Hi Peter, I’ll send you a PM, not to blow up Nicole’s log .
What? What is happening here…?
I’m just resurfacing from my first encounter with module 10 practice. First learnings: Weak finger G is familiar; mini barre A is easy enough; the push thing is easy… and difficult (I can get the chord change on 4+ … But skipping the strum on 1… will require some work); La Bamba riff memorized and I’m able to play it by ear (if too slowly); “Like a rolling stone” for F-barre change practice is challenging ( … but hopefully doable at some point; so far interestingly changing from Dm to F-barre seems easiest); hammer-ons are put there for my amusement, right? Those will be a major construction site for me… Well, at least I laughed a lot
Now to the important points:
@rorystrat , Peter, don’t you ever apologize for sharing your thoughts in my Learning Log. It’s not easy to confuse me. And: In fact you didn’t confuse me at all. On the contrary, I am always eager to learn… and I greatly welcome your expertise and knowledge. It’s entirely up to me then, what I want to make of it at which part of my journey. Plus, I always appreciate people who can actually make me think
I admit, it might be different with people who have been following Justin from the very beginning of their guitar adventure. But… that’s not me. Playing on and off I have been exposed to different sources, and I think I’m able to decide what I want to focus on next.
No worries there either, Andrea. I do actually like that my Learning Log has turned into a discussion platform at the moment.
@rorystrat and @ziggysden Peter and Stuart: I’m absolutely fascinated that one says my plan is slowish and the other one says it’s too much and fast. In the end, you are probably both right, depending on how you look at my plan.
First, of all Stuart @ziggysden, you are absolutely correct. It looks as if I would want to persue four modules in one week. In fact it’s three “only”. I was simply too lazy to mark the Sundays as end day of a certain module and add Mondays as beginning days of new modules. That’s why those screenshots look more confusing than they probably should.
Indeed practicing all activities of all three modules active at a certain time will be impossible during workdays. I simply won’t have enough time and will have to pick certain activities and will have to rotate them around. Add in stressful workdays, and it’s certain that the plan is too ambitious.
@rorystrat Peter, have you seen… That if all works well, I will allow myself to start the first Grade 3 practice in January already? Plus … Add in that I’m currently revisiting Strumming SOS1, will bravely make my way through SOS2 and the Finger Strumming course… and that I won’t be able to go without - at least diving somewhat deeper into fingerpicking, music theory and simple improvising… The plan is for the “mandatories” only… everything else is luxury
My first week of vacation is coming to an end already. The weather was, say, guitar weather (photo below not edited, it’s raining like that now as well)
… so I managed to invest at least two hours per day into practicing.
Modules 8, 9 and 10
The idea of practicing three different modules in a given week works fine since it keeps me from repeating the same things over and over again and getting frustrated not seeing any immediate progress. I can’t say that I’ll be sorry seeing module 8 go for some time after tomorrow, for some reason I have never taken a particular liking to the sound of some of these stuck 3 & 4 chords.
Note trainer
I started integrating five minutes of “note trainer” into my practice routine(s) and I clearly have to become better at identifying notes. 27 correct hits in five minutes seems slow
Song practice (= songs I want to play)
The songs I’m currently practing each include an F and that’s a fantastic coincidence. There is no way that I can play these songs with the F-barre any time soon, but mini-F starts sounding good enough that I can use the chord for finger picking. I randomly tried changing to the thumbover-F in the songs I’m practicing. While that’s doable it’s still slow and I don’t get all strings ringing out when using this specific chords in songs.
Strumming SOS 1; 2 and 3
Invested less time into dedicated “dry strumming” practice than I probably should have done. I am however applying insights from these courses to “Wellenreiter” (two different strumming patterns, varying more loud and more silent playing, slow rake thumb strum ( interesting how difficult it is to make that one sound good in a song)). I’ll record some practicing later today and might add a video if it’s not too horrible…
And then there is …
… the Dusty Wind. Working on this song is and will be my treat when all else is done.
so lucky to have rain
Yesterday, I had become so frustrated with myself at some point. I was recording working on one of the two songs I’m currently practicing and nothing worked. Strumming the old beginner acoustic without pick sounded like and strumming with pick sounded even worse - or so I thought.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had used my arsenal of swear words multiple times, I stormed to my husband complaining “I have practiced so much lately, why haven’t I still been getting any better? What wouldn’t I give for some kind of talent…”
Reviewing almost 40 min of recorded practice time seemed so daunting. No way that I was going to do that yesterday.
This morning, I forced myself to. What can I say? It’s not as catastrophic as I thought. It’s far from good, but things are far from being as black as they seemed yesterday.
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The most interesting insight I gained from watching these 40 min of playing time is that my strumming with a pick does not sound as horrible as I thought.
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Second insight I gained is that the idea of applying two strumming patterns to a song consisting only of verses is challenging as long as I don’t remember the chord progressions 100 %.
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Third insight: I have to pay more attention to how I angle my wrist when fingerpicking.
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Fourth and maybe most important insight: No matter how much I hate recording myself, I should continue doing it. It’s actually really helpful - if only to realize things are not that hopeless.
Here is the one and only time I managed to get through the whole song. I had thrown my pick far from me in frustration, I had given up on the idea of two clearly different strumming patterns, improvised some fingerpicking as intro and outro… I just - finally - wanted to get through the whole song.
Btw. … @MacOneill … Now it’s raining…
Hi @JokuMuu Nicole
I started with the note trainer app (after @MacOneill suggested the app) about 6 weeks ago and had speeds similar to yours. As of this week I’m consistently up above 80 notes in 3 minutes. And it is starting to help familiarise the fretboard. I also recommend the second exercise in the app, Name the Note and split my practice time for note recognition between the two, 6 minutes on each (2x 3 mins on each exercise). I made an item in my practice routine so I can record the score to keep track in my dashboard - it helps to see the line going up!
For Find the Note you have to find the same note in all 6 locations between up to the 12th fret. I do mine in string order 6th to 1st. Doing both exercises helps to lock in the knowledge I think. When I started I could do about 10 sequences of 6 (or 60 individual notes) in 3 minutes, now I’m consistently above 30 sequences or 180 individual notes.
I think it’s just the number of repetitions, and it seems to happen fairly quickly. Keep at it, I think it’s worth it in the end.
so lucky , i want to do so many things and can t … so frustrating
What a moody and cool video with added atmosphere in mono. The playing is consistent and I’m sure I detected the odd mini-F chord in there all of which worked great. I would be proud of that; it’s much better that you probably initially thought.
You might find a G chord with fingers 2, 3, 4 easier particularly when going between C and F 'cos fingers 3 & 4 are already in the right orientation. I’m sure there’s a Justin lesson on that fingering and he does it all the time in song lessons.
Edit:
Well done. More moody videos please. Peter
PS: Not only do you know German but sing it too! I could not hope to sing in Finish unless there’s a Tudelband song
Thanks Yes, mini- F, well spotted. Using different fingering for the G is a great idea. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I should try to integrate weak finger G practicing here, given the C-G-C changes. Brilliant idea. Thank you so much. Will do.
Monochrome colours or mono sound? The video needed to suit my general moodiness, so the colours had to go I know that the recording quality is not good but all I have for recording at the moment is my cell phone…
Hmm… German is my mother tongue, so yes, I can sing in German too. This specific song is in Kölsch (a German dialect) and I decidedly don’t speak Kölsch.
What? If Metallica can do it, you can too…
Wouldn’t this one be fun to try ?
Kirk Hamnett now owns Peter Green’s “Greeny” Les Paul. I’d do both those songs for that guitar…
They did some stadium gigs in Helsinki in June. Just missed them. Too late to ask … I don’t go to stadium gigs, but had I known, I would have made an exception
So all I can offer in exchange is a broken Gretsch G2420, which apparently had ambitions to become a percussion instrument and swollowed its output jack…
Thanks, I will take a look at these exercises as well.
Agreed, I also believe that it’s mainly repetition and then probably also remembering shortcuts, clues, signals (whatever might be the correct word here). that can be deducted from markings at fret 3; 5; 7; 9 and 12;
Hey cool your “Wellenreiter”!
Finally i got to know it, now i can listen to the original
I can’t really contribute too much constructive ideas. Your voice could be a bit louder, but i blame the cell phone
From Gary Moore to Kirk Hamnett . . . . somehow doesn’t seem right to me. Gary Moore’s Greenie album is a great tribute to the Legend.
Check if you can find a translation to “Hochdeutsch”. Great lyrics with a bit of eighties flavour.
True it could be a bit louder. The cell phone was quite far away from me when recording. Seems I should start saving for (a) microphone(s) maybe…
This is still very, very much work in progress. I added the video here as small proof that it’s nonetheless not as bad as I think and since it fits the lyrics in the last verse so well… maybe, case by case, perhaps not everything is
As you said, the recording primarely is to see you’re progressing even if you think you are not. So therefore no pro equipment is required.
Of course it’s not . It’s just us beeing overcritical with ourselves.
22 C and sunny. Finally, finally the weather is a bit better. So I can practice outside at last.
This has to be among the best guitar playing places on earth…
Seems my practice routine today will consist mainly of sitting on this pier, legs in the water and practicing fingerpicking with a metronome. After each 30 min session I’m rewarding myself with going for a swim.
Aah… This is the life! Somebody reach me some sun cream please
*jealousy *
“(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” perhaps…
Please don’t drop your guitar in the water!