Jonathan's Learning Log

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Hiya all,

I’d like to join in on these learning logs to keep track of my progress and get some constructive feedback on my learning route and performances.
You can read up on who I am and why I’m learning guitar in my introductory post.
For now, a summary how my ‘second guitar journey’ has went so far.

I started to play again in december last year on an old acoustic guitar from my wife and in-person lessons. I enjoyed the lessons and the guitar playing. I remembered some chords from my first guitar journey and a basic strumming rhythm. I could pick things up quite easily.

Alas, the learning path of my teacher and me wasn’t synchronized quite well. He kept feeding me new songs to learn every week (3 to 4 songs each week!), the next week I would fumble through them and then I got another few songs.

In april I stopped the in-personlessons and started working through Justins lessons from the start. Even though I knew most of the basic stuff already, it was nice to refresh it all and really get a good basis.

In may I decided that I was still pretty serious with the guitar stuff and bought a nice electric guitar. It’s a Les Paul-like (used) ‘Doodad’ guitar (a dutch brand which isn’t made anymore), but I find it really nice to play.

I worked through grade 1 pretty fast. Grade 2 is a different matter, especially with the notorious F-chord, though now that I’m in grade 11 I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made with it. Still not as smooth as other chords, but making progress.

My plan is to do an update in this log at least when I’m finishing up a module. The last two weeks I worked on module 11. I want to share my progress in a recording of the following three things:

  • Fingerstyle happy birthday
  • Fingerstyle song (Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen)
  • Song with ‘Sus’-chords (yellow submarine by the Beatles), added a Dsus4 in the chorus

The sound isn’t optimal, I have to see if I can do a better setup than this.

Other things I’ve worked on:

  • Changes from any chord to F (I’m trying to get at 30 changes)
  • Ear training, practising the 2/3/4/5 intervals (I try to do a couple of minutes singing the intervals and then challenging myself with Justins ear training app)
  • Playing other songs!

I’m looking forward to module 12, I like me some rock, part of the reason I got an electric guitar!

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Well done Jonathon - good to hear your progress.

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Hi Johathan,
Nice job :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:, and you will look back on this with pleasure in a while…

Are you left-handed? probably not looking to the name on the headstand… you have to mirror your camera setting …the other way around…I do not know how to name that.

And you also need to work on your fretting arm position because your elbow turns way too far inward…

Nice that you do a cover of an original song of mine, I feel honored, but you wrote the title wrong… understandable, but it is
Happy First Earth day :roll_eyes:

Have fun :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:and Greetings

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That was very nicely played. Well done mate!

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Thanks all!

@roger_holland I see what you mean with the elbow, especially with the F-chord it looks quite awkward (though the notes are ringing out OK), still gotta work on that I guess :slight_smile:

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It’s time for another update.

I’ve worked on module 12 the last weeks.
It was nice to practice the power chords. Allthough the songs which use them usually have a high tempo (logical, it’s rock!).
I spent some time on All the Small Things by Blink-182 but didn’t like practicing it as much so didn’t continue to practice the full song.
Enter Sandman was another one that I practiced (also in the video), though the song speed itself is still too fast. When I listen to the recording I also notice in the first riff I’m probably not placing my fingers as close to the fret as needed (they’re buzzing a bit).
Furthermore I practiced some songs (including F-chord). I’m still noticing my elbow is pretty wonky. It’s not as bad as in the first video (I think).
However, to change that, probably I should change my whole posture? It feels fine to play like this, so maybe it’s okay? I also tried singing and playing for Let it Be (also in the video). Another milestone, hopefully it’s not too bad.

Looking forward to module 13!

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3 weeks on, another update :slight_smile:
Been working on module 13 and was pleasantly surprised with it!
I really liked the blues lessons and (re)discovered how much I like the blues music.

I had a lot of fun with the blues shuffle and solo-ing over it with my manual looping pedal (recording and playing back to myself :stuck_out_tongue: ). I made this recording, still has some mistakes, but was nice to do.

Yesterday I went to concert of dutch artist Danny Vera and he also did some blues. Was really fun to recognize the 12 bars in a lot of songs and recognizing the chord changes.

I’m still not completely sure on my stance and posture, especially doing the barre chords. I’m moving on to the next consolodiation module. I’m thinking on going to back to some of the lessons on posture and especially the F-chord.

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Well played. :+1:. I especially like that you added the looper vs. relying on a backing track.

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