LunaRocket's Learning Log

Hi Rebecca,
My thoughts are with your guitars during these difficult times, I am sure they will get through this time with the strength and spirits of the universe :broken_heart:

Happy holidays :smiley: :sunglasses: :partying_face:

Greetings

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Hi Rebecca @LunaRocket

The John Denver recording is capo on 2nd fret. Just move the capo up, trial and error, until the song gets into your range, the chord shapes stay the same wherever you put the capo. Obviously, you canā€™t play along with the recording at this point!

If you canā€™t take your guitars on the cruise it might be a good time to start on that theory course (there are downloadable booklets, if you already have the course, in case you donā€™t have internet). You donā€™t need your instrument, just a pen and paper.

Or you could use the JG Note Trainer app (itā€™s about $3 I think) on your phone as long as you have cell phone signal.

Enjoy your break :grinning:

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Hi Rebecca,

aaaw, a cruise to Alaska, that sounds sooo awesome! :star_struck: Have a fabulous time (as good as it gets without guitars) and enjoy it as much as possible. :smiley:

Regards Capo and chord shapes, Stuart explained it already very well. Iā€™d just like to add: If capo at fret two is still to low, you can go higher fret by fret until you find the sweet spot for your voice. With each fret higher, you will raise the pitch by one semitone.
You could think of the capo as the ā€œnew nutā€, so for example: You hit the open A-String without capo: the note A will ring out. Placing the Capo on fret 2 and hitting open A-string, the note B will ring out, as the pitch is raised by 2 semitones/one tone.
Basically the same happens to chords: Playing an open C-shape chord without a capo: C will be heard. Putting the capo on fret to and playing the same C-shape will result in a D chord sound as the pitch is raised by two semitones/one tone. Capo at fret 4, the same C-shape will result in E chord that is ringing out. :slight_smile:

The good and bad thing about learning: Once we learn something new, we almost always learn what we still have to learn at the same time, a never ending learning. :sweat_smile: :face_with_spiral_eyes: :joy:

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No, no, no. enjoy your holiday! Your guitars and theory will be waiting for you when you get back home. There is more to life than worrying about all this. Unless of course you plan on becoming a professional musician. :smiley:

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Thatā€™s what I am often thinking as well, because it is exactly as @Lisa_S says hereā€¦

Have lots of fun on your Alaska cruise :grinning: I agree with @sairfingers btwā€¦ vacation is vacation :ship:

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Hi Rebecca, Iā€™m catching up with your learning log. It was a very interesting read. Youā€™ve progressed well in your guitar learning, and have received plenty of good advice and encouragement already, but Iā€™d like to comment on this you wrote:

I think that all the effort of the practice is to develop the ability to control the sound coming from the instrument to play it with a specific musical intent and be able to make music. Good youā€™re already getting a taste of that. I saw that first hand with my brother when he passed from playing notes in a keyboard to playing piano music with a musical intent.

For me part of the frustration with the learning process comes from the numerous skills needed to learn before being in capacity of playing at least at a basic level an enough diversity of music styles to cover a good number of the popular songs most people would like to play on the guitar and maybe some ones just a few know about.

That said I think that enjoying the process is very important and necessary; because unless the guitar player sets for playing only the songs or pieces that he or she can play with what he or she already knows (and the list could be endless anyway) he or she very likely will spent a good portion of his or her current and future guitar time just developing his or her guitar skills.

I see a positive in feeling somewhat frustrated with not enough time (or energy or both) for practice and thatā€™s that thereā€™s still plenty motivation to keep going. My advice is just to enjoy whatever time you have for the guitar and as you wrote:

My start with Guitar Pro was a little rough and Iā€™m still just using a limited set of the capabilities of the software. The software has a pretty decent manual and there are plenty of YT videos explaining how to use it (I knowā€¦ more things to watch and learn, but itā€™s absolutely worthy). As an exercise you can enter one of the riffs that you already know how to play. Knowing some musical notation and theory helps but itā€™s not a requirement. Iā€™ve found very useful the ability to loop a few notes and repeat them again and again at reduced speed or with automated small increases, Using it with the actual record of the song as an underlay has been more challenging, but I think that just the exercise of trying it has been very good for developing my understanding of the song A Horse With No Name and consequently my musicality. I may ask some help from my brother for this one.

Just keep on keeping on and having fun.

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Well, hi again. Iā€™m back from my 7-day cruise to Alaska. I had a blast with my sister-in-law even if I came down with covid the last day. (sigh) fortunately it ended up being a mild case. I guess I should have worn a mask in the elevators and not just on the airplane! However, I recovered after a week, managed not to give it to my husband (stayed in the spare bedroom for the first 3 days home), and am slowly getting back into practicing guitar.

I decided to concentrate on just playing my acoustic, and some of the songs, John Denverā€™s Country Roads, just sound so much better on it than my electric, and Iā€™ve found the Capo on the 2nd fret has definitely helped me be able to sing that one, tooā€¦ Whereas Neil Youngā€™s Hey, Hey, My My sounds weird on it, so Iā€™m skipping practicing that one for now.

I am finding mastering the F barre chord on this guitar is hard! I simply cannot press the strings hard enough with the tips of my fingers to get the low E, A and D strings to ring out. I am going to continue to persevere however rather than tuning the strings down a semi-tone as @DavidP suggested, simply because Iā€™m stubborn. :sweat_smile: Plus, itā€™s only been a few days since I restarted practice.

Iā€™m having a weird issue, and maybe itā€™s because the neck is wider on the acoustic, sometimes when changing to the C chord, my index finger drops to the high E string instead of the B string. Very annoying. Otherwise, playing Whatā€™s Up with the 2-bar strumming pattern is going great! I was surprised I could go right back to that without having to think about it.

However, I am going to have to review the 7th chords because some of them have slipped right out of my memory!

Yesterday after looking through the songs in the App, I decided to add Amy Winehouseā€™s Back to Black to my practice routine, itā€™s got that tricky B7 chord (I did remember the shape of that one, Iā€™m just not very good at it!) I love the song, and itā€™s probably the only song from this century in my repertoire (snort, I actually have a repertoire!) :rofl:

Okay, and as I know youā€™re all clamoring for anything about my cruise, a couple of photos, I may post a few more later if there is any interest.


Me in Glacier Bay


Our ship the Norwegian Encore, (the thing is HUGE), docked in Skagway.

(edit, typos)

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