, finally feel like I might be over the hump for continuing to play and not becoming part of the oft-cited statistic of 90% of new players quitting within a year.
*(conservative estimate, imperfectly accounting for playing beyond the timer, and for losing last year’s practice data, not realizing that would happen if I deleted old practice routines 
)
In module 9, my mini F was harder than the full bar at first crack, but now is definitely the easier option and is just about usable at slow tempos. I’m just getting underway with Module 10 - the weak finger G seemed impossible a week ago, but now that my pinky has figured it out, it is absolutely the easier option when changing to/from C. I’m hoping I’ll be able to say the same next week about the single-finger A (first practice with it today sounded rough).
I also revisited a song I was trying to learn before discovering Justin - By and By by Caamp. Last night, I was able to mostly play along at 50% tempo with the 16th note strumming pattern, which would have been inconceivable 5 months ago. Onward and upward! 
Congratulations. It’s amazing when you look back as to how far you have come in such a relatively short time.
Well, I passed the 6-month mark earlier this month without fanfare - I didn’t even realize it until several days later. I’m slowly watching and incorporating the lessons from module 11 into practice. I am currently about halfway through watching the lessons, and very excited to start trying a little bit of fingerstyle!
My full-barre F is slowly coming along. I have a spreadsheet for my chord changes which has a conditional formatting color scale (red-orange-green). After 6 weeks of practice, my F changes are finally starting to turn orange after a prolonged period in the deepest red. One current issue is that when I strum the chord, I must let up pressure ever so slightly because it often sounds a little messy/buzzy, but when I go back and pick the individual notes, they sound fine.
Other than module-specific exercises I’m currently working on:
Overall, pretty happily chugging along 
I wasn’t planning on posting a proper update until probably next week (after making a recording for the c/o 2023 Challenge #3), but this happened today and I thought it was worth documenting:
Whose fingers are these?
When did they get grafted onto my body, and by whom?
And more importantly, can I keep them???
I’ve been working on F changes since mid-April (and could only get 10-12/minute at the outset), finally started turning the corner from red to orange at the turn of last month. When I hit 40 for F-G today, I went back and repeated it since I thought I had to have miscounted, but it was repeatable (today, anyway). I still can’t quite manage these changes on tempo in songs, but seem to be making more progress now. As of yesterday, I’ve added a few minutes of “forced changes” into my practice routine, so hoping to get there sooner than later 
Hilary, congratulations on your “break through” practice session with the F chord changes. It will happen more often as you continue to practice. When you can make the changes without too much thinking, your brain and your hand don’t fight each other and you can make the changes faster. I like your idea of the chord change spreadsheet. I’m in grade 3, but still doing grade 2 consolidation and find that my F chord changing skill get worse over time if I don’t practice, so thanks for giving me an idea for keeping track of my progress.
I’m looking forward to what you’re saying about good F days happening more often 
And yes, I like having a spreadsheet to visually see my progress - I used to record numbers in the practice assistant, but once you get past G1, it gets too cluttered with all the chords and there’s no way to stratify the data. Doing it on my own, I can separate out chord groups and use a conditional formatting color code to easily see where I am. Hope it’s also useful to you!
Well, the 40 F-G in a minute was a one-day thing so far, but I’m still hanging in above 30/min for those five changes, except for F-Dm which occasionally dips to 28 or 29. I’m still happy to be starting to meet that typical grade 1 OMC benchmark of 30 changes/min!
Song-wise, I’m still working on Let It Be (with mini F). If push it, I can play at full speed, but not as cleanly as I’d like, so it’s still a work in progress. I’m practicing it a bit less frequently now - I’ve gotten a little tired of it - but I do have it nearly memorized as long as I have a backing track.
All of Me conveniently fit into the c/o 2023 Challenge #3, which is to play a song the whole way through using the grade 1 chords, so I opted to record and enter the challenge (I did not participate in challenges #1 or #2). I’ve been practicing it during grade 2, in spite of the ‘easy’ chords, though when I switched from learning it from the songbook to using the backing track in the app, it turned from 8ths into 16ths and was more rhythmically challenging for that reason, so a little bit of G2 stuff in there?
Excuse the timing hiccup at the very beginning - I don’t like the singer on the app version, so I opted for the original, but it meant that I didn’t get a count-in. Reviewing my recording, it’s clear that it’s time for me to start using my wrist more while strumming rather than doing the grade-1-sanctioned whole-arm strum 
I also don’t like the sound of my guitar much in this video (the tone sounds better to my ears in real, non-recorded life) - I’m hoping that’s at least partially an artifact from recording with a cell phone.
I still haven’t figured out what songs I want to do for module 11, though I’ve tried a few out. This, and doing a dice songwriting session, are the only things keeping me from moving on from module 11. Technically, I do know one song with a sus chord (Free Fallin’ has Asus4, and I learned it for module 8), but in the interest of repertoire growth, I wanted to learn a new one. My current top contender is You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away from the vintage songbook, but I need more time with the Fadd9 and the weird C voicing to decide if it’s doable right now. If it works out, it would also give me a 6:8 song.
Fingerstyle is pretty wide open between Hallelujah (probably not quite ready for fingerstyle F, though I love the song), All of Me (I was hoping to eventually be able to sing this one, and fingerstyle will make that even more challenging), and one in the acoustic songbook that I forget the name of (not a song I know, and not one I loved on first listen, but seemingly a good song for the technique, though it’s a trickier pattern than the one presented in M11). I probably need to just make make myself pick one so I can start moving forward - I’m starting to feel the itch for new material.
Hi Hilary,
Well done a whole song (and not the shortest one) played through with verve… good story too, and because of how your sound was set up I also thought it was a good choice to play along with the original … double points for that idea … you still have a good concentration face 
, I recognize the ‘lip to pull in’ phenomenon 
… (from you previous but I do it myself I saw the other day)
Thanks for sharing I liked it a lot …
Ps: great walls and ceiling
Greetings…
Haha yeah, the concentration face hasn’t gone anywhere 
And yes, I also love the exposed beams in the ceiling. The paint color wasn’t my choice (I’m a renter), but I am appreciative that it’s not just white.
Current Module/Lessons:
What I’m working on:
I’m curious and a little apprehensive to see how module 12 goes on an acoustic - at surface level, it looks very electric-leaning. In preparation, I’d love to hear about good power chord songs for acoustic (the playlist for the module doesn’t look too promising for this).
Fell off the wagon a bit these last few weeks - I was out of town for two consecutive weekends (the second of which involved flying my cat across the country to live with my parents until I move next month), I was practicing daily before the trips, but have had a little trouble getting back on the horse. I did one short 15 minute session between trips, made myself pick up my guitar yesterday for another short, songs-only session, and finally today got a ‘real’ practice in, which felt good, and I’m happy that I don’t seem to have backslid too much.
Unfortunately for my guitar skills, I’ve got more travels coming up, including two backpacking trips and the big XC road trip, so I’m anticipating my practice continuing to be a bit sporadic the rest of this summer. Hoping to still have the drive to be more serious/deliberate about it once I’m moved and settled!
Well, I’m (new) home for ‘good’ now - no more big travel plans until a weekend away in November - so it’s time for me to try to get back into the swing of practicing. I’ve practiced the last 2 days, my first true practices (as opposed to playing/noodling just to get myself to pick it up for a few minutes) since moving here.
And it turns out that I can’t tap my foot without bothering the neighbors, so I’ll have to try to switch to a heel bounce without actually tapping… just what I needed, another thing to split my attention (but honestly, I’m glad he pointed it out - thinking about how loud it is when people walk past my door to get to theirs, I’m sure it was disproportionately loud, even without stomping and only wearing socks). He did say the guitar itself didn’t bother him, so that’s good at least. I do have a possibility of shifting a rug so the “extra” rug extends on the opposite side of where my desk will be, into what I intend to be my practice corner, so hopefully that will help some, too. Oh, apartment life…
The good news for practice:
The less good news for practice:
The next hurdle will be continuing regular practice after I start my new job this coming week. It should hopefully be a less stressful, more predictable gig than my last job, but it’s always harder for me to fit a practice in when I don’t get home until later in the evening (especially now that I’m in an apartment and have more than just the one upstairs neighbor).
Today I jumped way out of my comfort zone and went to a “Teach, Learn Guitar Club” at my local library, the majority of which was completely over my head (including the warm-up, a 12 bar blues in the key of E, which I cannot yet play the V chord for). It was my first time playing in the presence of any other people, other than whichever of my neighbors can hear me through the wall. The leader had some print outs of lyrics with chords (many of which I don’t know yet) and some karaoke backing tracks without words, his song explanations were of chord sequences without mentioning the number of bars per chord or the time signature, and I generally had a lot of trouble following along. It was pretty rough. 
To my relief, we did eventually circle back to some 3-4 chord songs under the direction of a more experienced player in the group (while the group leader was out making photocopies), which was better - I was at least able to strum along as backing for the folks playing more advanced parts. I also learned the first bit of the Day Tripper riff. The good/bad news is I think I’m on the hook for going back next month since they had me pick one of the songs for the group to learn for next time. They were all super nice, but until that happened, I had strong doubts about going back again! I think it will be good for me, but my god so uncomfortable.
So, for the next month, I’ll continue working on Wagon Wheel (the song I tossed in the ring) and learn Leaving on a Jet Plane (suggested by another member, supposedly using the same key/chords), and will probably start moving ahead into module 12. I started module 11 in May, and have kept consolidating it since then because with a cross-country move, I haven’t been in the head space for learning anything new. But since I’m pretty sure the leader was trying to teach me B as a power chord for the warmup, I think it’s time to finally start those next lessons and get (more comprehensive) instruction from Justin.
No further complaints from my neighbor about foot tapping since moving the rug from under my desk to my practice nook, so that’s good!
Well done to you Hilary, that sounds like a true baptism of fire for you but you’ve put yourself out there and you’re going back, it should only get more comfortable from here on in and I am sure you will benefit hugely from the in person interaction. Good luck with your next steps, both module 12 and for your prep work for the next club meet up.
Oh yes, well done again!! 
Well done. That was certainly an eye opener. I am not sure that I could do that. Congratulations, and yes, you must keep going back. It can only help you move forward.
I almost talked myself out of going last night, but I knew it would be good for me. I’m sure I’ll have the same conversation with myself next month, but no good ever came from cowering inside a comfort zone.
@TonyHS You played your first gig a short time after you started playing, you could definitely show up to something like this! I think if it hadn’t been hosted at my public library (ex. by a music store or something), I probably would have been too intimidated to even try it, but for whatever reason, the library aspect of it made it feel more accessible to me.
