LunaRocket's Learning Log

Community Hub Learning Logs
181

After listening to my husband try to explain what he’s doing, I wouldn’t try it at the same time, but hey, your mind may be nimbler than mine. The hubby says it would be like trying to learn 2 different languages, then again, I was taking Spanish and French at the same time in high school without problems. :blush: Yousician costs over $100/year.

I’m pleased you’re finding my Log helpful; do you intend to start one yourself? I couldn’t find one in your profile. I do find it very helpful to me.

I am being careful with my arm, I’ve cut way back on a lot of household stuff, my gardening is very limited now and the hubby has taken over the lawn mowing for now which is the thing that really messed me up. Still have a doctor’s appointment coming up, so we’ll see if I get prescribed therapy or anything.

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182

Hi Rebecca,

so glad to hear your arm is doing better and you can get back at playing guitar! :slight_smile: Hope the pain will be gone completely soon.

Reading about your breakthrough with What’s Up sounds relatable. It’s an elevating feeling when it finally clicks and just works, somehow. I sometimes had this, when I put things at rest and come back to them after a short while.

You and your husband jamming along together is just awesome, too! How much more joy it must be to share something you really enjoy with your loved ones and have some fun together. :smiley: I’m really looking forward to see the two of you in action maybe. :slight_smile:

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183

Hi Rebecca

No I didn’t start a log yet but I think I should do that soon. Just a few weeks after I started learning I left Switzerland for a sabbatical in Colombia and travelled around Colombia by motorcycle with my wife. I’m a biologist and I think that there were far too many biological distractions in Colombia for a log. Then when I got back it was just too busy. Now things are more back to routine it might be time to start. Keeping up practice during that time was also challenging. But somehow I managed by borrowing guitars from people. It wasn’t ideal for learning - different guitars and no daily routine. But I made some slow progress. Since arriving back I’ve got in a good routine and practice 1-2 hours every evening. I feel I’m making progress slowly. I enjoy it more and more and find the course fascinating. So much to learn.

I have never done any recordings for other community members to comment on either. That’s something that’s a bit daunting for me, more because of my singing than anything else. Also I’m finding playing and singing to be a major challenge.

Bass: I actually always wanted to play bass. I almost bought one but then at the last minute I decided that playing guitar might be more rewarding and more versatile. I don’t have someone to play along with and decided playing bass alone without other musicians might feel like a lonely journey. I also liked the idea of learning songs to sing to my wife. She encourages me a lot. I think I made the right decision but perhaps once I’m an intermediate guitar player then I may start bass but that’s still a long way off. I’m doubtful that a Justin exists for bass, with a teacher as motivating as him or a community such as this. . I looked at quite a few guitar courses before deciding to follow Justin’s course. Most of them really put me off, especially the daft adverts for Guitar Tricks that come up on You Tube all the time. I made the right choice.

I’m learning on an electric but most of the songs I’m practicing would be better on acoustic - good riddance, wish you were here, free fallin, patience, what’s up, and a song called Don’t open the door to strangers by The Church ( not on Justin but quite easy to teach myself - except for a challenging G to B minor barre and C to B minor barre change). I’m thinking of getting an acoustic but I wish I knew more about acoustic guitars before taking the plunge.

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184

The sabbatical sounded like a blast. I always had a desk job, usually nothing as interesting as that (with one exception that didn’t pan out.)

I found out from my husband in 2022 that he, too, had always wanted to play bass. Married more than 30 years and I never knew. If I’d thought about him wanting to learn anything it would have been guitar because he could pick out what guitarist was playing with just a few notes. But, no he suddenly decided to buy a bass online and I thought about it for about 5 minutes and said, why not me, too? And I ordered mine online. I got an electric even though I always figured I’d get an acoustic but he convinced me to get an electric. I didn’t even have a base for the first 3 months, caught covid and couldn’t really do anything again till the end of January when I found Justin.

I did finally buy my first acoustic in April this year. I am definitely finding it harder to play than electric so I think you also did well to start with an electric. Besides, having no idea what I was doing in 2022, I probably would have ended up with a crappy acoustic, now, instead I have a nice little Breedlove which I love. :blush:

Practicing as much as you are, you’ll be passing me in no time! I’m barely managing 20 minutes a day now because of my strumming arm.

And as to a Log, you don’t have to write a novel every time, just note things you’re having trouble with, or excelling at, it’s fun to look back and see how much you’ve improved.

Edit: Maybe you could get your wife to sing for you? :smiley:

185

Rebecca

Please may I ask which Breedlove you have and the features you most enjoy, or don’t? I’m looking at a Breedlove electro-acoustic guitar which might become only my second ever guitar purchase. I play a Kiso Suzuki FE150 - it’s one of the (in)famous law-suit Martin clones. I bought it 49 years ago and, as you can see, I’m not rushing into anything!

I’ll appreciate hearing about your Breedlove exoerience.

Brian

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186

HI Brian, I bought a
Breedlove ECO Discovery S Concert CE Acoustic-Electric Guitar - Edgeburst African Mahogany

I love it’s sound, I haven’t even plugged it into my amp since I brought it home, but it sounded good plugged in at the store, too. I also love how it feels to hold, I find dreadnaughts much too large.

Since it is my first acoustic and the strings are much heavier (it has 12s) than what’s on my electric, I am finding it hard to get certain notes to ring out nicely while strumming, (that blasted F barre chord!) but I want to keep at it for awhile longer before deciding whether to get lighter strings.

At the store I also tried out a Breedlove Wildwood, which sounded really, really nice, too but I couldn’t hear a $500 difference, lol. So with the money I saved I bought a Boss Katana MkII amp. I’m very happy with that, too though I have yet to test out even half of what it’s capaable of.

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187

Short Update

I watched and attempted to practice the Blues Shuffle strumming pattern. Well, that looked easier than it was, especially when I tried to accent beast 2 and 4. For some reason, I was missing the low strings on the 1st and 3rd down strum, as if the heavier beats on the 2nd and 4th were throwing my timing off. I’ll keep practicing this, obviously, as well as trying to perfect my chord changes between Am and the F barre (which I apparently lost the ability to do while resting my arm), as well as changes between various 7th chords.

Otherwise, I’ll continue practicing songs more slowly to avoid aggravating my arm tendons (they feel fine at the moment) and throw in other things like power chords randomly.

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188

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Greetings from Mr. Sigmund Freud, can’t stop laughing! So many beasts to tame out there :muscle:.

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189

Sounds like you need a Mammotion Luba Robot to cut your grass for you, fantastic technology. Not only will it cut your grass for you the time you save not cutting grass and injuring yourself is time you can use on guitar :+1:

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190

The shuffle’s straightforward in theory but can be a little beast, especially with the accenting at first! Feel is so much of the blues stuff but once you start flowing it’s an awesome feeling!

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191

You might want to try some removable rubber guitar pick grips. There are various types on Amazon.

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192

Quick Update:

Okay, so my arm is better. I saw my doctor and indeed I essentially had tennis wrist, elbow and shoulder. I was given a steroid shot and 5 days of pills to bring down any inflammation. Apparently, I had purchased the right types of wrist and elbow braces and stopping work on pretty much everything for a few days and applying ice was doing the trick. My arm is much improved. My husband is still mowing the yard for me, (such a sweetie), and I am not spending hours every day gardening or staining and painting trim for the house. I am also taking at least 1 day a week not playing guitar and when I do play I am still using my elbow brace.

I also bought a set of .60 and .73 max grip plectrums, and I really love the .73! I was using those slippery orange .60 Dunlops and cramping up my hand something fierce and I know it wasn’t helping all those arm tendons. Someone recommended them on another thread. I thank them, whoever they are. Oddly, the .60 are thinner than the orange version so I’m going with the .73 most of the time.

I’m getting the hang of the first blues progression, and started the second one today. I also peeked into the next lesson, the blues solo and that looks reallycool, looking forward to it.

In the meantime, mainly practicing the songs:

What’s Up, getting better at singing and playing the fancy strumming pattern, though I screw it up here and there, I keep getting back on track. My main problem now is the singing tends to slow my hand down and I am a bit behind on beat 1. May have to try it with a metronome.

Bad Moon Rising I pretty much have this nailed, rhythm wise, I need to look into transposing to get it better into my vocal range.

Hey Hey, My My, I’m working on memorizing the chord progression, so I don’t have to watch the app, but when I think I have it down, I screw it up somewhere.

Have you Ever Seen the Rain My F barre chords are doing pretty well, especially if I don’t think too hard that “here it comes”.

House of the Rising Sun I know the chord progression and can sing along just fine, my tempo is a bit off now and then, so I have to work on that. It’s also very long and when I try to speed it up, I feel my arm protesting so I don’t play it as often as I would like. I also want to get back to playing it on my acoustic fingerstyle, I just don’t want to rush anything with my arm.

As Tears Go By is another song I need to transcribe into my vocal range as well as get that chord progression down.

Once I’m confident that I am back to 100% I need to play some of my Grade 1 songs to ensure I don’t forget how.

I also decided, having been nudged by Justin’s latest newsletter, to buy myself Guitar Pro 8 and its accompanying songbook of TAB music. Being 20% through July 5th as well as another discount on top of it from JustinGuitar made it seem a no-brainer, plus my husband can use it on his computer for bass guitar. It allows 5 computers per license, so cool. Now I have to figure out how to use it, lol. SO much to do, so little time!

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193

Hi @LunaRocket with House of The Rising Sun. I think the key to playing it at a speed that matches the Animals recording is to use the rake technique. Not sure if that is something you have tried.

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I just want to add that I have a similar PRS guitar and it slips on my leg even with a strap and good posture. The weight does not balance itself as good as my other guitars.

The simple fix was to put a simple piece of anti-slip mat for the kitchen found at the dollar store under my leg and there is no more pain anywhere, really comfortable. Instead of my elbow/back having to balance the guitar with the strap to avoid sliding all the time, this does it.

image
image1920×1416 143 KB

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195

:partying_face: :sunglasses:
I m so happy for you :smiley:

It took a while, but hopefully you will never experience this again and you will be able to continue playing undisturbed… with all the unfortunately always additional disruptive things that come with having a house… and a partner :roll_eyes:

Greetings

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196

Rebecca @LunaRocket

Glad your arm is getting better must have been frustrating not to be able to pick up a guitar.

I could be the guilty one about mentioning max grip picks but others have mentioned them. I had the same issue as you with the orange tortex, I liked it but it just moved around too much and I was spending far too much brain power controlling it. Using the max grip picks now and they just don’t move for me and therefore I don’t even think about controlling it.

I have been thinking about getting Guitar Pro, will be interested to hear how you get on.

Michael

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197

Well, my arm is definitely back to normal. It doesn’t hurt even when playing my acoustic. I am very pleased and relieved. Might help that I take at least 1 day off from playing a week and that my playing has been rather sporadic with summer activities, home improvement projects, etc. Now that I am picking up my acoustic occasionally, I’m still frustrated at how hard I have to press the strings to make them ring out. Definitely considering dropping from 12s to 11s.

I am finally progressing a little further into Module 13, started the Blues solo lesson this week. I am enjoying that, it sounds really cool, and to think it’s coming out of my guitar! :blush: I’ll definitely be staying here awhile longer, no point rushing things.

Still practicing several songs, “What’s Up?” with its 2 bar strumming pattern sounds really good to me now as does “Bad Moon Rising”, even “Have you ever seen the Rain?” although at times the F barre chord sounds a bit funky. Still working on a few others but I can’t play them without the app completely yet, more time practicing needed. I also added “Stand By Me”, back into my practice as my husband is learning the Bass part. It’s easier to play than it was 6 months ago. I must really be learning something!

One problem that suddenly started cropping up, the nail on my index finger behind the pick started getting caught on a string randomly on some up-strums. It would completely pull my hand down out of the pattern (and my nails are short), so I found Justin’s video on how to hold a pick in the App Strumming section, and oh dear, my index finger was much too horizontal! It’s going to take some time getting used to the new feel, but at least the string catching has stopped.

Okay, time to put in another 20 minutes.

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Great update, Rebecca.

I am not sure how much difference the drop from 12s to 11s will make, never tried that myself.

Another option in the short-term as you develop condition to be cumfy with the 12s (which in time I expect you will), is to tune each string down a semi-tone. That will take some of the tension off but not so much as to worry about neck relief (as far as I know).

If you do that and want to play along with originals then you just put a capo on at the first fret and you are good to go.

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Hi Rebecca, I’ve been catching up with your Log and I much enjoyed reading about your progress and what you practice. I’m glad your arm finally got to normal. It’s soo cool you can jam with your husband!

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Quick Update as I am leaving for a cruise vacation to Alaska on Friday. It’s going to be hard leaving the guitars at home!

I’m still in Module 13, enjoying the little blues solo Justin gave us to learn.

My index finger is no longer hanging up in the strings on the up strums.

Still practicing songs and random bits from other lessons, but mostly songs and the blues stuff.

I’ve picked up the acoustic a few times though not this week (bad girl!) I really like how John Denver’s “Country Roads” sounds on it. I’ve set the CAPO on the 2nd fret which is mentioned in the lesson, but it’s still strains my voice to sing it that low. I don’t know where else to put the CAPO to play the same chords, I’m still clueless on how to figure these things out as well as maybe changing keys.

I’ve looked at some of the links about changing the key, but I haven’t found the correct link it seems. One of these days I’ve got to continue music theory past the first free lessons (I did buy the course) I just haven’t found the time.

Plus, I haven’t barely looked at my Guitar Pro 8 yet.

Dang this seems to be a b** and moaning session!

So much to learn, so little time!

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