Ryan's Learning Log and Accountability Program

theryanbamford · May 21, 2025, 8:23pm

Greetings!

I started playing guitar this year, on January 12th, 2025. At this point I’ve been playing just over 4 months. I became almost immediately obsessed and play about 3-5 hours a day, probably closer to 8 hours on weekend days. Though it might sound uninspired, my only goal with guitar really is to be better than I was yesterday, every day. I would like to create my own music eventually and learn to sing, but I don’t have an immediate timeline for that. Every day I just strive to be a little bit better than I was yesterday and that keeps me going - not just with guitar, but with everything in life. My 11 year old son also got inspired to pick up the instrument and I’ve been teaching him what I can in his limited attention span and he has also signed up for Justin Guitar and has been following that.

The purpose of this post is more or less to share my journey and keep myself accountable for creating monthly goals, sticking to them, and continuing to record progress videos. I aim to record progress of myself at the end of each month, primarily for my own reflection but also in case anyone wants to follow along on my journey. So, I plan to update this basically every month to follow through on that goal. I’ll start off by sharing a few of the videos I took this past weekend as part of my four month progress, then I’ll share the resources I use, roughly where I’m at, and what my practice routine looks like. Finally I’ll share the big moments in my journey so far and about when they happened based on my personal log.

Video 1: Hell’s Bells (AC/DC) - I’d consider this a “Campfire plus” song that I still have some work to put in, but not sure what kind of campfire I’d play this at lol!

Video 2: New Slang (The Shins) - This would be considered a “Campfire” song for me, it’s actually one of the songs that inspired me to pick up playing guitar. Even though it only uses four chords, it’s pretty tricky to play because it uses very unique strumming patterns coupled with picked bass notes for every chord.

These are my nearly incomprehensible notes outlining the strumming/picking pattern that I determined from watching one of their live acoustic video performances of it.

Video 3: Thrill is Gone (B.B. King) - This would be considered a “Dreamer” song for me, I have a lot of work to do on it but this is my best attempt that I could reasonably record in a manner that sufficiently sums up where I’m at so far in my journey.

The resources I use are as follows:

Justin Guitar - currently on Grade 3, module 15. I love Justin’s style of teaching and I think it speaks volumes about his character the way he tried relearning guitar left-handed just to challenge himself and understand what beginners go through. Forgetting what the beginner experience is like seems like a common problem among teachers of any discipline, and they seem to forget little nuances and tips that come naturally to them as professionals now. Justin is the only person I’ve found that has figured this out.
Yousician - Currently on level 8, working through 3 silver starring the level 9 lessons and gold starring the level 7 lessons. I love Yousician’s method of getting you to play a ton of guitar and I think it’s a fantastic way to learn songs. Think of it like a tablature treadmill that listens to you as you play and tells you if you hit the right notes or not, bend to the right tone, etc. And you can change the speed and loop certain sections of time.
Scotty West’s Absolutely Understand Guitar Series - I completed this 33-hour long youtube series of uploaded old VHS tapes from 1999 that really helped propel my understanding of music theory early on in my journey

I also have a music stand with a silly 3-ring binder that I put together to track what I’m learning, store song chords / tablature, scale patterns, notes, eBooks, chord shapes, and a personal log of all my small wins. I put a star next to the wins that signify something meaningful but I think it helps a lot to keep track of all the little signs of progress to constantly remind yourself how far you’ve been able to come.

For my gear, I have…

Yamaha FS800J - Purchased January 12th, 2025, this was a great acoustic guitar to start with at an excellent price point. I’ve since upgraded but I was really happy with this purchase.
Epiphone Les Paul Traditional Pro IV - Purchased February 12th, 2025. Also really love this instrument, though I would like to try a real gibson some day! Dual humbuckers with coil-splitting is a great way to experiment with tone.
Ibanez Gio GRGR120EX - Purchased April 2nd, 2025, this is technically my son’s but he seems quite happy with it!
Fender American Ultra - Purchased May 17th, 2025 - I caught the gear addiction and wanted to try a quality American-made instrument. Very pleased with it so far but still learning how to craft tones I like out of it. It has a HSS pickup configuration with coil splitting on the humbucker.
Taylor 214ce-SB DLC - Purchased May 17th, 2025 - Wanted to upgrade from my FS800J and am very happy with this guitar. I love how I can plug it in to my amp and explore more tonal varieties and EQ this way.
Boss Katana Gen3 50W amp - Purchased February 12th, 2025, I love how many effects and tones I can get out of this amp but am still admittedly learning how to use it to its full potential. I love that I can send audio from my computer to the amp via USB, and then loop that audio back to the computer into a DAW along with my guitar’s signal to record covers.
Spark 2 - Purchased April 2nd, 2025, A bit easier to use than the Boss Katana but in my opinion not as modifiable to make the best tones possible. However, with my son playing, I needed a second amp, and another modeling option with plenty of features was right up my alley. I use the looper feature on a daily basis.

The “skills” I’ve acquired so far, roughly put in a list format, contains the following:

Understand the major scale (and its expanded modes) in any key in any position on the fretboard, expressed as a series of intervals.
Understand the pentatonic major and minor scales in any key in any position on the fretboard, expressed as a series of intervals.
Understand the harmonic minor scales and modes in any key in any position on the fretboard, expressed as a series of intervals. I know this scale isn’t commonly used but for reasons I’ll get into later, I actually quite like how it sounds.
Can do barre chords without much difficulty.
Can switch between most chords very quickly, aside from some very particular ones like F#m11(b5). I happen to type at 150WPM and I feel that I have a lot of prior experience moving my fingers very quickly in a coordinated fashion, which I think gave me a head start on the topic of chord switching. Just a theory…
Able to do most of the speed exercises I practice at around 95bpm 16th notes.
Exploring arpeggios, played as sweep picking exercises or played over chord changes.
My song repertoire from memory start-to-end is about 14 songs - these are songs I would be comfortable playing on a whim without needing to warm up or refresh how they’re played.
I understand the concept of improvising in a key, landing on chord tones and hitting scale notes in a somewhat melodic format over background chord progressions. I work on this every night.
I understand the CAGED system, what it represents, and how it allows me to find chords in any position on the fretboard.
I understand triads and can locate many of them, though I have to think a bit rather than simply knowing their location off the top of my head.
I understand intervals, how different intervals are located from each other. For example, fret 8 on the 6th string is 2 octaves apart from fret 8 on the 1st string, and 1 octave apart from fret 10 on the 4th string - or a perfect 4th (5 semitones) is the same fret one string higher.
I’ve learned a great deal of blues licks that I like to utilize at times when improvising, though I don’t typically improvise over a blues progression.
I have a pretty solid understanding of legato techniques but am far from an expert on them.
I alternate pick quite well and am exploring other picking techniques courtesy of Troy Grady’s “Cracking the Code” series, such as upward pick slanting, economy picking, string skipping, etc.
When practicing over my own chord progressions, I’m up to improvising over progressions that involved four chords and try to target chord tones on chord changes. I also try to identify the triads while doing this in different positions on the fretboard.

Things I’m missing that I need to work on in the near future…

I would like to have a complete understanding of the fretboard, in such a way that I can look at a random string and fret and already know what note it is.
I would like to have a complete understanding of the different types of triads, and where they’re all located.
I need to get much better at bending - I’ve been finding this takes a LOT of practice and I’m still working on it every day.
I want to get faster at my max picking speed in playing clean, articulate fast lines. Shred it bro!
I need to improve my fretting / picking hand coordination at high speeds. I find that when I try to push it past 100bpm 16th notes, my fingers start to flub up and lose coordination with each other. I haven’t fully determined if it’s my picking hand or fretting fingers that fall behind, but I need to solve this mystery.
I want to improve on soloing speed and technique. I’m working on a few different solos - Paranoid by Black Sabbath, Fade to Black by Metallica, and Hotel California by The Eagles and they are all too difficult for me to do at full speed - probably for quite some time.
I want to improve my improvisation skills, the notes selections I use, and the feel and timing I use with them.
I want to explore more genres, such as Funk and Jazz. I currently mainly play rock (classic, alternative, metal), blues, folk and some country.
I want to improve my “chugging” speed, such as at the end of Metallica’s song “One”, or their song “Fight Fire with Fire”, both of which the rhythm is currently played too fast for me to keep up with.

My practice routine as of May 2025 looks about like this:

I usually will pick up my guitar twice during the work day for about 30 minutes and play through some of the songs I know by heart
My night time routine is where I start to practice deliberately -
45 Minutes - spent “warming up”, doing various finger stretches, arpeggios and variations on the spider walk that emphasize string skipping, finger independence and speed. I also play the major scale based on the intervals within starting from every different finger on the 6th and 5th string to help hammer in muscle memory. Then I work on some of the various speed picking exercises I’m working on trying to build my speed.
30 Minutes - I pick some random keys and start playing various chord progressions through them and experimenting with different types of strumming and patterns. Most recently from Justin’s Grade 3 beginning I experiment with walking bass notes between notes. Other examples is arpeggiating chords with specific string orders and hammer-ons or pull-offs, and moving the chord progressions up the neck via CAGED shapes.
1 Hour - once I find a couple of chord progressions I like, I work on trying to improvise over them by looping the progression. During this improvisation period I first focus on hitting the root notes on chord changes and simply walking up and down the scale from that starting position, the same for the chords that follow and in their respective modes. Sometimes I focus on just pentatonic shapes, and sometimes I try to do so diatonically. I also try to do them as harmonic minor modes, because I actually quite like how it sounds. Once I have the notes of the scales and modes down, I try to identify what those notes actually are, and then identify the triads that exist in that position. Then I’ll repeat this process in another position on the fretboard.
1-3 Hours - after all of this, I start to work on songs that I’m getting close to nailing. I usually do this in Yousician, but sometimes straight from the tabs and sometimes from Justin’s lessons. Then, I’ll work on getting gold stars on the next Yousician course song. These are expressed as a series of incrementally harder challenges that focus on specific techniques, such as movable barre chords, legato, sliding, bends, etc. Finally, I’ll work on some “Dreamer” songs that are quite outside of my skill level to currently complete at full speed, slowly working up my tempo and technique until I can get closer and closer to my goal.

A timeline of events so far…

Month 1:

Learned most of my open chords, started exploring melodies, learned some basic songs, got my first Acoustic and Electric Guitar

Month 2:

Got Barre Chords down. I practiced these to a drum track, first changing chords on every beat, then every half beat, then quarter beats, then incorporating strumming patterns. I feel fortunate to have been able to do these quickly, though switching to them took some time.
Started exploring Legato techniques (Yousician teaches this a bit early I feel…)
Learned C Major scale and Pentatonic scales, though I didn’t understand what these meant yet.
Learned some more complex songs, such as Californication (along with the solo).
Learned a lot more about how my amp works and how to get tones I like out of my Les Paul.
Figured out more about what types of picks I like - settled on the John Petrucci Jazz III.
Started to understand what the major scale actually meant, understanding the musical number system as well as the intervals in them.
Started exploring more complex chords, such as Edim7, D#dim7, Bm7.
Figured out how to super glue my bleeding finger tip calluses (lol).
Started learning power chords.
Started experimenting with finger picking.
Started experimenting with jamming to backing tracks.
Started learning more complex songs, such as Fade to Black.
Better at techniques like hammer-ons, slides, and picking without looking at my right hand.
Figured out that I benefit from and enjoy anchoring my pinky on the pickguard to give me greater control and stability.
Started to understand modes expanded from the diatonic scale.
Started exploring chord progressions and understanding how they’re laid out in different keys - how to know when the chord should be a minor or major and where exceptions are made.
Learned how chords are made of the 1st, 3rd and 5th of a given scale, and how additional chords are generated out of that - such as dominant 7 chords (C7) and Major 7 chords (Dmaj7). Also sus chords, add chords, etc.
Got both of my guitars setup professionally and then learned how to do it myself.
Learned how to change my strings.
Began experimenting with songs in different tunings.
Learned a lot more full songs, completed Grade 2 of Justin Guitar.
Got much better at power chords.
Learned every major scale fingering, as in starting from each finger on any position to play a major scale in any position from muscle memory and interval understanding.
Learned new techniques for making scales sound musical, such as playing in thirds and four in a line.
Working on learning how to bend notes.
Learned new strumming techniques such as “Chick strumming”, backbeat hit, changing on upstrums, etc.
Noticably better at movable chords like power chords and barre chords.
Memorized all of Dust in The Wind and could play it well - an important task for me as it was one of my late father’s favorite songs.
Picky guy at the guitar shop said I improved a lot since I dropped off my Acoustic guitar (I wrote this down in my journal of wins because when I first met him he was totally knocking my picking technique)
Starting to experiment with loopers and improvising over my own chord progressions, using the techniques I detailed above in my practice methods.
Started trying to learn the guitar solos in Hotel California and Fade to Black - a seemingly insurmountable task at this point but a huge project to work on that teaches me a lot of new techniques.
Started learning blues licks and trying to incorporate them in my improvisation.

Month 3:

Made a lot of progress on the Guitar solos I’m working on, but still a lot of work to go.
Started working on even more difficult songs / solos, such as the full version of Hey Joe as Jimi played it and blues songs like Born Under a Bad Sign.
Learned more major scale fingerings.
Noticeably better at holding the pick and not losing grip / letting it spin around in my fingers.
Noticeable progress on techniques like bending, but still a lot of work to go.
Learned more full songs of a higher difficulty, such as Enter Sandman and One.
Noticeably faster picking and fretting speed.
Improving my rhythm with various songs and solos.
Started to improvise over more complex chord progressions with more chords, started targeting root notes, 3rds and 5ths.
Started learning more advanced picking techniques like escape picking.
Started to learn about triads and identify them and their inversions.
Started practicing “shredding” speed exercises.
Learned about the CAGED system and how it helps identify triads and chords all over the fret board.
Practicing chord progressions and improvisations over new scales such as the harmonic minor modes and blues shuffle riffs.
Getting noticeably better at improvising in different keys, still a lot of work to go.
Got my newest guitars!

Month 4 Goals:

My goals for this month include getting better at transcription, learning by ear, improvising both melodies and chord progressions, and continuing to learn songs that test my skills.
Songs I want to learn are Layla - Eric Clapton (the acoustic version), Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down, Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top (just the rhythm for now), This Love - Maroon 5, and Paranoid - Black Sabbath (including the solo). I’m relatively close on most of these so I think it should be doable in the next couple of weeks.
I’m also working on a few Iron Maiden songs but they are WAY beyond my current skill level and it’s really just to expose to what classic metal is played like.
I also want to learn “I will follow you into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie - but I’m taking this as an extra challenge because I’m trying to learn how to play it by ear and transcribe it as per the latest Justin Guitar lesson in Grade 3 Module 14. Props to UltraLord in the JG community for recommending Soundslice - a good tool that can be used to create tablature and loop certain parts of songs.

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Month 5 Goals:

By the time of my 6 month anniversary I want to try and record myself playing both the rhythm and lead portion of Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits and combine both into one video. This is a real challenge but I’m already starting to work on it and it’s coming along fairly well. I can do both of the main solos almost fully in-time but the rhythm portion is actually proving a fair bit more challenging, something about holding barre chords for 6 minutes straight is proving difficult.
To be continued…

I think that about sums it up. To finish off this post, here’s the current progress videos I’ve made so far:

1 Month - Maggie - Colin Haye - this is another one of those songs that inspired me to pick up guitar. Just running through a couple of the chord progressions in this song. Not much to see here.

2 Month - California Dreamin’ - I actually posted this video in the Beginner’s Safe Space thread.

10 Weeks - Dust in The Wind - I had a lot of fun learning this song, still made plenty of mistakes here but we took a trip to the mountains and I just had to get a video while I had the opportunity.

10 Weeks - Wish You Were Here- Learned this one from Justin’s course, it’s one of my “Campfire” songs now and a lot of fun to play.

3 Months - Hotel California Solo - I have a LOT of work still to do on this but this was where I was at at 3 months.

4 Months - Improvising in the key of A# Major - Figured I’d also record my progress with improvising. I was mainly focused on the pentatonic scale in this video and the chord progression abrubtly ends because I didn’t think to add a fade out or ending to my progression loop. Something to remember in the future.

4 Months - Skinny Love - Bon Iver - This song uses a really unique tuning of C G E G C C tuned to around 435Hz. The 1st and second string being tuned to the same frequency creates a very haunting harmonic tone to every strum and it’s a lot of fun to play.

4 Months - Sweater Weather - The Neighborhood - Not much to see here, just another campfire song. I figured I would start to also record songs I can actually play well, rather than just the ones I’m currently “Working on”, so I will continue to do this in the future.

Thanks to anyone who cares to read all this, but even if you didn’t, thanks for being here!

jowijunk · May 22, 2025, 3:23pm

That is way far out! Great job! Hard to believe you learned all that in 4 months but you have put in the work and it shows. Well documented journey! No clue how you find the time but hats off to you and a wonderful and enspiring journey. You make me want to clock out of work and go play! Haha! Thanks for the inspiration and rock on bro! Oh, and somehow you obviously find time to work out! You budget time very well, also inspiring!

theryanbamford · May 22, 2025, 5:12pm

Thanks man! The kids are about ready for bed around 8:30pm, I’ll play with my older son a bit but from that point I basically play until 12:30am (hence why all my videos are recorded around midnight lol). To be honest, I’m kind of sacrificing sleep a bit but it is what it is, once I get going it’s hard for me to stop. As for the gym, I actually spend no more than 40 minutes 5 days a week there, since I go on my lunch break at work. However, they are an incredibly brutal 40 minutes and I’ve been doing it nonstop for close to 6 years now. Bodybuilding (if you can call it that) taught me the value of consistency and dedication and I think that serves guitar quite well

Ontime · May 23, 2025, 5:30am

Man I totally dig it.

This is the way to take it head on. Straight up, and solid. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to future update

Prof_Thunder · May 23, 2025, 11:44am

That is totally outstanding dedication to a new pastime and I’m really impressed with your progress, not just the playing and videos but all the dedication to learning theory. I can’t imagine how it’s possible to practice so much every day. I would love to have time to do that but by the time I start practicing in the evening I often start falling asleep . Which is probably why after 2 years I’m still on grade 2.

Thanks so much for the post as it was a fascinating read. Keep up the great work. I didn’t watch all the videos yet but I totally loved the AC/DC one that you posted first.

Best, Ian

Richard_close2u · June 6, 2025, 7:59am

Hi Ryan - there are no words to express how stellar your commitment and progress is. Wow.
I have just commented on your Hells Bells video in the performance area and mentioned picking direction of the main riff.
This would be my suggestion if you do not use all down picks.

Keep up the great work. Cheers. Richard | JustinGuitar Approved Teacher https://www.justinguitar.com/teachers/richard-coles

theryanbamford · June 6, 2025, 1:24pm

Thanks Richard! I appreciate the suggestion, makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of the alternate picking stuff I tend to do without thinking much about it but there’s definitely room for improvement in efficiency and technique. Where can I see your comment in that area? I saw the video got posted there but didn’t see a place to see comments, though I just clicked it and saw it opens in a mini player with a couple of comments and didn’t see yours.

Richard_close2u · June 6, 2025, 9:03pm

Hi Ryan. You’re welcome
Comments don’t appear immediately… hopefully not too long a delay.

theryanbamford · June 23, 2025, 9:18pm

Richard, your comment did end up loading. I really appreciate the feedback, thank you!

This is my 4 month update - we were out of town two weekends ago so I couldn’t record any videos until this past weekend, so these are where I’m at at 5 months.

My biggest takeaway from this month is learning that while you can learn what other guitarists have done by studying their techniques and how they use the instrument, it’s a bit of a dead end trying to copy their style exactly. Everything from their dynamics to phrasing is a unique part of their style. I think I’m learning that a key part of progressing beyond being a beginner and beyond is finding your own style and flavor - what unique things you can bring to the table. I plan on exploring this further and paying close attention to these things. Another new thing I’ve done is start making songs almost every day, if you can call them that. I let my son keep the Spark 2 amp in his room so I lost my looper, and instead I started recording chord progressions in different keys each day in Garageband on my computer. Essentially I come up with a different chord progression (almost) every day in a random key, and then improvise over it. I figured it would help to track my progress by also recording the improvisation in a separate track, and then exporting it to an aac file to review later. I usually do the song in three sections, for no reason other than easier review and understanding mentally. The first section is just the chord progression (or two) by itself, then I do another loop of the entire progression with a melody I construct over it, typically using chord tones from triads of the backing chord and linking the triads together with scale tones. The final section/loop is purely improvisational and I use that section to explore new techniques I’ve learned and how they can fit into the chords, such as 2 string arpeggios as described by Justin in his fingerpicking video on Mark Knopfler’s style.

Here is an example from today, I messed up quite a bit on the arpeggios at the end but I’m still working on that technique. The chord progression is G minor > C minor > B flat major > D7. So, in the final arpeggio loop of D7 I tried to land on the dominant 7th before repeating it. I think that sounds about right.

One of my big goals for this month is to figure out how to find my own “flavor” or style and explore that with these melodies / improvisations. Coming up with the chord progression itself is a fun act of self-expression, because it’s not just about the chords being used but also the “strumming pattern” or rhythmic pulse of how you play those chords, as well as how long you hold each one for. The melody more or less surfs with the chord progression, while the improvisation allows me to express myself further.

Month 4 Accomplishments

I was able to learn a few of the songs I tried for in my goals, and a couple extras. I learned Layla (unplugged) by Eric Clapton and successfully managed to transcribe and learn I’ll Follow You Into the Dark. I think I wound up being able to play the latter pretty well, but Layla is going to take some work to get the phrasing more exact on the second solo. Paranoid by Black Sabbath is pretty easy and I can do the solo fairly well, but I’m not 100% there on it.
Gold starred all of level 7 in Yousician - this means hitting every note on every song in the level 7 course. This was a pretty big accomplishment because Yousician only goes up to level 10, and someone on Facebook at one point told me it would probably take me a year or two to accomplish that, from the point of gold starring level 6 - and the general consensus from other commenters was that this was a reasonable time estimate.
On Justin Guitar Grade 3 Module 15 now, I’ve slowed down a bit on JG’s material because a lot of the new topics are more advanced and seem to take a bit longer to study - as expected. Stuff like learning to figure out melodies by ear and flexing time are things that I feel benefit a lot from deeper study, while stuff like rolling fingerpicked chords was something I could grasp pretty quickly.
Currently hold some pretty good records on the leaderboards in Yousician. While I don’t look at guitar as any sort of competition (with anyone but myself yesterday), it’s fun to see your scores improve and get better over time. It gives you a good drive to try harder and excel. Some of these include #1 out of everyone my level for “Oh Me” by Nirvana, #4 for 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins, #1 on an indonesian fingerpicked folk song “Waktu Yang Salah” by Fiersa Besari, #1 on “Plug in Baby” by Muse, #5 on “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix, and #44 on Hotel California, which isn’t as impressive but considering the popularity and difficulty of the song I’m pretty proud of it.
Expanding upon what I learned about the location of major chords with the CAGED system, I learned how all of those can be modified to make minor and 7 chords, expanding my repertoire of chords by quite a bit.
On the topic of 7 chords, I learned how they can be used in chord progressions to create greater feelings of tension and resolve. For example, in a I > IV > V chord progression with a V7 chord, more tension is created because the dominant 7th note in the V7 chord resolves to the third of the I chord in addition to the 3rd of the V chord resolving up to the root of the I chord. Quite a bit to wrap your head around but recognizing this stuff is an important step I feel. I also found that V chords in a given key tend to resolve quite well to I chords for looping progressions.
I recorded 10 “songs” using melody construction, improvisation and chord progressions as I detailed in my summary. Some are longer than others. None are probably worth listening to, just to track my progress.

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Was able to learn 4 songs by ear in Justin’s Grade 3 Module 14 lesson on transcribing songs for beginners, Polly, Go With the Flow, Blizkrieg Bop, and Molly’s Lips. I expanded that further by transcribing “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie - though I did have to take a couple peeks at tabs to fill in a couple blanks I still felt pretty good about it.
Got a lot better at fingerpicking stuff, starting to really enjoy that.
Learned a good number of songs, and working on quite a few others.
Started experimenting with Neural DSP to get really good sounding tones, feeding it a dry signal from my Katana and using that as an interface was also another learning experience. It’s great to record stuff with Neural DSP plugins in GarageBand, because not only do they sound amazing, you can also change the tones after recording if you want to tweak things a bit.
Able to play through “Battery” by Metallica at 85% speed now, it’s way too fast to play at full speed but it has been a great speed exercise and lesson in palm muting.
Learned the entire rhythm portion of Sultans of Swing, which was quite a bit more difficult than I initially expected. The strumming is quite fun and uses a lot of that percussive hit stuff Justin talked about towards the end of Grade 2, and I’ve gotten quite good at that technique as a result. For the first week or so of practice I couldn’t finish the whole song because my hand would start cramping up from holding and sliding barre chords for so long. I’d wake up in the morning with tight and sore hands, at first so sore I couldn’t even close my hand. However, I’m happy to say that I can play through it all the way now, even though it gets pretty tight towards the end. It’s getting better. I’m working on the lead portion as well but that’s quite tricky to do finger picked, it’s totally different than fingerpicking on acoustic.
Recorded my first video with two parts recorded together - I played the rhythm portion of the solo in Californication and then played the solo on top of it using Garageband. I recorded both parts on video and stacked them on top of each other and it was a great learning experience. I then analyzed what notes were played over which chords and found that it uses all notes from the F# minor scale, and chords from it as well. I plan on doing this with Sultans of Swing as well, though it’s a much bigger project.
I’ve been playing over backing tracks on YouTube every night for a bit, it’s a lot of fun and I’m trying to learn to break out of the pentatonic box. Usually over my own chord progressions I know the chords well enough that I use the diatonic scale, but I’m working on expanding beyond that with backing tracks.
Finally able to play through Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix, though with a reasonable amount of mistakes. The level 10 version in Yousician follows the tabs pretty close and if you’ve looked at how he actually plays that song he’s flying all over the fretboard up and down, embellishing chords in random orders, throwing crazy licks between chords, etc. It’s a lot of fun and it was a meaningful development for me because when I first tried playing through this song I could only do it at 35% speed and even that was a struggle.
I made more progress on identifying triads of different inversions in different places on the neck, though they still take enough thinking to figure out that I can’t really say I can clearly improvise with them on the fly without a few minutes of study first.
Able to play all the way through a couple of Iron Maiden songs, just the rhythm portion. Started working on a couple of the solos and able to play them fairly well on their own but cannot keep up with the tempo during the full song though.
I memorized all of the pentatonic “shapes”, and how they fit together and can move between them easily while improvising now. However, I mainly only know licks that exist in one or two positions, so I want to learn licks in other positions.
I found that by memorizing three specific fingerings of the major scale and its intervals, you can have complete coverage of the fretboard. I use this knowledge when improvising. For example, if you learn the major scale fingering where the root is under your pinky on the 6th string, you have a 5 fret area covered. If you move your whole hand up two frets, and know the major scale fingering that starts under your index finger on the 6th string, you now have 8 frets covered. If you also memorize the major scale fingering that starts under your pinky on the 5th string, you now have 12 frets covered - the entire octave. Since this pattern repeats on after 12 notes, you essentially have full fretboard covering. This was an eye-opening revelation to me. Now I want to explore triads from each of these positions - since I typically identify them from the position that starts under the pinky on the 6th string.

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Goals for month 5

I’m working on a few tough songs - Sultans of Swing, Carry on Wayward Son, and Crazy on you by Heart. I’m making quite a bit of progress on all 3 and would like to continue to do so. Carry on Wayward Son is meaningful to me because it was one of my late father’s favorite songs. We’re going on a cruise in November to Mexico and I bought a Donner Hush X-Pro travel electric guitar just for the cruise. I’d like to play it on my balcony on the cruise (with headphones of course), because when we were kids my father would take us on a cruise every year. Every year without fail he’d start blaring this song in our cabin when we first arrived and I’d like to continue the tradition.
I want to continue making progress on improvisation, speed exercises, and melody creation. I want to learn how to use new techniques with my improvisation, such as sweep picking and arpeggios.
I want to spend time focusing on and finding my own “voice” with the guitar, and how I can make my sound unique to me. The reason I started guitar in the first place was because I wanted a creative outlet, and I want to learn how to express myself as best I can with the instrument.
I want to keep working on backing track improvisation and breaking out of the pentatonic box. To this end I also want to internalize more blues licks. I’ve learned quite a few but when it comes time to improvise I can only conjure up several before losing memory of the rest again, and how they can fit into the backing track progression.
I want to focus more on the chords behind solos in the songs I learn. Studying them in this way like I did with Californication is a great learning experience and really enjoyable.
For my 6 month video I want one of them to be a combination video of me playing the rhythm and lead for Sultans of Swing. I have the rhythm portion down well but the lead portion is going to be quite the challenge and will take a lot of time. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve worked on so far.

As for the progress videos for this month;

I’ll Follow You Into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie
This is the song I transcribed. Typically it’s played with a capo on the 5th fret, but to me it’s a sad song and I quite like how it sounds with the key shifted down a whole step. Plus, I have a deep voice, and if I ever decide to man up and learn how to sing this would match my voice better. I feel pretty good about how I was able to tackle this one.

1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
I really like this song a lot and it was a lot of fun to learn, not very difficult and you get to move up and down the neck a lot.

Born Under a Bad Sign - Cream
I have quite a bit of work to do on this song but I’m happy about the progress I made. I would consider this one of my “campfire plus” songs, because I still have a good bit of work to do but individually I can play each part well. Playing through the whole thing without mistakes is a bit beyond my reach at the moment.

Ghost Towns - Radical Face
I really really love this song. It’s one of the songs that I always dreamed of playing when I heard it. The lyrics mean a lot to me for reasons that led me to learning guitar in the first place. I was thrilled to find that the artist (Ben Cooper) actually uploaded a tutorial video on how to play this song to Youtube, so I used his video to learn it. There’s a couple things I change about it, such as the embellishments on the Am chord leading up to the chorus, and I guess it’s a small example of trying to find my own voice.

Layla (Unplugged) - Eric Clapton
Still quite a bit of work to do on this song as well. I hate to blame the guitar but something about the Taylor didn’t feel quite right and I measured the action and to my surprise the action is measure at about 3.1mm on the 12th fret on the low E string, and Taylor’s specs apparently recommend about 1.5-1.7mm. It’s tough to switch between 3 verses / choruses of barre chords straight into an acoustic guitar solo but I still feel pretty decent about where I’m at with it so far. I’d like to turn it into a campfire song once I have the phrasing better on the solo. I’m getting the Taylor set up tomorrow, because apparently this is done with shims in the neck and I don’t really want to disassemble it myself.

And finally here’s the combination video I did of the Californication Rhythm and Lead portions, not much to say that I haven’t already.

theryanbamford · July 24, 2025, 2:05pm

Month 5 Progress Log

Month 5 was a pretty significant month of progress for my playing in general, but perhaps not as much representable by a laundry list of guitar-specific items and new concepts. Now that I’ve been playing for half a year it’s a good time to reflect on where I came from and where I’m going. If I look back on what initially inspired me to start playing guitar, it was to develop a creative outlet and eventually create music one day. In the beginning of last month (June), I started tracking my progress with improvisation both with coming up with chord progressions and improvising melodies / lead lines over it. I continued to do this but in the journey of doing so I sought out how to come up with better and better recordings.

To this end, the primary outcome of last month wasn’t necessarily learning any new particularly challenging songs or techniques, it was on music production itself. I upgraded from GarageBand to Logic Pro and took on the massive learning curve it presented. I’ve been exploring different genres, trying to learn as much as I can about music creation and mixing along the way. Some new techniques I picked up include:

Double tracking rhythm guitar, panning them for stereo walls of sound.
Unconventional chord progressions, such as those used in metal genres - also exploring new tunings for recording like a drop D song I did with palm-muted chugging for the riffs.
Song arrangement itself - Intro, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, Outro, etc, as well as project time and key signatures.
Learned and start to create my own drum tracks for the songs with Logic pro’s drum kit designer, creating drum beats and lines with real drum sounds to fit the time and tempo of the project.
Explored layering multiple lead guitars for specific parts.
Starting to understand how to tell a “story” with the songs, starting from a slow introduction with tension, resolution, and climatic moments.
Learned how to create MIDI bass lines with my guitar… by recording a guitar track played as if it was a bass, analyzing the flex pitch, exporting the flex pitch track to a MIDI region, assigning bass notes to represent the MIDI as a bass guitar.
Learned a lot about mixing, but have quite a ways to go. For example leaving room in the bass for bass guitar, using lead melodies in the treble frequencies, volume leveling, etc.
Exploring summing stacks and mixing busses, to EQ or add effects to for example all rhythm guitars, or all lead guitars, or the entire track as a whole.
Learned that sometimes the lead guitar is just another instrument, not some guitar-soloing device that’s supposed to shine above all other instruments in a mix. It can be used very effectively to create ambience and melody in a way that’s not loud and in your face.
Learned about using automation controls to level out dramatic swells in volume that can clip the mixer, or bringing up sections that are too quiet - based on where they are in the music rather than entire tracks as a whole.
Learned a lot about plugin utilization, amp modeling, currently using ToneHub or Logic Pro’s built-in amp models. It’s been my experience that these perform better on recordings than recording a wet feed straight from my amp.

I still have quite a ways to go until I have anything worth sharing with an audience but comparing it to where I started is pretty drastic.

The most recent three examples demonstrate that pretty well.
The first one, I’m not sure what genre to consider it. It has kind of a surfy-vibe and is more mellow, but I sought to explore musical harmony through laid back lead lines. The second is my most recent and was my attempt at exploring an industrial, post-punk kind of genre. The third is a bit hard-rock, with some metal tones and harder bite.

For records’s sake, this is my first recording from June 5th. I would say it’s objectively terrible in comparison, and I still have quite a ways to go with these most recent recordings, but it’s a learning process like the rest of this.

As for guitar-specific progress…

I mostly accomplished my somewhat crazy idea to try and learn both the lead and rhythm portions of Sultans of Swing and play them concurrently over the record. I’ll link the video below. I posted it in the AVOP community forum as well. I used logic pro to split out the stems from the original song, removing the guitar and leaving the bass, drums and vocals, then I recorded my rhythm guitar and played lead over it. I combined both into one video and it was quite the project.
I learned a really helpful way to identify triads anywhere on the neck, using what I know about CAGED and which notes in each chord are represented as the root, third (or minor third), and fifth of the chord. It has been invaluable in quickly improvising over backing tracks and recordings, and it has helped make my improvisations sound much better and musical.
I purchased Guitar Pro through Justin Guitar’s affiliate link, and have been using that to learn tabs, loop sections, slow them down, etc. It’s much better than Ultimate Guitar and I can see myself continuing to use that as a tool moving forward.
I posted a query to the general discussion on Justin Guitar’s community asking about a certain technique with guitar. Turns out it’s called something like “Rhythm licks”, or “Lead fills”, or anything in between. Basically each chord shape has an associated pentatonic scale that can be played in various licks creatively to connect chords with each other. Jimi Hendrix does it a lot and as far as I’m concerned he was the pioneer of it. All of my “noodling” time has been basically replaced with running through barre chord progressions and finding ways to link them together in this manner, such as hybrid picking 6ths between chords or using hammer-ons with double-stops, etc. This is pretty big because this is the sound I always wanted to achieve with guitar and it’s going to take a good bit of practice but I’m making headway there.
Following up on that last point, I’ve made a lot of progress in finding my own unique style on guitar and have been working on how to incorporate that into my covers and playing. I’m not sure how I’d describe it, but I’m getting there. Justin talks about this a bit in Grade 3 Module 17 - Finding the Musician In You. It takes a certain level of experience and instrumental know-how before you can start to really figure out how to express yourself freely on the instrument. I’ve always felt that way but one of the wonderful things about guitar is that the more you learn the more free you can get.

The videos this month are more limited because I spent less time learning covers and more time learning music production. Also, the Sultans of Swing video took longer than 3-4 normal videos would have taken, so it felt a suitable replacement.

Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
This was the hardest video / song I’ve done, the rhythm portion alone is basically barre chords the entire song, and my hand couldn’t handle even the first couple minutes at first. By the time you get the end of the song during the second solo and you’re constantly sliding Bb > C barre chords I almost have to shut off feeling to my hands and just keep letting muscle memory doing the work. The lead was quite difficult to cover exactly but I did my best. Like I said before, I split out the stems in Logic pro, leaving just the drums, vocals and bass. Then I recorded my rhythm on top of it all, and recorded the lead last on top of everything else.

Blackbird - The Beatles
This was a really fun and easy song to learn for me. A couple other songs I’ve learned use this same time of fingerpicked / strumming technique so it wasn’t totally new to me.

I’ll Follow You Into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie
I redid this one with better technique in the right key and it came out a lot better. I got my Taylor 214ce professionally set up by a luthier and it made a huge different in capability to do barre chords further up the neck. The action at the 12th fret was lowered by about 33%. I tried to set it up myself but couldn’t do it without getting horrible pinging fret buzz in the first few frets. It turns out the frets needed to be leveled, as it’s a used instrument and seemed to lead quite the busy life with its previous owner.

Okay, that’s about it for this month. Looking forward to seeing where I end up at year’s end. I purchased a Scarlett 2i2 Gen4 as an audio interface for recording, and a couple of Audio Technica condenser microphones for recording acoustic guitar. Previously my only way to get acoustic guitar recordings into logic pro was either my phone camera or a direct line from the pickups on the guitar, neither of which are really suitable for good sounding recordings. I’m excited to try them out moving forward.