This chord melody arrangement is really good, I enjoyed, well played!
I want to get into this myself eventually, maybe for next Xmas 
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Sounds good Steve. I’m surprised @MacOneill hasn’t asked you to add it to her Community Christmas Song Compilation Topic or has she. 
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28Dec2024 - I started learning both versions of We Wish You a Merry Christmas finger style arrangements last week. That was a mistake as 30 minutes per day of practice wasn’t enough time to even start to learn both. I recorded a couple of videos with me stumbling through both versions, but didn’t post when I saw @roger_holland Rogier’s version and realized that I needed to focus on the "easier” fingerstyle version number 1 and practice for another week. I am trying to finish today to close out my holiday practice. I found that my fingers were not cooperating today and had trouble getting a good recording. I actually had 10 takes in a row where I didn’t get past the first note played after the first C chord. Here is my first usable take after about 14 false starts:
We Wish You A Merry Christmas - SteveL - first usable take 28Dec2024
I realized that not doing any pinky exercises in the last year has been a mistake and I will need to correct that as I review and consolidate grade 3, while I am learning grade 4. I did about 20 more takes and used my ring finger more for the 3rd fret. A lot of those takes were less than 10 secs where I couldn’t even get started. Here is my final take of today where I remembered to do the repeat:
We Wish You A Merry Christmas - SteveL - last take 28Dec2024
Notice the struggles I am having even forming the weak fingered G today. Fortunately I will be revisiting this again next year after a year of pinkie exercises.
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Hi Steve,
been there done that 
Good that you post it like this and yes it is a real difficult one, still very pleasant with the sound of an acoustic guitar 
… nice to see what will be better/smoother next year ,There is also a lot of difference between take 1 and the last 
… now that Christmas is behind us but we can find songs with a similar level and then we will learn a lot faster next year 
. …
I wish you a beautiful 2025 with lots of guitar and singing 
Greetings
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Rogier, many thanks for listening and for the kind and generous review of my playing. I also wish you a beautiful 2025 with good heath and much fun and happiness playing the guitar. 
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29Dec2024 - Tomorrow I will be taking a big step in the transition to becoming an intermediate guitarist, starting on Grade 4 lessons.
To provide a little more structure to my Grade 4 learning I am using the practice routines and associated lessons in the Intermediate Method book:
The classic Intermediate Method book divides the fundamental skills such as barre chords, closed form major scale patterns and intermediate rhythm into 5 foundation stages. The foundation stages also use songs from the 4 intermediate song books that I will use. The first 2 stages are grade 4. At the same time I will be practicing blues rhythm, blues solo and finger style by expanding the classic IM 50 minute practice routine to a 90 min. practice routine.
In this transition week I will be actively playing along with Grade 4 lessons on the JG website and preparing for practice activities. Here is my first month schedule:
2025 Weekly Practice Focus Log
Week Date Practice focus area
0 12/31 Grade 4 IM Foundation 1 prep – watch and play along with videos
1 1/6 Grade 4 IM Foundation 1, acoustic and electric blues, fingerstyle (1 of 6)
2 1/13 Songs from Acoustic, Rock, Vintage and Pop songbooks
3 1/20 Grade 3 review, transcription and consolidation, Classical guitar
4 1/27 Other method tutorials – M. Schwartz Blues lessons, D. Hamburger Fingersyle
I will repeat weeks 1 to 4 for a total of 6 months of Grade 4 (classic) IM stage 1 practice with new website practice suggestions and focus on blues and finger style guitar.
here is a break down of the Grade 4 stage one 90 minute practice routine spread over 3 days of 30 minute practices:
This is repeated for a total of 6 days of planned practice in week 1.
The first half of grade 4 with foundational 1 skills will be a little boring, since I already know the E shape barre chords, the 1st closed major scale form and some intermediate rhythm. I also tried to practice the IM foundation 1 practices back in 2015. Fortunately the foundation skills or technical exercises are just 10 minutes each day. The other blues, fingerstyle, classical and outside lessons will keep me from getting bored. I know that from experience with the new grade 3, which will continue to be an inspiration to me as I learn how to learn grade 4 lessons.
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Coming along nicely, Steve.
Good to see you including some blues in your 2025 plan. My cult leader @TheMadman_tobyjenner has been working on Hamburger’s fingerstyle courses and recorded one of the courses. I’m surprised you never enrolled in BLIM Class 2, you would have got more out of it that the current Blues Lead course.
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James, thanks. I will enroll in the BLIM course eventually. I have a ton of blues resources to look through and I will finally have the time to focus on blues now that have put grade 2 consolidation behind me. Take a look at the post from June 4 especially the middle picture where you will notice the stack of M. Schwartz GuitarJamz acoustic and blues solo lessons on DVD. I can also get them streaming but I’m a little old school and I still have a DVD reader attached to my 45” LG TV.
BTW, I am surprised that you don’t have Moises in your software list. I just started working with it recently and found it useful and easy to use and free
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I use RipX DAW. It gives me more options than Moises as can be used for other purposes. It cost me about £75 for a perpetual licence and updates have been free.
James, thanks for the info. I was not familiar with that software, but I am still a digital noob when it comes to music software One of my unwritten goals for this year is to better learn to use GarageBand, GuitarPro and Moises to create recordings of me playing to backing tracks and of course to use my DAW a little more instead of the lazy recording by phone.
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4Jan2025 - I am finished playing through the new (to me) blues specific videos this week from Grade 4 that I will be learning in the next few months:
5 Blues Licks from Pattern 1 - Essential Blues Lead Guitar section
Using Blues Licks Effectively - Essential Blues Lead Guitar section
Boom Bass with Licks - Solo Blues Guitar With MatchMySound
Steady Thumb Primer - Solo Blues Guitar With MatchMySound
Vari-Shuffle Climb - Blues Guitar Studies
Tore Up A Sidestep - Blues Guitar Studies
I had a post in someone else’s post about beginner/intermediate motivation and someone’s response about lack of rock in the intermediate grades. I decided that.I needed to line here since it has some learning log appropriate notes:
The last sentence in this post represents an update to my learning plans:
I just remembered that I am also reviewing grade 3, which in the classic song organization, is heavy on rock songs, so I’ll still be working on rock songs while learning blues in grade 4, particularly in the JG Rock Songbook.
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Hi @SteveL_G99 Steve. Interesting to see how you’ve planned your practice out. I see you focus on different things each week and dedicate particular weeks to other courses, songs etc with a dedicated week for technique. I’d be curious to know how you arrived at this pattern as it’s different from my approach of trying to do a bit of everything each week. Do you find it easier to just focus your time on one topic and then move on?
Happy New Year by the way!
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Stuart, I have developed this type of practice schedule gradually over the past 2 years. I do find it easier to not switch too often between topics or areas of focus.
If you look back at some of my practice schedules at the beginning of the my learning log - 20Nov2022, 12Jan2023 and 21Mar2023, I was just doing the technique exercises and learning a new song each week while working on grade 3 and saying.I was doing grade 2 consolidation. I had to add an actual week of working on grade 2 review and consolidation every other week to make sure I actually finished grade 2 consolidation. I had to add a week of working on songs, because I was not focusing enough time on songs. Then I finally added another week to use outside tutorials on blues, fingerstyle and rock and allow time for classical guitar just because it was fun for me.
All of this is based on at least 30 minutes of practice time each day. If I have more time, i just work on songs. If I had an hour each day that I could depend on, then I would shorten the time between technique weeks.
Most of this is just to find something that works for me, but trying different approaches. You have to find what works for you. 
Happy new year!!
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Thanks Steve. I agree with you that each person needs to develop what works for them but it’s interesting to see how other people structure things. I probably won’t change anything up for myself right now but you have given me something to hold in reserve and try out in future if things are not working for me at any point. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about structuring practice like this but I can see how it might be a benefit.
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9Jan2024 - I am having fun starting the lessons in Grade 4 this week. I did discover when working on blues licks from the 5 licks lesson in blues lead, that I need to put lighter strings on my Strat. I have 10s (10-46 D’Addario XLs) strings and 5 minutes of string bending really gives you pain in the bending fingers. I’ll probably replace with to a set with 8s.
I added an old guitar method to my practice that I had never completed. I had done the first book but gave away and had to repurchase books 2 and 3:
Even though the font, style and format of the pages is a little old-fashion, like from a 1960s Mel Bay book, the books were updated in the early 2000s and the song focus in the rock lessons has a good emphasis on Texas blues rock, like ZZ Top and SRV. So I am reviewing the guitar method book 1 and rock shop book 1 and using the simpler rock and blues exercises to practice entering songs into Guitar Pro.
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10Jan2025 - The most important step in my learning this week is becoming familiar with the guitar fretboard by finding notes all over the neck of the guitar. Since a note only occurs once in an 11 semi-tone or fret region, it is easy to find a note on each string. Using the octave shapes also helps. I used copies of the fretboard notes found at the back of the Belwin Guitar method. After I did this for the C notes all over the fretboard, I decided to also do that for the other notes (E and G) in the C major chord triad. I colored the 1,3, and 5 scale notes with different colors (red, green and blue). It was easy to see the CAGED shapes. What surprised me is that the open chord shapes for C were in the order C, A, G, E and D shapes. I did this exercise for the A, G, E and D chords with the scales notes from the keys that the chords are the root or primary chord. The resulting map is done by hand and I will refine at some point in the future, but I believe that this will be a major point of reference in intermediate guitar as I compare to the major scale patterns. Here is my CAGED map:
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13Jan2025 - Fortunately I have built a lot of flexibility in my schedule. I have woken up several mornings with pain in my ring finger tip. I guess I worked it a little too hard doing the full tone bend in blues lick 1 and I need to rest the fingertip. I am switching weeks 2 and 3 and doing grade 3 review and classical guitar this week. Since I was going to do the grade 3 music theory review as part of grade 3 review, I did 15 minutes of classical guitar review using just first, second and fourth finger (or pinky) for fretting the notes. I did 15 minutes of music theory review which gave me a chance to look at the new lessons in grade 1 of the PMT course. UPDATE: It only took me 2 days to review PMT grades 1 and 2 and retake the tests. I have started the PMT grade 3 review on day 3.
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Hi Steve, catching up here. Good you started using Guitar Pro. It is a tool that can be used in several ways. Creating the tabs by myself I think has helped enhancing my musicality. Using the tabs for practicing at reduced speed has give me a pull with some pieces. I think also that after Grade 2, that the basics are covered, practice can benefit from incorporating other resources, including other guitar methods. There can be either something that Justin has not covered or a new exercise to strengthen an already acquired skill.
Edit: changed the redaction of a sentence.
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25Jan2025 - I have decided to post a recording of the intros for the 2 songs I have been working on this week to have an initial work in progress.f\
The first is The Sound of Silence. I recorded just the first verse and barely sang, since I was focused on the fingerpicking. I think the last 8 months of practicing classical a few days each months has resulted in better tone in my acoustic fingerpicking. I have only practiced each song for 15 min. each day for 5 days so it is not perfect
The next is Angie, which is a lot more ragged, since this is the first week that I have really focused on this song. I have seen a lot of progress this week.
I will be practicing both of these song a lot more this year.
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Steve
Well played on both. Quite adventurous to switch from fingerpicking to pick / strum: it’s great that you’re developing a breadth of skills.
My only suggestion, on both songs, is (the 1st commandment of Justin perhaps) practice slowly practice perfect. To be at this level after just five days seems very good.
Like both the songs.
Brian
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