Spacey's Acoustic Journey

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I’m not sure if I’m opening a learning log or not. Hopefully I am.

I’m 56 years young. I started my guitar journey as a teen taking a night school interest course. I fumbled along, probably not realizing just how much focus and practice was required and instead convinced myself to be somehow flawed when it came to fine motor skills. I never realized how much relaxation, focus and practice was required. Over the years I would return to it everyone now and then, but never keep it up and never realized how much confidence and relaxation was a part of it. If you are constantly stressing over that next chord change you have a long road ahead. That said, all the intermittent attempts did add up. YouTube also helped in that your teacher is only a click away and you can watch them over and over again. After learning a few things from random YouTube views, after about a year I landed on Justin’s site and lessons. I use the phone app mostly. Enjoying immensely. Currently on the app, I’m on the first module of 2nd level beginner. I’ve learned to relax and progress comes more easily. I’ve also learned that when you think you are stuck, just keep going and eventually the fingers and brain somehow learn… even at my old age!

In module 2 of the first batch of lessons I’ve taken a slight step back. I was getting a little bit frustrated over pick movement while strumming until I returned to the lesson on how to hold a pick. I realized I was doing it wrong. Amazingly though, the adjustment has affected my strumming and my strumming has gone backwards in progress. I know this is temporary and repeated practice will eventually have me back on track. That is all for now. This is a handy place to log the journey.

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Hey Steve,

I’m not h further ahead of you apart from about 6 years!!
Try and stay chilled with it and it does come to you after lots of practice. Just got to stick at it. You’re so right that you just keep going and thinking you’re not getting anywhere, then something clicks. We’re in it for the long haul. Take care.

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Hi Steve. Same age here. Justin gives you the route but you still have to do the walk. Any guitar skill you intend to acquire will require some practice, often a lot of practice. Good news are that being able to play at least a basic version of so many songs can be within your reach sooner than later. It has happened to me also that when an exercise is giving more difficulty than expected and check again the lesson I find that I had not understood the instructions correctly.

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Thank you for the encouragement. I remain determined to keep improving and putting the time in. Sometimes the quality of the time I put in isn’t there but for me that’s ok. It always feels good to have guitar in hand. My 15 yr old commented the other day that he thought I was getting good…lol. Compliments from teens are not so common so I’ll take that one to the bank.

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Love to hear about people picking the guitar back up :slightly_smiling_face: and to hear someone in your household to say you’re getting good :open_mouth: well, thats just amazing :clap: it took me over 2yrs before my dad actually said “oh, you can play that thing?” :joy:

Keep at it :v:

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I wanted to add that I acknowledge ‘Spacey’ is a dubious name given the abhorrent behaviour of an impossibly egotistical celeb, so to ensure it is known my moniker is musically related it comes from a song by an Canadian band called Prism. I can not help but feel supremely excellent when I listen to their song Spaceship Superstar. The lyrics and pure rock sound for me are beyond compare…lol. Anyway, my buddies shortened my one time email spaceyshipsuperstar@ etc etc, to Spacey and the alter ego has stuck. Maybe some day I will be top of all the charts on Mars :wink: