This sounds like a severe case of “Bye bye overtime money” 
Practicing with the metronome will tighten your timing up and should make your playing with a backing track even better.
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I am glad to read this and hear that your overtime period has ended!
sounds like a really good plan!
And … one pattern each day for a whole year? Sooo many?
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Yes, the 365 fingerstyle exercices - 1 per day is a unique concept. I have no idea how it will goes… It can either work really well or not at all haha… . 
And it might take 2 years to complete it. I’m still debating wether it was a good purchase or not, at least it was 50% off. I’d have prefer something more exciting with blues songs. But, he’s saying that the fun is behind the boring stuff. 
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Hi Math, I’m glad you’re finally back to practice! The 365 fingerpicking patterns made me wonder too…but I guess there’s a specific goal for them, does the teacher make it clear? If you practice with the metronome it’s gonna be super powerful practice anyway.
No need to say be aware of your fingers being relaxed without pain when you do the exercises.
I hope you’ll share some recording of the Blues solo when you’ll feel confident.
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The teacher says that the goal is not pattern memorization, but fingerstyle freedom. We will most likely only remember from memory our 10 most favorite patterns. But, each day, is a step further to push us to the fingerstyle freedom which he describes as your picking hand will be able to play whathever you throw at them without too much thinking. Great training for your fingers 
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That sounds similar to the exercises I’m working on.
Very different exercises of course, but they’re for a different style of playing. It’s not about memorising patterns, it’s all about independent finger movement and two hand synchronisation that will eventually lead to the freedom to play anything.
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Sentence 2 was my thought too. Some will possibly click with you in that moment or you’ll have some song idea during practice or whatever.
And the other point, I didn’t think of it, but now I understand. Finger independence was what I was also trying to improve and at least reached to a certain degree. (Haha, in relation to point zero I mean)
Felt great when I noticed making a little step again, but I mostly did my own patterns and excercises and can easily struggle when I have to do a certain pattern. Now I think I should incorporate something like you mentioned in my practice routine too to continue improving finger independence. But maybe only after Blim, right now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed anyway
I am glad to hear about your updates and look forward to some video one day!
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March 2026
This morning, I recorded a backing track in my DAW and improvised a 12 bar blues in the key of E. I had a lot of fun and I realized that I had made a lot of progress in my fretboard mapping . I was seeing the CAGED shapes and mixing some licks from Solo Blues acoustic in E with Blues Immersion in A in the D shape of the caged system. It does seems confusing, but everything was making sense in my eyes, I was seeing the shapes.
In april and may, I need to continue to revisit my blues vocabulary and really map it to the corresponding shapes.
Also, this month, I explored a few different lessons and it felt a little overwhelming. So, I will narrow my focus more.
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Chapter 8: End of the 6 month fingerstyle blues immersion
July 2026 marks the end of my 6-month personal immersion in fingerstyle blues.
The result is that I now have 7 fingerstyle blues songs in my repertoire.
The most challenging one is this track, which took me a few months to learn. I haven’t had much time to focus on improvisation, but I have significantly expanded my repertoire.
5-Week Multi-Style Fingerstyle Bootcamp
For the next 5 weeks, I’ve decided to tackle different styles of fingerstyle songs to see if my blues skills are transferable. I’m going to work on a few arrangements by Joe Robinson. Being in vacation, I can practice more than usual.
Week 1: I’m pleasantly surprised to have managed to learn the entirety of You Are My Sunshine in just one week.
Week 2: My plan is to start learning House of the Rising Sun while consolidating last week’s song. The learning phase went well. Playing at full speed will need a few more time.
Week 3: It’s already week 3, time flies fast. I am ready to start Amazing Grace . The arrangement looks pretty lovely
Weeks 4 and 5: For the last 2 weeks of my fingerstyle bootcamp, I am learning the more complex arrangement The Water Is Wide while consolidating the previous arrangements.
Reflecting on the bootcamp
This bootcamp was a good idea, as I was able to get through 4 out of the 7 songs of the course in 5 weeks. That’s about 57% of the course, which is great progress. I can already say I got my money’s worth, since I bought the course at 50% off for $50.
I’ll put those 4 songs in my repertoire and slowly get them up to speed in the coming months. And I’ll eventually come back for the 3 last songs later when I get another fingerstyle itch.
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Mathieu, that blues piece sounds really good and has a lot of blues elements in it. I’m still working on the solo blues primers, so I am impressed
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@SteveL_G99
Thanks a lot Steve for the compliment 
Congratulations for your 5 year guitarversary 
I saw in your learning log that you have made massive progress in the last year ! You went broad with many learning resource and it paid off . I’m sure you will have fun with Justin’s Solo blues course. It’s a great pathway to get into that style and also get the confidence to try some other songs on YouTube. Here is the youtube tutorial in case you want to try it one day after you get further into Justin’s Solo blues course.
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Mathieu, that sounds great! Close my eyes and it’s two guitars not one 
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Mathieu
Very well played with good definition of bass and lead lines. An impressive performance!
Brian
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@Beatup6String @beejay56
Thank you very much Ashu and Brian, I really appreciate it
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I just wanted to mention that it is my 4th year guitarversary, not 5th, although it seems like 5 years 
Hopefully at the end of year 5, I will have finished the BLIM course that I have been putting off. I am on the waiting list, but not sure when you are supposed to make it official and pay for the course?
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That sounds great Math! Reading about your progress makes me really happy
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@Silvia80 Thanks Silvia. Same for me when I read your progress on Dee. Wonderful job and really smooth playing. If there was 40 hours in a day, I would gladly get a classical guitar and learn it too.
@SteveL_G99 I don’t know the date for the next BLIM. Last newsletter is talking about fall. When I did it, they sent a message near the beginning and we had 1 week to subscribe at an early bird price. And the next week was at normal price. After paying, you then had access to a module 0 with brief recommandation from Justin and the course started the next month with module 1.
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Mathieu, thanks. I haven’t been as consistent in reading my emails since retiring, so I’ll have to go back and look at the newsletters. I was so afraid of missing the early bird email that I asked Fanny to DM me when it is time to pay
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Chapter 9 : 5-year guitar anniversary
June marks my 5-year guitar anniversary. 
It’s time to reflect on my journey so far.
Reflecting on my goals
In grade 3, I set my goals. And I am proud to say that I have achieved all of them 
I later expanded my goals to include more in-person social interaction.
The experience was mixed but I’m glad I gave it a shot. I learned a few things along the way even if it wasn’t the exact fit I was looking for.
Reflecting on buying new courses
After BLIM, I have bought a few blues guitar courses on other platforms to work on my consolidation period. I have enough for now and I’ll stop buying new blues course for a while.
They are good, but I must not forget that each one takes 100 hours of work. And their marketing are playing on “the fear of missing out” when offering THE solution to common struggles and promising huge improvements. But, it takes a lot of time to do them.
My current blues course library is strong and I have enough to make progress.
Discovering a new style of song
I like to play solo song arrangements that sounds great on their own without the need to sing.
I thought it was mostly fingerstyle blues or electric blues with a backing track. But, I recently discovered a new type of composition called “Blues by yourself” that are played with a pick and sounds really full. It’s pretty fun and they don’t need a backing track.
Reflecting on next year
For year 6, I’ll keep my main goal of having guitar as a hobby to relax and have fun after a long day at work.
I’ll keep it light and fun until Rock Immersion in Spring 2027, which will be a huge new step in my journey.
Mostly working on building and maintaining my current repertoire until then. I’m realizing now that maintaining a repertoire of solo arrangements takes a huge part of the practice routine.
This is all new to me; back when I was learning rock songs from the rock songbook, I would get so sick of hearing them after hundreds of repetitions that I’d move on. It was an ambitious project, recording them at full speed playing along to the original band recording.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a good project and I’m really proud of the result. It gave me confidence in my early days but getting the song to that level of performance was exhausting and it’s not worth it if you get tired of the song.
Nowadays I try to keep it more relax; which is not always easy as I’m a perfectionist.
What I enjoy the most with the “Blues by Yourself” or “Fingerstyle Blues” is that you can play at your convenience, you don’t have to follow the backing track and be perfectly in-sync. A few errors here and there and you continue. It feels more relax. On the other hand, with a full-band backing track, everything must be pretty tight all the time. It does feel less relaxing and you have to constantly rewind the track to start over. Cause the other players are not stopping 
Reflecting on the try-something-new-every-week approach
I noticed that the ActiveMelody channel posts a new instrumental song lesson on YouTube every Friday night, so I used that as an opportunity to keep my Friday nights fresh and exciting.
While trying every weekly song didn’t lead to making them stick, it was fun and introduced me to different styles of music. My progress ultimately came from picking my favorite lesson of the month and diving deep into it.
Setting up new goals
- Maintain my current song repertoire.
- Add new songs to my repertoire. Focus on song arrangements that sounds great on their own without the need to sing.
- Revisit my rock songbook project to finish the last 2 remaining songs .
- Join Rock Immersion in Spring 2027.
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Congratulations Mathieu, on your 5 years.
You’ve kicked some mighty goals in your journey there man.
As a bluesmen myself, Im always particularly interested in how others approach the Blues; what type of Blues; and what their goals are.
You seem to have settled on a solid path that looks good going forward.
Congratulations again mate, and all the best…
Cheers, Shane
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