LunaRocket's Learning Log

[DaveTC59]

Enjoying reading your LL outlining your progress Rebecca. I wish I could get my wife to learn to play guitar but she has no interest in learning to play an instrument. I might have to work on getting my grandkids interested instead.

An electric guitar is a great way to start off, so ignore that cranky store owner. They are much easier to setup and can be easier to play.

Which open chords do you find the most difficult? For me it was Dm though C was a struggle at first.

Re your E to D changes.
I have fairly fat fingers but with A to D, A to E and E to D chord changes I found using my index finger as a pivot finger helpful. Positioning the index finger on the G string for the A chord. Keep it on the string, just slide it back or forward as you reposition middle and ring fingers. Going from A to E , slide index finger toward the nut a little, for A to D, slide it toward the fret. For E to D slide it forward again. Only have to think about two fingers then😁.

Singing while playing, that’s really good progress, something I have yet to seriously try. My initial attempts at it were woeful so it’s been put on the backburner for later.

Looking forward to the next progress installment.

Cheers Dave

[LunaRocket]

A short update as I will be going out of town Thursday through Tuesday sans guitar which I am taking to the local guitar shop tomorrow in hopes they can improve the sound with a setup.

I’ve been madly practicing a half dozen songs or so using the App and thought most things were going pretty well. I do a 33 minute practice with strumming, OMC and chord change/perfect practice as well as 5 minutes of Ear Training, then take a break and play songs.

I gave up after 35 minutes or so of my 3 main songs, What’s Up, Stand by Me, and For What it’s Worth. Nothing, and I mean nothing was going right! I thought my guitar was out of tune, checked it twice. My guitar wouldn’t stay in position, it was as though I’d never held a guitar before! And I was screwing up chord changes, putting in D chords in songs that didn’t have them, the chords I did hit sounded like crap! And as to keeping the tempo… ACK!!! Maybe because I couldn’t play till after dinner and I have lots of my mind, tons to do before I leave Thursday morning and not enough time to do it. It felt like I was back in Module 1 not knowing how to do anything!

At least my OMCs that I did practice earlier in the day were all above 50.

So, instead of getting my stuff done (I did a little of it), I’ve decided to listen to some Phish on YouTube with my DH while we partake of a little whiskey!

[LunaRocket]

A shorter Update.

I started practice before 9 am this morning with the amp turned down as DH was still asleep. I did a lot better, must have just been an off night.

Took my guitar in to the shop and they did the setup in a couple of hours while I went to a few stores. I think it sounds a lot better. Plus took a couple minutes to check out another acoustic and the owner who plays guitar played a nice tune on it so I could hear it. I like it, maybe a little better than the one I tried a couple weeks ago… hmmmmm

[dobleA]

Hi Rebecca, I also sometimes have once in a while a practice session that doesn’t go well. Usually is something isolated and can be due to many reasons, included maybe to be part of the learning process.

[southpaw6]

I think we all have those days where practice just doesn’t go well. Or the days where you just don’t feel like doing the items on the list. I’ve found, too, with some songs, that it can be helpful to take some time off from them - I revisited Twist and Shout recently (it was originally going to be one of my 5 G1 songs, until I got sick of it and swapped it) and after many weeks away, the syncopated strumming is so much easier than before!

Enjoy your setup! And your travels!

[LunaRocket]

Well, I went away for 5 days for a family event and though I just HAD to take my guitar with me, I didn’t get to practice much till this morning and a few of my OMCs went way up. Driving home tomorrow, back to regular practice Wednesday. I’ll see how it goes.

[LunaRocket]

Okay, so, my OMCs are averaging between 55 and 62, sometimes on a good day, a couple will hit 70, but they’d be so sloppy I sometimes don’t bother counting them. But they aren’t really helping with my Grade 1 consolidation, so I altered my routines today to include:

finger stretching - 2 minutes

chord perfect changes/air changes - 6 minutes (as for air changes, hahaha, sometimes 2 fingers will go down at once but only E and Am are reliable as 3 finger transitions, and of course, A, D and E with the anchor fingers go pretty smoothly.

strumming old faithful while trying to change chords practicing with muted strings wasn’t helping me progress - 4 minutes,

strumming 6:8 while trying to change chords - no songs to play for this one so it’s not as important to me currently but I’m keeping at it.

Ear training - 5 minutes - Happy Birthday is getting pretty old but I keep hammering at it on different parts of the fretboard. I am sure this is supposed to do something for me in the future, I just don’t see it yet.

then my 5 songs which are now:

For What it’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield
What’s Up - 4 non blondes
Cortez the Killer - Neil Young
Wish you Were Here - Pink Floyd
Mary Jane’s Last Dance - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

I relegated Wild Thing and Stand by Me to what I call Consolidation Part 2. Stand by Me is still too fast for me to make good chord changes (I’m barely managing it at 90% and that is poorly) and Wild Thing has a chorus that keeps screwing up my strumming. I’ll work on these and others I have mentioned earlier in my log when I have more free time, but for memorization the 5 songs listed up above seem to be the ones.

Speaking of strumming, I can’t seem to do old faithful within a song successfully yet, every so often I try but it often becomes chaos. I’ll keep trying we’ll see what happens, but I’ll need a lot more practice.

Now I have watched the first lesson in Grade 2 though I haven’t put any of it into practice. I’m going to really push my song practice for the next couple of weeks, more than 10-12 minutes per song as I am doing now before I start Grade 2 officially, but I think Grade 2 will be sooner rather than later as I’m starting to feel like I’m stagnating a little bit.

[dobleA]

Hi Rebecca, good progress update. Strumming with the strings muted may feel a hard to do, boring, and not so productive exercise, but it’s just that, an exercise, a workout. I think you can use it as a warm-up (maybe one minute or two) before trying it with chords and also as a warm-up for a song with lyrics. You don’t have to try the whole song at the beginning, you can try with just one verse. I’ve found strumming with strings muted very useful for working on syncing lyrics and strumming without the added difficulty of making chord changes on time.

[LunaRocket]

@dobleA

I’ve found strumming with strings muted very useful for working on syncing lyrics and strumming without the added difficulty of making chord changes on time.

Now that sounds like a idea, thanks for that.

I tried Stand by Me again a few days ago at full speed (sounds like I’m taking off in a plane, lol). I was a little better with the chord changes but still a work in progress.

My practice strumming has gotten a lot better, and I’ve been able to incorporate Old Faithful within a couple of the songs where it’s just instrumental, it makes it a bit more interesting. With singing though, I can’t seem to manage anything but strumming on the 4 downbeats. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work with the song at all. I’ve got some more experimenting and practice to do! I do believe Grade 1 Consolidation is going to take longer than I hoped.

I’ve also got a trip coming up at the end of May so won’t be able to play for something like 6 days!

[jkahn]

Nice learning log updates.

I’d really, really encourage you to stick at Grade 1 consolidation until you can hit that 5 song benchmark and play them all well (old faithful strumming or similar). If you feel you’re stagnating, just learn some more songs. Grade 2 is significantly harder and having that sorted will help a lot.

Oh, air changes - IMHO you don’t need to specifically practice that, you might find that one day they just “happen” - generally from playing songs. It’s an aspirational thing.

Keep at it!

[LunaRocket]

@jkahn

air changes - IMHO you don’t need to specifically practice that, you might find that one day they just “happen” - generally from playing songs. It’s an aspirational thing

Thanks, I do remember Justin saying something about aspiring to it, the perfectionist in me is just crying to get out again! I think practicing more songs may be the way to go, too. Though I do want to learn that Bm chord because there are a couple songs I’m interested in that use it.

[southpaw6]

Another vote for strumming muted strings, it’s super helpful. Justin’s strumming course prescribes a little muted strumming each practice session - I haven’t been as good lately about doing it every practice, but picking a tempo (60/80/100/120) and strumming muted for 5 minutes every day really does help you make things feel good.

[LunaRocket]

Okay so where am I now? Still in Grade 1 Consolidation. I was away from my guitar for 6 days! (Family wedding weekend) and when I got back had a hard time getting back into it. Between how busy I have been which I won’t go into here, by the time I had time to pick up the guitar at night, I was too tired, and when I did pick it up nothing seemed to work right.

Today I said, “screw this” and forced myself to play earlier in the day, housework, and house construction, and gardening be damned, and it was so much better! One of the other things I’ve also done is drop the 5 minutes of ear training as I don’t seem to be getting anything out of it and I can pretty much play happy birthday up and down the fret board now (memorized due to repetition as opposed to whatever it’s supposed to teach me, I think). I also messed around with Jingle Bells for awhile.

OMC

These are the ones I am still practicing. I seem to have lot of finger fumbling as I try to go faster. If I just did 40 a minute, they sound pretty good, but beyond that, it just falls apart.
C to D
C to E
C to G
Em to A - It seems weird that I have trouble with this one but not having that anchor finger seems to make it trickier.

Strumming

This seems to be going okay. I sometimes just practice with muted strings, sometimes halfway through my 4 minutes I will switch from muted strings to chords. Old Faithful seems to be working just fine at 80 bpm. And though I’m not playing any 6:8 songs, I am doing okay on that strumming pattern, too.

Songs

Yet another change up to my Final 5. I’m dropping Wish You Were Here though I’ll keep it in my secondary practice routine. This easy version just isn’t helping me as it’s slow, and I already have a couple slow songs, plus I can’t sing in the register I’m playing it in. I decided to replace it with Dreaming by Blondie. I’m having a lot more fun with it, it’s faster, plus it’s more singable for me.

I was also replacing Cortez the Killer, as it was “broken” in the App, with Three Little Birds since I already have it memorized, though now that Cortez has been fixed, I still haven’t decided, I need to play it again, it’s very slow though and not very exciting.

I may drop Mary Jane’s Last Dance as I’m a long way from having it memorized but I really like the song so I’ll keep plugging along. I’m pretty happy with What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes, I barely glance at the App while playing along. And, of course, I’m keeping Buffalo Springfield’s For What it’s Worth as I do have that one memorized.

I’m going to try a few others though and see if I like any of them better. After all, it’s supposed to be 5 “easily memorized” songs. If I over complicate things if I May never get to Grade 2!

That’s it for now.

[BurnsRhythm]

Hello Rebecca!
Yes, life inevitably gets in the way. Don’t worry about it though, as long as you retain the desire to play, then you will always get back to it.
There’s no timetable for the lessons so you can go at a pace that suits you and find a way that suits you.

You’re doing well and you’re on your way! Have fun!

[LunaRocket]

Grade 1 Consolidation still ongoing.
OMC

Still practicing these 4 and finally they are mostly going up rather than down! Going to keep them in my practice routine for now.
C to D
C to E
C to G
Em to A

Songs

Yes, I keep changing up my 5 songs!

Currently practicing:

What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes - I barely have to look at the app now, playing and singing along with the backing track. Probably my best song in terms of memorization. Still only doing 4 down strums to the bar, want to learn the 2 bar strumming pattern, but I figure it isn’t required for graduating Grade 1, but I do plan on figuring it out eventually.

For What it’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield - I do have this one memorized, so only practicing it twice through per session.

Up Around the Bend by CCR - This one is fast and fun. I can sing to parts of it, my fingers fumble during parts of it while singing, so I just need more practice, practice, practice!

Dreaming by Blondie - I Have the words almost memorized. Maybe a couple more weeks before I can keep from looking at the App. Also playing this one with all down strums but it “needs more” I’ve been trying to throw in up strums here and there but haven’t quite figured out where it works best. Going to keep experimenting.

Bad Moon Rising by CCR - I’m playing this one at 80% and it’s still faster than Up Around the Bend which was the fastest song I’ve tried till this one. I really love this song, too though so I am going to keep at it. I cannot imagine how or even why it needs to be played faster than 80% which is 143 bpm. Interestingly, when I look online, most sites claim it runs at 90 bpm but can be played at 180. So why does the App automatically go at 179/180? This confuses me.

And, of course, Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and the Wailers is still there for a backup.

[southpaw6]

@LunaRocket

I cannot imagine how or even why it needs to be played faster than 80% which is 143 bpm. Interestingly, when I look online, most sites claim it runs at 90 bpm but can be played at 180. So why does the App automatically go at 179/180? This confuses me.

I think it may have to do with 8th note vs. 16th note strumming patterns. I have Justin’s Easy Guitar Songbook, and in that one, What’s Up is 134bpm and All of Me is 126bpm, rather than the tempos used in the app, which are half that. It makes it easier to learn the strumming patterns in the book…until I go to use the app for a backing track and have to wrap my head (and hands/foot) around it as a 16th note pattern

[LunaRocket]

This morning I decided I had graduated Grade 1! I’ve been having a hard time staying motivated playing the songs over and over and feeling like I wasn’t really improving anymore though I did get Bad Moon Rising up to 90% speed on the App. My voice is wonky when it comes to singing Dreaming by Blonde and it’s annoying me plus I haven’t figured out a good strumming pattern for it, the backing track is so much faster than the rhythm guitar part that it’s sounding strange with just 4 down strums per bar. My other 3 songs are going along just fine. I came to the conclusion I was getting bored as I haven’t been learning anything new.

I decided to rewatch the final Nitsuj lesson for Grade 1 and realized I was actually playing my songs better than he was I’m sure that will never happen again! lol Plus my OMCs were hovering about 60 per minute and my strumming was still going okay and I was able to use Old Faithful a bit within songs here and there. So, graduate I did! YAY me!

I’ve now watched the first 3 lessons of Module 8 and am setting up a practice session to practice these interesting looking Stuck 3&4 chords! Once I figure that out I’ll go on to that Em Pentatonic Scale.

Onward!

addendum:

Well, 10 minutes of attempting the Big G (8) and Rock G (2) chords, besides my 4th finger hurting, my 3rd and 2nd fingers do NOT want to separate and go about their business. I put 3rd and 4th finger down and as soon as I put the 2nd finger down there goes the 3rd finger down the fret board to try and join it! So, the rock G is easier, no 2nd finger, but Big G? that’s going to take a while. Plus, for that one my 2nd finger keeps laying on top of the 5th string and muting it. The contortions my hand has to make hurt!

After that I did another 10 minutes on the next 3 chords, easier, but still. ACK!

I have to say though, after those first 20 minutes the 3 songs I played using just my open chords were a piece of cake! I even accidentally played Bad Moon Rising at 100% speed and managed to keep up the tempo till about the last 4 bars. Not too shabby.

For now, I’m just going to concentrate on the first 5 of the new chords Justin dropped on me, and continue practicing my songs.

That’s it for now.

[JokuMuu]

@LunaRocket

This morning I decided I had graduated Grade 1!

Congratulations

Certainly this is the right moment to move on. Cannot wait for the day when I will come to the conclusion myself

@LunaRocket

Well, 10 minutes of attempting the Big G (8) and Rock G (2) chords, besides my 4th finger hurting, my 3rd and 2nd fingers do NOT want to separate and go about their business.

More than 25 years ago I learned both the traditional G (like can still find it in the app) and Big G, so I think it really depends on your muscle memory. It’s perfectly normal for your little finger to hurt at this stage, I had the same experience when I played around with Big G and the similar C version (I have forgotten the name) some weeks ago.

Just take it one step at a time, your fingers will learn to spread as needed

[roger_holland]

Hi Rebecca,

Doing new things from now on … great … how nice , next time start a little earlier with the next because now you were a little too bored … great that you continue now
Greetings…

[Helen0609]

Hi Rebecca, congrats on finishing Grade 1, first milestone in a loooong row! You did right to set yourself on “graduated”. Looking backwards, I realised that I’ve spent far too much time on consolidation of Grade 1, as I wanted to play my songs really well. Funnily enough, those things, that were holding me back from moving on, suddenly disappeared within a few weeks after having started Grade 2. Your over all abilities increase and some things get a lot easier with time.
Don’t worry about the Stuck 3 & 4 chords. They are a bit stretchy at the beginning but your hands will improve dexterity and it will get easier. I’m sure there is so much to learn in Grade 2, you won’t get bored. Have fun and a good time!