Hah, i broke my ulna back in my twenties. I also had limited rotation on my fretting hand. I’m finding with persistence and practice it’s getting more and more range though.
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Hi SteveL_G99! Thanks for telling me your experience. I am still working on Grade 3 lessons, and enjoying a lot of course. I would like to know the songs you are playing with barre chords, some of them at least, to see if I can follow your steps. Best regards and keep enjoying music!
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I have just started lessons in Grade 3, so I don’t have a set song list yet.
My current practice with power chords and barre chords on electric guitar is playing a blues progression with A, D and E power chords (5th and 7th frets) and A, D7, and E7 barre chords. The barre chord blues progression I play is:
| A7 / D7 / | A7 / / / | D7 / / / | A7 / / / | E7 / / Eb7 | D7 / / / | A7 / / / | E7 |. Repeat
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Thank you! I will copy your practice with blues barre chords if you don’t mind!
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Yes. You can play this progression if you enjoy it and it helps your practice.
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@MarioD I must tell you that I am not just practicing this blues progression. That would get very boring. My main practice is playing through all the Grade 3 songs with lesson videos on Justin’s website. If you haven’t done this, select songs from the top menu and in the filter side menus select difficulty level of grade 3 for song level. I am playing all of the Grade 3 songs, one per practice session along with 15 to 20 minutes of the 1 hour practice routine (20 minutes is best, in that I could cycle through the 1 hour practice routine twice in one 6 day practice week)
For example, today I played “Summer of 69” with the video lesson. There is a Bm barre chord in the song that is optional, but I play. Also it has a series of power chords to play.
This is the most enjoyable part of my practice, playing along with Justin in the song videos.
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Ok thank you for your advice! I will try!
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@MarioD If you have the Justin Guitar Beginner’s Song Book, the grade 3 songs are the Stage 7, 8 and 9 songs. I am also going to try to play through all the songs in the Beginners Song Book 2. That is 120 songs. This will take many months (6 to 8 months or longer) but I will enjoy the journey and become a better guitarist.
The main goal is to enjoy your practice, so play what you enjoy and you will continue practicing.
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I would like to suggest you to play the blues “Going Down Slow”. It’s a twelve bar blues on G, with only three barre chords: G7, C7 and D7. Keep in touch, Mario
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@MarioD Thanks. I played this song in Grade 2 with open chords. I will play again with barre chords.
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If anyone is interested, I have tried to split the practice routine over 3 days. I have put a chart of 3 day routine customized to me in my Learning Log:
3 day module 15 practice routine
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I realised that with this topics it is hard for me to keep a specific schedule (but idk if it is a good or a bad things?)
Yesterday I wanted to learn a new song (Repertoire), but than i realised that the chords weren’t correct, so I tried to find out the correct way to do it (Trascribing).
And today a started with practice of some chord shapes (Technique), had an idea to change the fingers (knowledge/explorer) and than ended up writing a song with this chord, because I loved its sound so much (songwriting - i have it as a additional section).
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I’m back again after struggling with a consistant practice routine for Grade 3 modules, since I have a 40 minute practice constraint. My apologies for the 3 day routine I linked in my Nov22 post in this discussion. I have a better organization of the practice routine with one day of just songs/review/recording followed by 2 days of the module routine split into two 30 minute routines and a 10 minute warmup:
https://community.justinguitar.com/t/steve-l-s-learning-log/149199/31?u=stevel_g99
I have a routine schedule for Module 15 and added a routine schedule for Module 16 (I’m planning ahead).
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Mate, not to sound patronising but there is no ‘good’ pace IMO. Learning a musical instrument is not a competitive sport. You will feel in your bones when you’re confident of the material taught so far.
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Justin says, quote: “Playing along with songs is great; you can even mute your strings, so you focus on the groove.” Does that mean that we can literally play any strumming pattern along any song and its all good as long as it is in time with that song?
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That’s what I think he means. Timing is key. I do a lot of muted strumming to get feel of the song. It’s so important to get the feel before I even start thinking about the chords
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I try and do a little practice on barre chords every day. I tried to ignore them for ages but decided it was time to try and push through. Surprisingly enough you do get better even though you might initially think it’s hopeless.
Feedback: You are an awesome teacher and doing a great job teaching everyone guitar. You are not at all talking too much. Thank you for taking the time to teach all of us.
I have been doing Grade 4 stuff but decided to come back to improve my transcribing and Ear training. Il like the melody chords style and it is sometimes difficult to find proper tabs for songs so I figured I should write them myself. Easier said than done. This is difficult!