Haha thats super rad.
Month 9/10 Progress Log
This month got derailed a little bit. Looking back at my last update, my plans for this month were to keep working on improving my singing and get better at playing fast so I could play through some of these metal songs, or at least get closer. Unfortunately I got really sick right around Nov. 10th and couldn’t really sing for like half the month. I have a dirty little secret - I vape. I know I shouldn’t but there you have it. I think because I vape it causes extra congestion and phlegm in my lungs when I get sick that makes it stick around an awfully long time. I still continued to play guitar - I just couldn’t sing more than a couple sentences without coughing my lungs out.
Another side quest from this month was that I took my family on a week long cruise to Mexico. We had a great time! I bought a Donner Hush X Pro and a Spark Go specifically for this cruise so I wouldn’t have to go any days without playing guitar.
The ship we went on is Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas. It was absolutely gigantic, rather absurd. Tons of free entertainment going on at all times everywhere, but one of my favorite was this guy named Gonzalo who would do solo performances of fingerstyle nylon string compositions of various popular songs throughout history. There was a bit of a language barrier but I believe he comes up with the compositions himself. He was kinda set up in a somewhat hidden area in this area of the ship called “Central Park”, and it didn’t seem like many people appreciated how well he was playing. I chatted him up on one of his 15 minute breaks and he let me try out his Yamaha SLG200S Silent Guitar - pretty cool stuff.
As for notable progress for the month, there’s not a whole lot of earth-shattering revelations this month.
- Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned this month that has had an impact on all of my playing is finally realizing how important it is to keep a shallow pick depth when trying to play fast. There’s several songs and passages I’ve been working on for months but more or less hit a roadblock in tempo because I couldn’t pick fast enough. This awareness has let me continue to progress on these songs and even fully tackle some of them. A couple examples in the videos for this month.
- I seem to be progressing still at improvising, both over diatonic jams and blues progressions. I practice improv every day but don’t often record it because a lot of these backing tracks are somewhat repetitive and make for mundane videos I feel.
- I learned 5 new songs this month, though I’m waiting to be able to sing along to a couple of them. I think my voice is fully healed now. The songs are Hallowed Be Thy Name (Iron Maiden), Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash), South of Heaven (Slayer), California Dreamin’ (The Beach Boys), and Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (Bob Dylan). A couple of those I’m obviously not trying to sing but I do want to be able to sing Ring of Fire and Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright before recording it.
- From Justin’s Grade 4 module on “Major Scale Maestro”, the way he introduces the second “shape” opened my eyes to the idea of looking at shapes “in-between” the other shapes I already had memorized, which helps fill in the gaps and make my fretboard coverage feel more cohesive. That’s still a work in progress.
- I finished transcribing All The Best by John Prine (including the vocals) and think I got it reasonably on point. Next I plan to memorize it and learn to play it while singing. I’d like to be able to send the guitar pro file to someone more knowledgable than myself at transcription and with a better trained ear to get a second set of eyes on it and let me know if it seems accurate. If anyone happens to read this and you don’t mind checking it out please let me know!
- I’ve started incorporating arpeggios into my practice routine. I look at it kind of the same way I did with CAGED and triads for improvising - identifying notes that work good over different chords. With arpeggios you just have more notes to visualize (and thus, more options for expression).
- Started putting more focus on palm muting stuff, a few of the videos for this month involve a lot of that.
- The last item is just about singing - I’ve started trying to “work out” my range by singing along to songs that are normally what I’d consider to be out of my range and I’ve surprised myself a bit with the range that I actually do have. Previously I would have considered my voice to be just a “bass” but part of the reason for that probably had something to do with my lack of confidence.
Videos for this month:
South of Heaven - Slayer
This was the first song I learned all the way through that used palm-muted galloping techniques as part of some of the main riffs. It’s a lot of fun to play and I think it clearly made my son’s testosterone jump as well. One interesting thing to note about this song, like one of the comments on the video I believe misinterpreted, the tempo changes a few times. It changes when the vocals kick in from 106 to 115 bpm, a slight increase in tempo that does sound a bit weird when the guitar is the focus of the mixing since it happens suddenly during a repeated riff. Then it jumps again to 136 bpm for the rest of the song once the galloping starts.
California Dreamin’ - The Beach Boys
This was a good experience to learn because as far as I can tell I’m the only one that’s put together a fingerpicking version of this, or at least no evidence exists of one being done on Youtube. The only other cover of it he seems to strum the chords so I had to put a lot of this together myself. In every live video I saw, they also strum it. On the record they must have hybrid picked or something. I used a mix of the capo, Ultimate-Guitar Tabs, Yousician, and isolating the guitar track to transcribe it by ear to put it together. I think if you listen to the studio recording the notes I chose are pretty accurate. One regret I have about this video is that I tried sculpting my tone to sound as close to the Beach Boys as possible. The problem is, when I do a cover like this where I isolate out the stems and replace the guitar track with mine, the tone they used on the studio recording seems to depend on how it sits in the mix. What I mean by this is that by recreating their tone and then proceeding to place it in the front of the mix for the sake of a cover, some of the drawbacks of this tone become more evident. So, I think my tone in this video has a bit too much treble or chorus, or something - whereas it would have sounded better as part of a whole mixed in at an appropriate level.
Hallowed Be Thy Name - Iron Maiden
This was a lot of fun to learn and play. I’m definitely not as consistent as I need to be on the palm muted power chords in various parts, so that’s a takeaway lesson from this. Other than that, it’s fun to analyze Iron Maiden’s music because they use very melodic riffs with lots of legato and diatonic / harmonic note choices. This song would be an example of something I wouldn’t have been able to play fast enough just a month or so ago before really making that connection about the depth of my picking.
Freight Train - Elizabeth Cotten (Tommy Emmanuel’s “beginner” version)
Tommy Emmanuel is probably my favorite overall guitar player and I would love to learn some of his songs one day. Lewis & Clark comes to mind as my favorite. Anyways, this style of fingerpicking with palm muting the bottom three strings while playing a different melody with the other fingers on the top three strings was totally new to me. I started with his introduction video on Reverb’s youtube channel and this was the continuation of that. I play it every day as a warm-up but for some reason when I hit that record button it immediately becomes 3x as difficult.
This one is kind of just goofy but I bought a treadmill desk for working from home as I do, and I try to walk about 20,000 steps a day. I figured out I can get more guitar time in if I play the guitar while walking on the treadmill. It’s not the easiest way to play but it does give some more experience playing while standing up.
That’s about it - my goals for next month are to keep focusing more on arpeggios and use them effectively while improvising, or at least start to. I also want to learn All The Best by John Prine and record three videos singing.
Until next time!
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Sweet update. I can’t help with the transcriptions. At this time. I was doing good at the beginning of the year transcribing but then droped the ball with them around summer time. I am just starting to look at GP again. Great program and transcriptions are super valuble.
Love the Maiden song. Your playing was on point amd recognisable. It’s a tough one and an arm burner. My daughter and I used to sing that song and others driving to and from soccer. She used to love it but now she is in the “I dont like Rock music phase currently.” 
You can’t win them all. She let me teach her some knife sharpening skills the other day, so thats a win. 
Right on show appreciation to the artists. I bet he plaed some cool music. Love the photo of you amd the fam. 
Have a great rest of the holidays bro.
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@Ontime Thanks brother! Enjoy your holidays! My wife is taking one of our kids to New York for a couple weeks for Christmas so I’ll be spending some time with our older son here, probably take him camping and fishing or something on the beach here in sunny Florida. Definitely will need an acoustic guitar or two for that one.
Shame about your daughter’s music tastes but I’m sure she’ll come back around eventually. I had a pretty unconventional childhood, my Dad worked a lot and my mom was a pilates instructor at several different gyms so she always had some kind of ambient / trance electronic music playing while my dad listened to classic rock and folk. Because of that I spent a majority of my life listening to EDM and related genres which shaped a lot of how I perceive the rhythm of music I think. It wasn’t until after my father passed that I grew a big appreciation for the music he listened to. He played piano a bit as a hobby and sang karaoke every chance he had so I really would’ve loved the opportunity to play some Rolling Stones with him or something.
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Yes she will, I think its a peer type thing. She had her play list going in my truck a couple of days ago and she sure had a lot of Rage Against The Machine on there, haha.
Camping with your boy, Oh nice. I can’t think of anything better than taking your little man that age camping and fishing. Hope you guys have a blast.
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Month 10/11 Progress Update / End of Year 1
Straight up, this was a bad month for me. The fishing and camp trip was great but everything after that spiraled. I experienced some very difficult situations that I’m having a hard time dealing with mentally. I had originally planned to make a big update / video recapping my first year of picking up guitar but I haven’t had even the desire to turn on my camera or write. I have, however, been playing guitar every day still. Sometimes a bit less than usual but never less than two hours a day. It reaffirms why I started playing guitar in the first place, to deal with difficult trauma and find a way to express myself in some way. I still plan to make that video glazing up Justin Guitar, Absolutely Understand Guitar, and Yousician, but it’s going to be a bit more time before I can actually talk to a camera right now - let alone sing to one. I did sing one of the songs for this update though.
With all that in mind, I don’t really have any huge revelation updates for this month. Just some progress in some areas and some difficult songs I’m working on. I did manage to record a few new songs I learned but they were very tough to pull off, just emotionally.
Update key points:
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I’m working on learning two songs by Tommy Emmanuel - Lewis & Clark and It’s Never Too Late. It’s actually coming along rather well. One of the other songs I learned this month is Tommy Emmanuel’s version of Windy and Warm. With that said, I purchased some black mountain thumb picks since it seems necessary for many of the songs in his style. I think this is the type of music I most enjoy playing, but it sure is challenging and sometimes progress can feel slow. I’m probably shooting out of my league here but I enjoy a challenge. Getting used to the thumbpick is coming along pretty well.
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I was successful at guessing a vocal melody in a song by The Smiths by singing along with it and matching the pitch with my guitar. From there I was able to figure out the vocal melody pretty easily for a song by them called “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”, which I recorded a guitar-only cover of not too long ago.
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I can downpick through the entire song of Master of Puppets at about 90% tempo now, a huge improvement from when I tried that in the past.
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I learned the song “Right Down the Line” by Gerry Rafferty very quickly… in under 20 minutes while dinner was in the oven. I felt pretty good about that. This was one of the songs I always dreamed of playing before I started playing guitar and it has some really tasty lead lines that feel incredible to play.
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That’s really it for this month… I spent a large a large amount of time trying to work on those three Tommy Emmanuel songs and trying to work up the mental energy required to function. Unfortunately two of the songs I can’t play well enough to try recording yet, but I’m making progress.
Videos for this month:
Right Down the Line - Gerry Rafferty
Like I said earlier, this was a good experience all around. It’s fun to play and it made me feel rather accomplished how well I was able to pick it up. I learned it from tabs but I recognized the scale (D Dorian, or C Major) for the lead lines, and the rhythm section during the verses are all quadads that I could recognize as major, minor, or minor 7 chords so it was easy to pick up. The chorus is also all barre chords that I already know including two in the “C Shape” that I learned from studying CAGED. So basically, all the things I’ve learned so far regarding music theory and guitar helped me pick up this song quickly. Had I not known these things and tried to just memorize the tabs, it surely would have taken much longer.
Windy and Warm - Tommy Emmanuel (cover of Chet Atkins)
This was tough as nails to get down. This, and the other two songs of his that I’m working on, I can play fairly well but it’s like the difficulty presents a much higher chance of making a mistake somewhere along the line. Getting through the whole thing without making mistakes is just rather grueling. Anways, it was a good lesson with the thumbpick and bending with my pinky on an acoustic guitar was no joke to get used to.
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
Not a hard song to play on the guitar, and I left out the iconic trumpet sections. But this was more of a progress video on singing and trying to stay in key. I feel like I did pretty decent for only having started singing a few months ago, but progress on that is definitely slower and less tangible than progress on guitar.
That’s about it for this month. By the next update I’d have like to make that year end review video, and hopefully get at least one of the Tommy Emmanuel tunes good enough for a recording. I also want to be able to publish another singing video or two. One of the ones I’d like to sing is All the Best by John Prine, a very fitting song for my situation right now and one that I worked hard to transcribe everything. That’s going pretty well but as I said before, haven’t been able to sing as much this month as I’d like. The other is “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie - a song I learned on guitar quite some time ago but tackling the vocals for that as a challenge to try and extend my technique and range.
Another benefit of the year-end review video is that it would give me a chance to reflect on everything from this past year and maybe re-frame my goals and next steps.
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Month 12/13 Progress Update / Beginning of Year 2
Still has been a rough time lately for me. Going through a divorce right now but starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As such, I haven’t been extremely focused on grinding out new knowledge or skills. I do have a few new things with guitar going for me right now and I’ve still been playing hours every day as usual. However, I’m starting to realize that I may need to focus my attention to excel in a specific area soon. I’m getting really close on being able to record those two Tommy Emmanuel songs I mentioned before (It’s never Too late, and Lewis & Clark), but it’s still not perfect (or close enough for a recording…)
- I bought a looper pedal suggested by another member of the JG community here (Thanks, Mike!) called the Nux Loop Core Stereo Looper and have been having some fun with that. It’s much much better than trying to use the looper on my Spark amp. I’ve put together some decent melodies but haven’t been focused enough to get a recording of one.
- I bought a banjo! A Gold Tone AC-12 Open back banjo. I already started playing guitar and thus I cannot start playing guitar for a mid-life crisis, so I bought a banjo. It works out because there’s some traditional folk banjo songs (eg, Shady Grove, Undone in Sorrow) that I felt inspired to learn. I’ve been practicing both clawhammer style and scruggs style every day. The songs I want to learn are all clawhammer style and that’s totally new to me as a technique but it’s going well. Scruggs style is really quite similar to fingerstyle guitar so that’s a lot easier for me.
- I bought a better lens and lighting for my Sony Alpha ZV-E10 Mark II Camera and my videos look absurdly good now. They’re compressed a bit after uploading online but locally they look like a netflix documentary. It’s a bit intimidating actually because you can see all my acne and everything. I may need to start wearing makeup. If I thought it was intimidating to record something before, it’s much more so with giant spotlights in my face.
- I’m transcribing a really cool song by my new favorite band Rattlesnake Milk called “On the Road”… in fact the only video for this month is another one of their songs that was already transcribed on Ultimate-Guitar.com .
- I’m starting to get much more familiar with arpeggios starting on the 6th and 5th string roots and as such am noticing more shapes and note choices for songs that I can relate to the underlying chord shapes… this is really noticable in the aforementioned band Rattlesnake Milk’s songs.
Video for this month
I’ve still been out of focus but making progress in all areas, but running a bit thin with the recent introduction of a divorce and the banjo… hey there’s a joke in there somewhere. What came first, the banjo or the divorce? Ha-ha… anyway
Midnight Train - Rattlesnake Milk
This is my favorite band I’ve recently discovered and they appear to be criminally underrated. I posted this video in a musician’s group on Facebook and everyone loved it but most had never heard of the band. Their lead guitar parts are extremely tasty, like a silky protein shake. I don’t know how I’d describe them, I guess it’s a bit like if you mixed alt-country with desert punk and shoegaze and then drowned it in reverb. It’s so much fun to play the lead guitar for this band. This song has 3 solos (one is rather short) but they’re all so fun and were a good challenge to tackle. Trying to get the tone right was also kind of challenging. Consider this final sentence a warning about my camera quality and skin quality.
Goals for next month
Survive
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Ryan
Very good playing: you know the song really well and your enjoyment and commitment are reflected in your performance. Your guitar sounds great.
Brian
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@beejay56 , thanks for the kind words! It’s definitely much easier to get in to performing a song when you enjoy it a lot, and when you’ve got the experience necessary to be comfortable playing it.
Sweet playing! ;D Lvoe to see you progress. diligently, focused, but loving the music and the instrument.
Thanks for introducing me to that song, I didn’t know it
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I’ve been skimming through this progress thread and all I can say is WOW. Your progress in a year is downright formidable. It’s clear your hard work and dedication is paying huge dividends. I feel inspired by your skill and your work ethic. Way to go, Ryan!
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Ryan, you are doing amazingly well, I have been keeping up with your log as you post and you obviously are practicing a a great deal to make such big leaps of improvement. I particularly liked your take on the Gerry Rafferty song. ‘Ring of Fire’ is fun and you have you have a singing voice, did you sing a t school much or have yu taken lessons at some time?
Well done.
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@LievenDV Thank you so much, Lieven! I need this band to put out another album asap. I actually like their song “On the Road” much more and I’m going to record that for this month but it’s a harder guitar part so I wasn’t quite ready to record that yet - plus I have to transcribe it.
@djdrysdale Thank you! I’ve been a bit out of focus these past couple of months with life events but once these next tunes are tackled I think the payoff will be worth it.
@AJSki2fly Thank you AJ!! I don’t know where I’d be right now without music to dedicate my time to but it has given so much back to me. I never took singing lessons or even sang a day in my life before several months ago - not even in the shower or car alone. I was always too self-conscious about expressing myself to risk letting my voice be heard even by only myself or my kids. So it’s been a journey going from that to posting videos of myself performing and singing online, but I guess all that serves to grow and mature as you journey through life.
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I’m so excited that you got a banjo! That’s awesome!
You always sound great. I hope life settles quickly for you and continues to be full of things that you enjoy.
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