I have a long way to go before i will even say i play guitar. But. I notice things improve a lot when it’s fun. When i find a song i like and play that the chord changes in that song get easy.
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Always trying to concentrate on tension, lasts about 5 bars or when fingers tell me I’m pressing to hard.
that’s just an example. My point is, when I started I stuck to those 10-20-30 min a day, using both hands, always. I should have had an additional 2x15 min a day using picking hand only and whatever patterns come to mind, I recall Justin has a strumming sub-course or something like that? You can strum across all strings or just the low E.
The point is to teach the right hand to maintain a set pattern for minutes without “flinching.”
And I also agree that songs have to be fun. I never learned the simple songs in Beginner 1, I preferred to just do cord changes.
Speaking of that, “air changes” where you try to go as quick as possible on fretting hand only helped me immensely.
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Hi Bruce,
I’ve found myself in this situation many times. The solution is to go back to basics. In my case I was trying to learn too much too fast and wanted to advance before I was able to. Pick a simple song or exercise you can do and build on it. There are thousands of songs you can play with Em- cadd9. G and D. Try those to build confidence.
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There is a lot of good advice above Bruce from some real good people so I do not intend adding anything but instead welcome you to a great community, you will get there believe me cheers Hec
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This happened to me as well. After ~6 months, frustration got the best of me and I quit practicing. During that time, I re-assessed why I wanted to learn guitar, what Ievel of proficiency/skill would satisfy me, and pondered whether I had the patience to accomplish what I wanted to.
After a 3-4 month hiatus, I decided that I was going to let go of my self-created timetables and accept that it was going to take as long as it will take. I restarted Justin’s course from Grade 1, Module 1.
Today (5 years later) I am working thru Grade 4, I can play E-shape and A-shape Major and Minor Barre chords with no difficulty, I can play Mary Had a Little Lamb by SRV at 80bpm (original is 120bpm), Give a Little Bit by Supertramp at 60bpm (original is 80bpm), She Talks to Angels by Black Crowes at full speed, have a 15-song repertoire of complete songs at original speed (not simplified versions), etc. etc. I practice 2 alternating sets of 7 practice items, 5 minutes each, and practice 5-7 times a week.
I am 59 years old.
YMMV
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welcome
yes thought about building a fret board for when watching TV or conversing.
yes pretty much starting over with what i know and what advice I’ve gotten.
Proud of you man! Hoping to do the same in 5 yrs one slow Modular at a time.
Hi Bruce, Steve from Raleigh, NC. I’m almost 70 and been playing guitar for a while and 3 years with Justin Guitar. I looked at some of your other posts and the one that I found the most interesting was the question about chord changes between D and D6/9. I think the only time that I have seen Justin use the D6/9 chords is in the Horse With No Name song which changes between the Em and the D6/9, which is a pretty easy chord change. I agree with Justin that you should focus on chord changes that you can find in the songs you are learning. If you tried to learn every combination of even the 8 open beginner chords, you would be spending all your time practicing chord changes and still not making good progress. I calculated (because I need the brain exercise) and found it would take 28 minutes to practice one minute changes for all combinations of the A, C, D, E, G, Am, Em and Dm chords. If you doubled the number of chords it would take over 4 hours. Also many of those chord changes might never be found in a song you want to play, which would be a waste of your time I think in a 1 hour practice session you would only need to spend about 5 minutes of focused practice with one minute chord changes. Justin recommends spending about half of your practice having fun playing songs. Most of my chord change practice now is when I play songs. If you play songs that you like, you will make gradual improvement. Also you will be having so much fun, you might not care if you are making a lot of progress
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On the app , each modules has songs to practice what you ve just learned
its targeted to make you practice what’s in the modules
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That is true. The website also has a list of songs for each of the modules. When I went through grade 2 consolidation I used both sets of songs for each of the modules, because it is good to have choices in songs to practice.
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I am late to this thread, but I just want to plug Justin’s app for this situation.
I no longer use the app, but what it was great during the first few years was for having fun learning musical chord changes and feeling like you are playing music.
When exercises get dull and stagnant the app really does bring it back to the fun part, and as a beginner, there aren’t many better ways to practice and feel some joy playing at the same time.
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i find that most songs in beginner 1 are chords A E D. so are these the chord’s i should be focusing on?
Absolutely. And as you move along, you’ll find that by using a capo, there are a whole lot more songs you can play with those three chord shapes.
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Hi Bruce, I am replying again after seeing your practice schedule and the earlier post you had about tension and slow chord changes. First I would say that you might want to take your guitar to a guitar or music shop and have the action or string height checked on your guitar. If it is hard to press the strings down then the tension can lead to slower chord changes. You also may need to switch to lighter strings. Also check your posture again with the beginning module lesson.
I would suggest following Justins suggested practice schedule as much as possible in the earlier modules. Notice that he focuses on the A D and E chord changes and the songs that use those chords at first. You definitely should drop the A-Am chord change from the list for now, since you are not likely to find that chord change in any beginner songs. As your speed on the chord changes go above 30 changes per minute and you get a lot of experience playing the A D and E chords in songs, then you can drop those chord changes and add new changes. If you try to practice too many chord changes at first then you will get frustrated trying to get faster speed in your chord changes. I’ m just taking my advice from Justin’s lesson in module 7 - Best Chord Changes To Work On . Hopefully you spend just as much time practicing strumming as practicing chord changes as Justin suggests. Playing songs will give you practice with both chord changes and strumming, so that is the most fun way to make good progress.
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I’m in no position to give advice given my track record of restarting and giving up and so the cycle continues. There are 100’s of these guitar motivation videos on youtube, it’s always going to be a subjective sort of thing, but I think there are several good points in this one.
Hi @Brewie
I think I am saying the same as folks above…
On your practice list, I see a lot of chord changes there and not much else.
- One glaring omission: Where is the song practice?
- And related to that: How many of those chord combinations are in songs you want to learn?
I’d recommend cutting down the chord changes to be mostly changes you see in songs you are learning. If you are not learning songs, then change that and pick some songs to learn to play.
Your chord list above is pretty long. Maybe you want to cut it in half so you have song practice time, and then add chord changes as you add a song with a new chord progression and remove songs and changes from practice as you gain competence in those.
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