Liked your story and you seem to have a plan now on how to progress and make sure you don’t get upstaged by your daughter.
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True, for me it works a bit like an outsourced guitar conscience conscience as well …
Looking forward to reading more, Jeff 
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Great read Jeff, I always love your song choices in your AVOYP so it was cool to kind of get some of you background. It’s also awesome that you’ve met Troy Stetina. I agree with you that he isn’t really a beginner level teacher and wouldn’t even touch his “beginner” stuff until at least having a firm grasp on Justin’s grade 2.
I struggle with scales too! Specifically, string accuracy is a killer for me.
Love your guitar collection!
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Haha thanks Trevor. She can upstage me anytime. I appreciate you taking the time to read my long winded rant.
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Hi Alexis.
Thanks for reading my novel here lol. I met Troy and his band years ago. I remember being in awe of his talent. The band was called oversouls but may not exist anymore. I remember them playing their songs and for sure monkey wrench by the foo fighters with screaming Ibanez guitars. It was really cool to experience.
For scales I can play them slowly to medium speed but can’t connect the dots with using them as a solo in a real song. I’ll get there eventually I guess.
I appreciate you watching the videos and positive words. You’ve come a long way yourself since I saw your first video. You’re pretty awesome in rock music. Have a great weekend.
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I knew there was a psychologist inside you😎. Guitar playing behaviorism and positive reinforcement lol, Thanks for reading my story.
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Hi everyone,
I decided it’s time to add a few updates in here to keep myself accountable for progress. Finding adequate practice time has been a real challenge lately. It’s not because of lack of motivation, more so lack of availability. I have one of those jobs that’s demanding 10-12 hours a day often times. Not an excuse because I do squeeze in min I practice sessions during my workday. Besides what I mentioned working on last time I have a couple of new projects going.
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First I decided no more excuses and I will be performing for the next open mic night here in august. I really want to leave a good impression and I take the way I sound seriously. I’m my own biggest critic. I’m still learning so it won’t be perfect but I’ll be there and learn something. Hope to see Ebt there.
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I’m working on what I like to call music without borders. After struggling to find a jam buddy here I decided to collaborate with a talented individual from Switzerland who is new to Justin guitar , yet his good experience as a DJ and understands the technical side of music production. @Siff and I hope to collaborate on a song as a starter and we are working together on original music that hopefully will be shared here soon. I can speak German, have been to Switzerland once, and we both player Green Day’s “good riddance “ as a cover song. That’s a good start at least. So far things are going great and I feel very fortunate for the opportunity.
One of the things I like best about Justin guitar is the support from the community. People from all over the world playing guitar and cheering each other on to succeed. I hope you feel the same and I challenge you to collaborate with someone unexpected and see how it goes. There is one guy I am still trying to connect with here from near Hollywood that would be about 2 hours from me. @jforrester i haven’t forgotten and would still love to connect for some studio time there when we could make it work. @JokuMuu thanks for always keeping me in check.among many others here. Too many to list, but I appreciate you all.
Until then enough ranting and time to get back to basics and grab a guitar. Have a great day everyone.
Jeff
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Thanks, you are most welcome 
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Hi Jeff, nice to read your update! I wish you all the best for the OM, a great goal and you’ll make it a good experience for sure!
Cool, that you’ve found somebody to collaborate with, that will lift things into a new dimension. I hope both of you have lots of fun playing and producing together and we’re already curious about the “product”. Have a good time, Jeff, greetings!
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Hey Jeff, it was great to read your background. And your newfound approach to practice. A shame about not being able to get much time in recently though.
Keep at it!
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Really cool to read your history of learning Jeff, I know I can certainly relate to a lot of what you’ve described there. Your “reset” with Justin has clearly worked and clearly stuck with you, player for life now 
Cracking looking and quite unique S-type there, single bridge humbucker, must sound tasty!
Hi Jeff,
awesome you want to tackle a performance on the upcoming OM! 
Best of luck and loads of fun on your way till there, already excited to see/hear you perform then! 
Fingers crossed, you’ll find some more practice time in the upcoming weeks. Demanding work days can truely interfer with guitar time (know that struggle all to well myself), so hopefully better days with lots of time for guitar may be coming soon.
Cheers - Lisa
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement. To answer the question, I am working with Marcel on an original version of “Ruby Soho” by Rancid. This may take me some time because there are some tricky fast chord changes in the chorus. G to B seems like I will have to do either power chords or barré chords and I’m a little slow with this progression so far. Practice makes permanent thought. Marcel will be putting his unique supporting background music. We are still working on it. Secondly, we are working on cowriting an original song. I started with something and he has been giving great feedback and adding music that fits. The song is about having a rough moment in life and kind of keeping the faith and powering through it. His music so far had kind of a Don Henley vibe to it in my opinion. It was a pleasant surprise. We’ll see where it goes ,but very exciting so far.
Jeff
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Hi Jeff,
that sound like pretty cool stuff to be working on! Happy for you and Marcel, that you found each other to collaborate even though you’re that far apart. It’s amazing how music connects the world. 
I’m really looking forward how this collaboration will turn out on both your projects and can’t wait until first bites of it can be heard here! Sounds exciting to me as well, so I wish you all the best for these projects and loads of fun while working on it!
Hi everyone,
I had kind of a bumpy July and didn’t meet my own goals for the month, but that’s okay since I’m back on the horse again after the slump. I’m heading back to the same learning goals I last posted. I posted a couple songs to start the month and hopefully that will be the icebreaker to get back on track, I’m still working on a collaboration with Marcel from Zurich so hopefully will will find the song with the right chemistry that works for both of us.
In July I rebuilt my Flying V acoustic guitar that hadn’t been played for years and plan on doing a video with it soon, she still sounds amazing after a new nut and strings. Open mic is in 2 Saturdays and I’m excited to show my stuff. I’m having a Justin guitar barbecue at the beach to celebrate that day with lots of supporters. I bought a new portable wireless PA system and hopefully it works well enough to hear me outdoors, onlookers can cheer or boo it’s all good lol. Also hoping to work on my singing with Chris Liepe’s course. I think the most important thing to do is keep it moving looking forward at all times.
Jeff
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Wow. You already wrote me about the flying V, but I somehow assumed an electric one. Didn’t even know this exists. Wonder how it sounds.
Have some good fun with it. Eye catcher for sure.
Good hearing you are systematically working on your voice practice too. Something I also should consider (especially since I’m also often out about singing around people already…)
Good ongoing ride on your journey! Hoping to join the wagon for a few stations to jam some tracks with you soon
Hey Jeff,
Thank you for your positive feedback on some of my posts and thank you for sharing your guitar journey. That’s some serious perseverance there my friend, and I’m happy to hear that you’ve found your guitar practice/playing groove. Best of luck with your upcoming Open Mic, that’s a great milestone and I’m sure will be a great learning experience as well.
I love your self awareness and attitude of backing off and trying something new when things don’t work out as expected (that’s something on developing myself). Those are traits of a life long learner which I hope to imitate on my own guitar learning journey and life as a whole.
I can’t wait to hear that when it’s ready. Going through a rough patch myself, which Justin’s lessons and this great community is helping me through (along with tremendous support from family and friends). A song acknowledging such times and how others have gotten through them is always inspiring and a great reminder of our tremendous capacity for not only survival but to adapt and grow beyond our struggles.
I’m looking forward to checking out your existing AVOYPs.
Keep on rocking
I was working on that original song today. I think it’s at least 75% ready now and have the goal to make that my next video upload here. I have the verse and pre-chorus melody down. Just need to finite Chris and I’m good. I have to thank @Siff for the idea of the melody. It took the song in a direction unexpected, but life tends to do that too. I think it will sound great and glad you want to hear it.
Jeff
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Already looking forward to hear you original, Jeff! It’s exciting to see what can develop out of a co-operation.
Input from outside often help freshen up things or puts food for thought, stuff like that. So I’m curois what you guys will come up with!
Have a great day!
Lisa
Hi everyone,
My journey ends here. Nothing else to write here. My depression has gotten the best of me lately so I’ve decided to stop playing .,Best of luck to everyone and thanks for listening to my videos.
Tschuss
Jeff
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