Matt’s Learning Log

This is somewhat of a tangent for my learning log but I had a very vivid dream last night. I was online and had decided to buy a bass guitar (not something I’ve been looking at ever) but everything I was typing into google was getting auto corrected into something else which was hugely frustrating and when I did finally get onto the Andertons website apparently it was closed until 6am (this was all in the dream remember). Definitely had a quick check on gmail this morning to make sure I hadn’t ordered anything :joy: Does this mean I’ve been playing the wrong instrument all along? Or is there a deeper meaning? :blush:

Back in real life I have been continuing playing along to the Needle and Damage Done. I can now play along with the recording, at 100% speed but there’s too many mistakes to be able to say I’ve nailed it yet. Will see how practice goes today and try another recording

In terms of things I’m actually buying I have been looking at whether to update my iPad Pro or not. The thing is, despite it being 4+ years old, it does everything perfectly so I’ve decided to wait another year. I have ordered a little USB hub that should make it easier to connect it to power and my audio interface at the same time and also to a big screen

2 Likes

It’s so weird how your brain actually physically hurts when you’re concentrating so hard. And we’re not learning a hard science here, just focussing on our fingers and remembering simple patterns! :roll_eyes:

Somehow the forum stopped showing your LL in my New and Unread section so I just forgot it existed until this morning. Hopefully this kicks it back into rotation.

Anyway, your chord changes are super clean in all your videos, and it all sounds great. Guess I gotta listen to Oasis now!

Hi Matthew, it is interesting to read about your progress on The Needle and The Damage Done. That is on my list for songs to work on in 2025. @jjw post above reminds me that I will need to review the lesson in Grade 3 Module 17 - How to Pick Individual Strings While Strumming. That is a difficult strumming technique to master and I never came close to mastering it :slight_smile: Of course you can play the song any way you like. That is the beauty of music, there is always a lot of room for interpretation if you are not tying to exactly copy the original.

Very true. I think in my case it’s just that my thoughts are generally pretty scattered so the effort is about keeping the focus on point rather than the task being difficult. Some days the focus comes easier than others.

Thanks for watching the video and for your kind words.

2 Likes

Thanks for reading. I’ve played round and round that chord sequence so often lately! I can do it but not consistently enough to call it done. I’ve settled on something that is picking but almost strumming. It’s kind of a bit of a swing of my wrist, down, up, down, up throughout the sequence but only one note at a time. I will share another video this week… I promise!

I think in the past I believed that songs had to be the same as the original artist played but I’m now plenty happy if I can play along with the original song, playing something that fits with it, rather than worrying whether it’s the exact same notes or not. I think you’re right about the beauty being in finding our own way, we aren’t robots after all

1 Like

So true !!!

Sometimes I forget that Im the one playing … and then oops I missed a beat :joy:

2 Likes

Ok I’ve slipped on keeping my LL up to date and I’ve also not delivered the recording I think I promised, so I’ll give myself a slap on the wrists!

I’m having a little break from the Needle and Damage Done. It was so close and yet so far away. I can play to the recording but not to a level of consistency that I could say I’ve truly got it. Am going to park it for a week or 2 and then come back to it.

I’ve been learning Everybody Hurts by REM. I can play a fairly simple version along to the recording, again it’s just a bit more consistency that I need. All things considered though I am very happy at the rate that I got up to speed with it, a real improvement in itself

I’ve just noticed a post that I made a few weeks ago saying how I was going to stick with my 4 year old iPad Pro for another year - that hasn’t aged well as I bought a new one last week :roll_eyes:

The new one is an iPad Pro M4 and rather than a keyboard case I’ve gone for mouse and keyboard this time around. It can run 2 screens (as in the photo) with different apps on each, which my old one couldn’t do. (The laptop in the picture is my work laptop). I did get a fairly decent trade-in price from Apple which softened the blow

The final thing is that I also took the Black Friday code for Yousician so I’m going to give that a try over the next 11 months to see if it can help me get going with electric guitar. At the moment I’m practicing a simplified rhythm guitar version of Back in Black by AC/DC which I don’t think is something I could have tackled myself. Being able to run it on my big screen definitely helps. There is a bit of a transition, my fingers need to adjust to playing single notes and moving around the fretboard as I’ve mostly played open chords so far. I’m finding that I also need to be a little lighter with my pick to get good recognition of the notes as I’ve got used to strumming quite hard on my acoustic. If I can learn a few songs like Back in Black over the next year it will have been worth it. When I say learn, being able to play rhythm along with the recording counts as success. Happy for Angus to play the solos!

Thanks for reading - and Happy New Year!

2 Likes

I saw that you looked at this weeks challenge ( The clash )
Its giving me a hard time :sweat_smile:

Yeah I had a quick look but I’m not ready for that yet. As I say, getting the fingers moving round a series of single notes is a very different thing to being able to strum and change chords. Maybe if the song was one that I wanted to learn in the future I might have stuck with it but as it is I watched it through once and decided to park it. Will see what future ones come up and I’m sure I’ll give them a proper try

1 Like

yeah for the moment just get accustomed to playing single notes
its a level 3 and you re level 2 at the moment

melodies can be hard to play but good exercices for the fingers independency

1 Like

This isn’t an update on my playing but how I’ve organising myself behind the scenes. For a while I’ve notes for songs in various places, notebooks, apps etc and also had a spreadsheet tracking my progress with songs. It was a bit all over the place.

Since I bought a new iPad I decided I was going to try to come up with something better, ideally with the bundled apps, and I think I’m just about there using the Reminders and Notes apps.

Each song I learn will have a note in the Notes app for it. The app is really flexible, so it can include text, handwritten notes, links to YouTube, copies of PDFs etc - but that’s still just a load of notes. You can tag all of those notes and then create a folder that is just your guitar notes.

The thing that brings together is that you can create a Kanban board in the Reminders app and include links to the notes. I’ve only added a few songs so far but this is how it looks…

So there’s a column for whatever stage I am with learning each song and if I tap on the little icon on each item, it opens up the note for each song. As I progress with a song they can be dragged into a different column. Seems pretty cool! :nerd_face:

2 Likes

I’ve been playing a bit more electric guitar over the last week or two, using Yousician as a guide. The single note stuff (as opposed to cowboy chords) does feel like being a total beginner again! I’ve got a super basic version of Back in Black going but I’m definitely not ready for the next iteration of it yet.

Then “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” came up, cowboy chord style. I played it a couple of times and decided to park it on Yousician and have a go at learning against the original recording with my acoustic guitar. I realised after a couple of playthroughs that I could do it. I’ve used Moises to keep me in line with the chords but I’m just trying to strum along to the rhythm of the song rather than a set pattern. I’ve done a recording which I’m pretty happy with after maybe a dozen plays. There’s a couple of choppy transitions that I can improve and I got slightly ahead of the beat just before the last chorus but it’s nearly there. Apologies, the backing track is there but could have been a little louder.

It maybe an obvious thing to say but I’m definitely more comfortable strumming along on either of my acoustics vs my electrics. For this song I’ve used my first acoustic guitar as I use that for alternate tunings (this song is a half step down)

5 Likes

Matt, the chord changes and strumming are consistent and on the beat. It sounds good to me. I noticed that you were leaning the guitar back again, so I looked at the other videos and the other guitars didn’t lean as far back, so it might be the dreadnaught sized guitar. You’re probably more comfortable playing the bigger guitar with the body of the guitar slanted towards and you or you were just extra relaxed when you recorded “Every Rose Has. Its Thorn” :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks for watching Steve and giving feedback, it’s really appreciated.

That particular guitar is dreadnought shaped but not as big as dreadnought guitars can be, but it is bigger than the other acoustic in some of my videos. You’re right about the angle of the guitar… I can only say it’s down to some combination of comfort/habit/laziness! I’ve just checked and I can play it vertically but the video probably does represent my default position. It might actually be a hangover from earlier in my guitar journey when I needed to look at my fretboard which I mostly don’t anymore (for standard chords anyway). I’ll try to be more aware of it and adjust my position :+1:

1 Like

A quick update here while I’m replying to feedback!

The last few weeks have been quite consistent. I think I’ve played both acoustic and electric guitar every day. I’ve been playing Patience by GnR which I’ve pretty much got sorted (by this I mean a version that I can strum through with a few little embellishments), just deciding what to play in the opening few bars when there’s not much other than a single strum going on (yes there’s a few background twiddly bits but that’s not my level)

On electric I’ve been playing simplified versions of a number of songs via Yousician. The Pretender by the Foo Fighters is quite fun. It’s getting me used to moving between single notes and power chords all while not looking at either of my hands. It’s quite challenging but I am seeing progress

1 Like