LunaRocket's Learning Log

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141

Thanks for all the encouragement, it helps. Today was a better day, I got all my technical practice done early today. took my guitar, unplugged into the living room where the :sunny: SUN!!! :sunny: was shining through the windows. It was a nice change from sitting in my cold little room (central heat? what’s that you ask?) practicing in the corner.

Later in the afternoon I played a bunch of my songs with just the click/metronome in the App, and boy, I need a lot of work there. Apparently, the backing tracks were covering up some wonkiness. I’ll keep at that a few days. One annoying thing is that with fancier strumming patterns, even old Faithful, i can’t seem to keep the beat with my foot, too many things going on at once, and that’s without any singing.

The first 2 stanzas? of La Bamba I actually was able, most of the time, to do by memory, working on adding the 3rd bit now.

And since I’m already learning House of the Rising Sun I practiced finger picking with it. Yeah, that’s gonna take a loooooong time! But it actually was kind of fun. At least it sounded nice when I hit it right.

Just realized I forgot to try Happy Birthday today. Ah well, another chance at that tomorrow.

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142

Sun? What’s that? :thinking: I forgot… all grey and icy here…

Nice reading your latest update. Wow, that’s a major step trying to let go off the app’s backing tracks. Might seem like a lot now, but you will get used to it sooner than you think :slightly_smiling_face:

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I have resorted to the metronome in the Practice Assistant today. I tried with the App’s click track but I swear the speed isn’t consistent. I am, at least with the PA metronome, sometimes having that sensation that I can’t hear the “nome” when I get the strum exactly on the beat. Haven’t been able to do that with the App.

@Notter I don’t have a songbook yet though I’ve got a few songs listed in my Practice Assistant section about Campfire songs, etc. I’ll have to look into that, I really need to get more organized. Sometimes I feel like I’m flailing all over the place.

eta: And as I’ve been practicing HotRS fingerstyle now, I’ve been checking into other things about 6:8 songs and rediscovered that Justin recommended a 6:8 strumming pattern that’s different from 6 down strums. I honestly did not remember that lesson at all. I figure it might be good with my strumming version of House…Sun but since I’m still struggling playing it fast enough, I think that will be further down the road.

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144

Hey Rebecca, that’s great to have some songs already saved up in the Assistant, the list will no dubt change over time and some of your early songs will always be in your head regardless! Just something to consider more than anything. There was a period when I had 10 or so songs listed out and for my practice warm up would roll a couple of dice and whatever numbers came up were my warm up tracks for that session, that helped keep the variety too.
Enjoy!

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This is exactly what I’ve been doing too. I can strum an acceptable bare bones version of it (not 6 strums per bar fast) and decided to make it my first finger picking song, maybe a tad ambitious, we shall see.

I find that generally if I slow songs down in the Songs app to 80 or 90% they still sound ok, but with this I’ve had to cut the speed down to only 50 or 60% so the vocals had to go… it sounds like the singer is having a seizure played that slowly! It’s mostly the D to F change that requires me to have it so slow.

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146

I had to do the same thing with Hallelujah in the app for fingerpicking practice, even if the tempo isn’t that fast. It made it sound like Jabba the Hut was singing at 70% and below :laughing:

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UPDATE:

Well, okay, while still plugging away on various bits of Mods 8, 9, 10 and a whole lot of 11, I decided yesterday to give Module 12 a go.

I’m happy to say I can do the A minor pentatonic scale slowly, looks like that won’t be a horrid thing to practice.

Power chords are a whole different animal. AND JUST WHAT IS THIS THING ABOUT SUDDENLY HAVING TO MUTE STRINGS G B AND E AFTER TRYING NOT TO MUTE B AND E IN THE F BARRE!!!

Anyway, I moaned about that over on the power chord lesson discussion. Including the fact that the few power chords I managed sound HORRIBLE no matter what I do with my fingers or what switches I change on my guitar!

Okay, rant over as we all know practice, practice, practice.

Other tidbits: Module 11:

I’ve finally got the La Bamba riff and happy birthday coming along rather well.

Push strumming practice I can do fairly well with several different chords.

Hammer on is fairly good till I get to the pinkie portion. That little sucker still mostly mutes rather than hammer the string.

(Interesting side note, for the heck of it yesterday I decided to practice with my lowly Squire Bullet instead of my lovely PRS and found the F barre chord easier to play!

Also learned that I hated the strings on that guitar compared to the ones on my PRS, AND then discovered in the hammer on practice that on the high E string around the 12th fret there is no sound when hammering on the next fret because the E string is already resting tight against the metal strip. Apparently, I must have a high fret at that point. Not quite sure what to do about that, yet. Not a high priority.)

I’ve pretty much nailed the SUS chords though unfortunately the only song I am playing that has one is Wonderwall which I am not enjoying that much. I’ll have to look around a bit.

My F barre chord is pretty good, I can change fairly well from C or Am to it in practice but not fast enough in songs. I’d hate to go back to OMC for it, but I may have to.

Fingerstyle is giving me trouble in that I have to look at the picking hand a lot, anchoring with the pinkie doesn’t help much, it seems to strain my hand and I’m having trouble getting the high E to ring out, my ring finger angle or something just isn’t right. I’m using House of the Rising Sun for it, and I have to go so slowly! But at least my mini-F chord sounds good in it!

I think the ear training thing with the 2 minute improvisation song had run its useful course, so I dropped it, I’ve got to drop out some more things though because the technique section of my practice routine is becoming rather unwieldy especially as I’ve now added a couple things from Module 12 to it. (the rest of Module 12 will have to wait till I get a handle on the power chords). It’s an hour long before getting to the fun song practice stuff.

I seem to be getting lost in what I should be practicing vs what happens if I don’t practice something for too long, use it or lose it? How long do I keep plugging away on happy birthday and La Bamba, for example? There is just SO MUCH STUFF!

Okay, so to end this update/rant post I will say that 2 days ago, on Sunday afternoon, I don’t know what magical fairy blessed me, but I was super energized all day, got lots and lots of things around the house accomplished, including canning a gallon’s worth of the first maple syrup of the season.

When I got to my practice, split into 3 different sessions, everything was awesome. By the end of the evening, I had practiced 2 hours and 33 minutes. About an hour of techniques and the rest songs. It was a great feeling. (I probably should have kept going because yesterday everything went wrong!) :rofl:

I hope to do that again. Someday.

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148

It looks like there’s a lot on your plate! But you’re doing a great job. There’s a point where I guess you have to drop some stuff and practice new things.

I still practice la bamba riff, come as you are and enter sandman but not always. A couple times a week and you may think it’s not enough but if you have already memorized it you won’t forget how to play it.

I hope you get to enjoy playing power chords soon! I felt it was more difficult than I expected but once you get the gist of it it’s “easier” than the basic chords. You are basically playing the same shape up and down the neck.

Good luck!

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I have to confess, I love reading your updates, Rebecca :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m sure you will get these powerchords sounding fine in no time… See, you got the F-chord working as well :slightly_smiling_face: The thing with the string muting made me laugh. The exactly same happened to me when I - just for fun (I’m far from getting to that module) played around with powerchords at some point - yes, of course these strings will ring out nicely when I don’t want them to. It’s probably just trial and error. Looking forward to read how you will proceed with them and getting helpful insights from someone, who went down that road before :grin:

About what you should have in your practice routines… It’s something I’m struggling a bit myself as well, since I started way too many little things.

I guess, maybe it’s a good idea to have different practice routines - with different content, when it comes to things you are already somewhat familiar with (La Bamba, simple 6:8 finger style e.g) but there would always be THE new thing(s) ( one, two or three) that you are working on? Something like practice routine A (= new things + familiar things X and Y + one or two songs), practice routine B (= new things + familiar things V and W + one or two songs), practice routine C ( new things + familiar things T & U + one or two songs). On Monday it would be time for routine A, on Tuesday for routine B, on Wednesday for routine C and so on…

Remember, there will also be the consolidation time, when you can go back to things that you are not happy with yet :slightly_smiling_face:

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150

Thanks @CarlosAP, I’ll get there, I still find it kind of wild to think that a year ago I couldn’t strum a simple 2 chord tune!

At last, someone likes my writing (no one reads my wimpy blog, lol) Glad I can entertain.

Nicole, I’ve got probably a dozen practice routines, a few courtesy of JustinGuitar, and ones I created:

These 3 are my current ones:

Beginner Module 11 + 12 (mostly F chord and fingerstyle from Mod 11 and only the scale and power cord practice in Mod 12.)

Extra Song Practice (grades 1 and 2) (77 minutes long!)

Beginner Module 9 + 8 + 10 (just bits and pieces to keep things up to speed).

The rest of Module 12 will have to wait till I get the power chords figured out. :smile:

I’ve got other now defunct ones for Grade 1 though I may revive the strumming practice one as singing, strumming, complicated strumming patterns and foot tapping has screwed up a bit in some songs.

Time to go practice, it’s afternoon here, so I’m late! Have to pay attention to Ziggy first, he’s being needy.

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i do like it too :slight_smile:

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Hmm… Ziggy was your dog, not your husband, right? :dog2: (I’m sorry couldn’t let that one go… :grin:)

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153

I know exactly what you mean. Been practicing changes from F barre for months with what seems like little improvement!

Try Heroes - David Bowe , Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison or Teardrops on My Guitar - Taylor Swift.

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OOo I LOVE Heroes. Better go look for it, thanks.

155

Just a quick update.

I’m doing fine with happy birthday and the La Bamba riff so I’m dropping them from my regular practice routine and mainly concentrating all my efforts on Module 12. Going to try Enter Sandman for the first time today.

For my first power chord song I’m going to try the Kinks’, You Really Got Me.

My power chords on the 6th string aren’t as horrid as they were a week ago when I first started trying them out but the ones on the 5th string are still worse and going between 6th and 5th is tough. The Kinks song should help with that, (I hope).

I haven’t even tried palm muting yet, that is on the schedule for today as well.

I hope to get a pretty good handle on these things in the next few days before we go on vacation for 2 weeks. I am taking a guitar with me, but not sure how much time I can practice, maybe while our hosts are sleeping, (I am bringing my headphones, too.) :smile:

That is all.

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A quicker Update.

My power chords on the 6th string are sounding okay-ish, the 5th string, not so much. The Kinks’ song is too fast on the App even at 50% so I’m just practicing without it but trying to keep the rhythm. Switching strings is still tough. And there is palm muting in it, so I got that covered. No time to try anything else. like a 2nd song, I’m just going to keep practicing until our 1500 mile (2414 km) road trip to Texas on Thursday.

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Enjoy Texas. I live in San Antonio.

Mike

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Well, howdy, pardners! Just got back this afternoon from our road trip to Texas. In a nutshell:

Had a great time, but the eclipse was a bust where we were in New Braunfels! The party was great though. Visited a bunch of wineries, a distillery, San Antonio’s River Walk and the Alamo, did a little shopping, ate a lot, hung out at the pool, bought a couple cool hats and a metal armadillo with the Texas flag painted on its back. Went to an air show at Randolph AFB and saw the Thunderbirds, had dinner with a friend whom we hadn’t seen in 35 years!

Somehow, we never did have any BBQ!

And, of course, I bought that acoustic guitar I’d been wanting and wrote about in this thread.

Drove through some hellacious rainstorms the last 2 days on the way back, toyed with visiting Sweetwater again, but kept our heads and money this time.

I didn’t get a lot of practice in between all the stuff we were doing, in fact I finally missed 2 days, so I can’t say I played every day this year anymore. Some days I was lucky to get 5 minutes in, like tonight, had to pick up my PRS and tell it I still loved it.

As for my Breedlove acoustic, I have no idea how you people who start with an acoustic manage to keep it up! My F chord is a mess again, I know all the chord shapes, but my fingers aren’t landing in the right spots, nothing feels quite right anymore! I’m beginning to think I need to start over with Grade 1, Module 1!

If anyone has any tips I’m all ears/eyes.

I will say though, going back to my PRS feels really easy! :smile:

Now I just have to remember to call Sweetwater tomorrow to have them ship the other thing I bought but had no room for in the car on our trip!

It’s good to be home!

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159

Hi Rebecca!
Glad you had a fun trip! The acoustic/ electric thing is surprisingly challenging! I switch back & forth every time I play… my acoustics all have chunkier necks than the electrics with the sole exception of my PRS - it has that PRS Wide/Fat neck profile. If I play the acoustics for too long, the electrics feel “too” skinny. That’s why I don’t stick to one or the other for too long!
I think the “problem” will solve itself as you become more accustomed to your beautiful Breedlove! Also, learning new techniques tend to be a bit easier on the electric but often sound better on the acoustic :blush:!!!
Just a little food for thought!!!
Have lots of fun, it’s enjoyable reading your log!!!

Tod

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160

Today my new amp arrived, I bought a Boss Katana 100 Mk2 with the money I saved by not buying that $1000 guitar I had been looking at.

It came late in the afternoon, so I only got to try it out for around 30 minutes after dinner. I must say, I think I like it. I just have to figure out what everything does, the manual that came with it really only listed the names of each knob, not really explaining how to use them effectively. Fortunately, I know there are lots of posts about it here in the Community.

As for my actual guitar practice, I’m having a hard time getting back into it, but I’m getting there.

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