Seriously @Lisa_S ?!?!? 
We definitely have to figure out how we could get the study group going 
@domi7 Have you bought the rhythm book yet? Want to join? 
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Haha, I’d love to! The thing is that I have put too much on my (guitar-) plate lately and struggle to do everything! I don’t want to be a person who disappoints the others because he can’t keep his promises! 
But at least the OM will be done tomorrow, so one thing to practice/worry about less.
Yes, we’d talked about the book, but I didn’t get it yet.
And now I’ll immediately look for this book as there was a lot of praise about it!
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That’s just fair @domi7 
So how could we pull this off @Lisa_S ? It’s a shame that we can’t play a duet together…
Aah… Since I know that you are both using Cubase… Any idea, when Cubase 15 is coming out? I might want to test it to see if I really don’t need a DAW
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@JokuMuu Nicole, we could simply start with DMs here and see how it will work? And yes, from middle of Germany up to Finland it will be hard playing an in-person-duet unfortunately…
For Cubase 15 it is said it will be coming by this year, so it should not be too long anymore.
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I looked at this too sometime in the past and it seems the new version usually appears in november (nowadays even every single year, but they usually put quite a few good new things into it so it’s not just more or less the same thing in a new coat as we see it with lots of other products), and then, once or twice during the year there will be sales where it will be more achievable. (once you’d like to buy it).
Once you test it, you can always send me a question if you don’t understand anything. But also lot of intro tutorials on youtube fortunately. It’s crazy nowadays what a modern DAW can do!
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Then I will keep my eyes open 
Might well I will need some advice…
@Lisa_S DM sent.
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Same over here, I’m afraid 
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ok, just got those news today.
Now a few minor updates and to me this is a bigger one - they seem to have a singer on board, so you play midi notes (via a little detour you can of course your guitar also) on a keyboard and type in the lyrics and it sounds like a real singer singing your lyrics. I find tech often scary nowadays but it can be fun also.
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So 15 is already out now?
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Yes, it’s out and I had to test the new singer feature.
Baffled! It sounded good in the demo I saw, but I just opened some of my recent (I have quite a few) song-starts (which most often don’t get far) and played a melody on the keyboard. Then it’s the singer firstly singing ah-ahs, and some easy lyrics came quickly to me (this time they did - generally I feel bad at lyrics!) and wow - it felt really easy to create something. Though the (probably a text to speed engine combined with some AI enhancement?) only helped me rendering my own notes and lyrics, so it feels better than if I used the “bad AI” haha. I was wondering about uploading something in my reply, but I’ll possibly create some post somewhere - don’t want to congest your learning log!
now I created a topic under “just chatting”
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Let’s see If I have time to start testing the Elements 15 trial version this weekend or next I can see how the “singer feature” can have its use for certain situations 
@domi7 Don’t worry about congesting my LL, you are always welcome to share your thoughts here.
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It has been approximately a week with “I love rock’n’roll”, and expectedly progress has been slow. I love playing powerchords, although I will probably still play them badly for a long, long time, but so be it. I also really enjoy paying attention to actually “playing” the rests in the intro. Antti had suggested the song as a song to cheer me up, and turns out, it has really been a good choice.
Funnily, when I sat at home with the tab and notes for “rock’n’roll”, I chickened out, when I saw that the first guitar will soon play a full tone bend. Naaaah, let’s leave this to people, who actually can play guitar I thought… and started following tab for the second guitar instead. Here, the tab calls for playing a root five E powerchord with playing the open E-string as well… Oh, I really, really like sound of this chord with E as root and in the octave
Had I thought though that Antti would have me switching to guitar 2 as soon as I would tell him that I have never played any bends, I was wrong. Thus, yesterday’s lesson marks my first practicaln encounter with bending. Wow, it’s hard. It’s really hard. Even in my best attempt I was still a quarter shy of the full tone 
I know that Justin has lessons on bending (which I have entirely ignored so far). Seems, it’s time to watch at least some of these lessons and add practicing bending to my practice routine
As to rhythm reading and sight reading, I am meanwhile better at the actual reading - I have invested a lot of time in learning to read and I enjoy every minute of the process. As always with me, the issues are with transferring the learned to guitar and actual playing. In the lesson yesterday, we started with playing using simple sight reading and playing simple slow rhythms with rests. All the while using a metronome of course. It’s challenging for me still and Antti is probably right, when he says it’s more prespiration than inspiration. It will require lots of hard work and repetition. At the moment, luckily, I enjoy this process and I love how it’s all coming together and how my understanding of music in general keeps on getting better bit by bit 
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Another week came and went. Most probably last Thursday’s lesson should have left me more than just a bit frustrated. Alas, it didn’t.
Antti had come up with a new idea. If I am anyhow playing single notes when practicing the rhythms and note reading from Justin’s books… how about we start learning to play the melody of a real song? “Yes, please”, I said. Smiling, Antti handed me a few pages of tab… for… this…
Hmm. It’s a very beautiful song for sure. Maybe played to death on the radio, yet a magnificent song nonetheless. Never knew though that Kirk plays that many hammer-ons…
Trying to play the melody, illustrated that I hadn’t been investing any time in practicing hammer-ons lately. It’s still all new to me. It’s clear that it will take months and months for me to learn to play the original melody, incl. all those hammer-ons, at original speed. Right now, it’s really, really hard.
Am I frustrated however? Sad? Depressed? Not really. This spring, my former guitar teacher had rightly attested that I am not one of those people, who “have it”, who pick up things just like that. Accordingly, I know that it will take hard work, repetition and time. I will be playing badly for a long, long time, but I learned that what seems impossible (looking at you Hurriganes’ song intro) can be conquered.
As to bending… I did practice it a bit last week, and I mastered my first full-tone bend last Thursday’s lesson. I still haven’t found time to watch Justin’s bending videos, but I watch at least a few of then in the next days.
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Antti has very good taste…I love that song!
That’s how it is Nicole…what else should I add? Patience and little steps…enjoy your little conquers everyday 
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Some old geezer around used to say it’s not a sprint it’s a marathon. But every step you take is another step forward. My catch up read tells me you are making steady progress. 
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Aah … Yes, I guess, I have come across this some time to or other, here in the community
I very much hesitate to call any of this progress. Small successes, surely. Small steps into the right direction. I might concede as much … Still it’s an ultra-marathon run in slowly sloping spirals with many a pothole waiting for me to fall and get onto my feet again.
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Yesterday would have been my last 1:1 lesson. I have been thinking long and hard, whether I can justify investing in additional lessons and in the end decided to go for it. After last evening’s lesson, I am very happy about the decision made.
I went to the lesson without guitar. Sounds, as if it does not make any sense, doesn’t it?
Honestly though: Yesterday’s 30 minutes were probably the best 30 minutes, I have ever invested in 1:1 guitar lessons. We spent the entire time discussing and planning together what the next eight lessons would be about. Earlier, I had mentioned in passing that I am interested in learning more about song writing. Now, Antti suggested this focus.
Last year, after a very short excursion into song writing, my old guitar teacher had told me “these are guitar lessons, not song writing lessons” - and that was the end of that. Funny, how things change.
For now, it looks as if we will be sticking to the major scale. We will be looking at the major scale pattern 1 Justin introduces here Major Scale Pattern 1 | JustinGuitar.com, we will be taking a look at chord extensions (how are these chords created as opposed to triads, how are they played, how are they used to spice up chords), we will be opening up the neck and take a look at different chord voicings (which means I will also absolutely take another look at one of my favorite JG lessons (How to Play Easy Chord Shapes Up The Neck | JustinGuitar.com) ,we will take a look at how to write melodies. I am over the moon 
Of course I got homework. The task is to make an eight bar chord progression in C major, that sounds good to me, choose a rhythm from Justin’s rhythm book, play it and bring my “creation” to the next lesson. I might even end up recording it (for Antti at least). Well, let’s see…
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Hi Nicole,
I actually don’t remember where you are with Justin’s lessons. But if you are going for songwriting, I also assume that you have taken the lesson on Chords In A Key (Diatonic)… indispensable for you now, but I heard him say this week that this is perhaps THE most important ( or something like that) theory lesson for guitar for understanding the necks and making your own …music… chord progressions…
I still remember the feeling well when I learned this 
… Oh well, I’m just saying it to be sure and if all is well, completely unnecessary… but you never know.
Have fun with guitar lessons 
Greetings
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Now I have catched up reading your log and really enjoyed it! You have such a nice and honest way of writing these things down!
Refering to part 2 of the quote, You seem determinded, even if you take small steps for some time to come and that’s certainly a good attitude.
Personally I am convinced that those “talent” / “You have it” things come to a lesser degree from our genes and would be there when we’re born but to a bigger part from what we experienced growing up. Plus, if you take me, (and there are certainly better examples here on the site) I am happy how I learned guitar pretty late in my life, so I think motivation and fun is much more important than just being young to learn something.
So I am also convinced that if you keep at it with that positive mind you have (and I think your teacher does you good too) things will come to you more easily and you’ll feel much more like “you have it” later on.
PS. Plus, I think that you learn quite a lot of things that I find kind of “advanced” at the moment, (or maybe “advanced” in the sense that you tackle quite a few few things at the same time that I didn’t do) so it’s normal if it doesn’t come easily to you!
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Thanks, Rogier 
To be honest, I don’t even know myself anymore, where I am in Justin’s grade system. Somewhere between mid to end of Grade 2 and the beginning of Grade 3, I suppose. However, I have never strictly completed Grade 2…
At the moment I enjoy the freedom of floating freely… as long as this tactic just gets me playing. I’ll get to more structured learning according to Justin’s grade system at the beginning of next year again (I promise 
)
Is this the video you meant? https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/chords-in-keys-super-easy-bg-2004 Great video (just listened to it as a podcast while working).
If soooo… this sounds a lot like Antti’s starting point yesterday (conforming whether I know the major scale formula and how triads are built (I do), whether I’m familiar with the major-minor-minor-major-major- minor-diminished chord formular of the major scale (I am), whether I’m familiar with the chord numbering system (I am) …).
Once again I’m glad to see, how well my 1:1 lessons and Justin’s material ( no matter if Grade X lessons, PMT or books) are completing each other at the moment
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