Crikey, my last update was July, oops!!! Whilst not keeping up with the documentation of progress I’ve continued to push on through what’s been a really busy summer. One comment that doesn’t fit into any of the below however is that the Community continues to be a place of joy and inspiration, terrific to see the swathe of introduction posts and the ever expanding, amazing, AVOYPs people are posting up. Kudos to you all 
OM-X Preparation and Performance
Hmmmm………interesting one this. Following the undoubted adrenaline and confidence boost I took from OM-IX I jumped straight back in with OM-X. In contrast to the first show I already had my song “selected” as it’d been in my practice rotation for a little while but not as a focussed song, Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I had a tonne of stuff going on through summer, aided by the weather we had in the UK, so the bulk of the OM level practice took place in the couple of weeks leading up to the show. I wanted to do this one standing and had been practicing it stood up, feeling pretty decent with it all………until I had the bright idea a few days out to add in a foot switch (my Airstep connecting to my Yamaha THR) to move between the tremolo intro section, the clean verses and crunchy chorus tones. Adding that into the mix, in retrospect, I didn’t practice this anyway near enough and whilst I had a few pretty clean run throughs, when the OM RBS kicked in it felt all over the place with timing the changes. It just added an additional layer of nerves of something to go wrong / think about and it messed wit my singing half looking at the floor whilst trying to remember to sing into the mic!! Amazing feedback in the chat and post event from the community but I was disappointed in myself to be honest. I bit off more than I could chew without giving myself enough practice time to bed it in. A bit of overconfidence I think, and a reality check, although good to test yourself, perhaps that’s not the best environment or approach! On the upside it’s a clear lesson for me for rehearsing for a performance and for the next OM I sign up to. Don’t make last minute changes folks!!
NGD – Unplugging!
There’s been plenty of recent topics around my Faith acoustic purchase which I absolutely adore! Shout out to Andertons for their support, time and terrific customer service through my testing and buying. My “original” Yamaha acoustic went to a local charity shop and sold within a day and my Eastcoast electric sold to a good home. Safe to say the current pair of instruments I have will never leave me, but I will expect the family to grow over the years obviously!!
Learning Progress - Closing out Grade 2
It took me forever to sit down and go through module 14 what with the aforementioned busy summer and also a bit of general procrastination. There still weren’t many days where I didn’t pick up the guitar but was more messing around rather than structure practice. Some of that was also down to knowing what was in 14 (standing up, playing without looking, recording etc.) that I was part way down many of those little avenues. The 2 new things really were / are thumb muting and percussive hits. I’ve spent less time dedicated to mod 14 practice and more planning on incorporating those final couple of skills from the grade into consolidation.
So, here we go then, grade 2 has been a big step up from grade 1 looking back with so much covered it’s quite incredible. The fact it’s all stuck in my head and hands is a true testament to Justin’s teaching. And now we’re getting into darker / colder nights here I’m ready to play songs songs songs…!!
Grade 2 Consolidation Plan & Goals
I’ve spend a good bit of time considering how I want to approach grade 2 consolidation. I’ve landed on an approach of listing songs I’d like to learn (we’ve all got a list 200 long right?!) and isolating ones that focus on skills taught throughout grade 2 (like “simply” an Oasis song or two for stuck 3 / 4 
). Clearly a lot of songs tick more than one box so I’m listing songs below with what specifically I’m looking to consolidate from learning that song. Across all of these there’ll be general things too, like the thumb muting, mixing in some slash chords where suitable (and identifying where suitable is!), embellishing with sus chords, playing more stood up and improving recording production and so on. I’m giving myself through until Christmas to work through consolidation and go New Year, New Grade. So the big reveal……:
- REM - Everybody Hurts
- (fingerstyle, stuck 3 / 4 even if it’s just one chord!)
- REM – Man on the Moon
- (no specific grade 2 skill but I’ve been wanting to learn it since @rod58 played it in OM-IX!)
- Green Day – Good Riddance
- (I want to kick on to the fingerstyle version, a different pattern to what I’m used to)
- Green Day – Macy’s Day Parade
- (Percussive Hit & Barre Chords)
- Blur – Coffee & TV
- (Percussive & Barre Chords)
- Oasis – Whatever
- (Stuck 3 / 4)
- Oasis – Don’t Look Back in Anger
- (Stuck 3 / 4)
- Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Californication
- (hammer ons mainly with the riff but I’d like to continue to develop my playing of the song)
- Bradley Cooper / Lady Ga Ga – Shallow
- (fingerstyle and it’s such a lovely song)
- Notter – An Original Song
- (I’ve got some lyrics written for a couple but not really done anything with them, to include a solo too)
- Nirvana – Lithium
- (Power Chords)
- Eric Clapton – Cocaine
- (Power Chords)
- Metallica – Enter Sandman
- (move beyond the opening riff to the whole song, multiple areas in this one for consolidation)
- Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
- (Bit of everything really!)
- Slackstring – Sunday Jen
- (been a fave of mine forever. The song is mainly piano so this is more looking at an arrangement that works solo.)
- Blues – now this one’s tricky as my knowledge of the genre is poor, so this will be researched for songs. However alongside a song or two I’d like to come up with a solo to Justin’s backing track, as well as another over a loop of my own to cover the Pentatonic scale (Am and Em)
So that’s ~15 or so songs, quite a few I know already and it’s about taking them to a new level, so hopefully that’s not unrealistic with some focus over the coming few months.
And a bonus thing I’d like to spend a bit of time on:
Make a start on learning the intro to Little Wing, definitely in the Dreamer category!!
So there we go, we keep on rocking and rolling
I’ll update the log with links to AVOYPs of the above as we get into Autumn and Winter up here.
Appreciate your reading time!