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:
- 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!