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.
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 
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.
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.
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!
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!!
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
10Feb2024 - I see that all 10 of the my grade 2 consolidation videos posted in Nov. 2024 have been deleted from YouTube. I have sent a feedback message to try to find out why. I wonder if anyone else has had that problem and whether it indicates an increase in the rejection of videos for copyright reasons in YouTube.
Not happened to me but take it as a YT compliment, you must have been on the money compared to the originals ! 
@TheMadman_tobyjenner I wish!!! 
I only used a backing track that I pulled with Moises on one of the videos. It seems odd to me. I guess I will have to upload again and relink.
14Feb2025 - As I mentioned on Jan 13, I got sore fingers from the blues lick bends, so I purchased electric guitar strings with the thinnest string having a gauge of 9 instead of my customary guage of 10. I decided to try a set of hybrid strings at the advice of the guitar tech at the local guitar store. I got set of Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky nickel wound with gauge of 46 to 9:
The guitar tech suggested that I would probably need to adjust the setup at the bridge, to make sure it remains in tune across the fretboard. I installed the strings on my Fender Strat and check out the bridge adjustments after the strings settle in and stay in tune for a few days.
I have done some additional study of my hand position when playing an E shape barre chord using a small mirror. I tried to have a completely flat wrist, but my short fingers result in not being able to reach string 6 with my index finger:
If I bend the wrist slightly I can reach with the index to barre all the strings:
I’ll need to spend some more time research hand biomechanics and study the E shape barre chord videos some more to make sure I am understanding the shape of the wrist and the contact point of the bottom of the guitar neck with my hand.
8March2025 - I am starting to play Grade 4/Grade 5 songs with a lot of barre chords. The song “Torn” is recommended as a barre chord workout, but is a Grade 5 song with both E and A shape barre chords. The verses have just E shape barre chords, so I recorded a short recording of Torn with the intro and one verse and no singing. I have just spent a couple of days learning the rhythm and this is the first time I have used the orange vortex (0.60 mm) pick instead of the JD nylon 0.60 for 16th note rhythms. I have just learned the intro so it needs a lot of practice. Some OMC between the F and the Fsus4 chord will help. This is just a first take snapshot to see where I am at the very beginning of intermediate learning. Hopefully I will be a lot better in a couple of years. I just did one verse because that is all my hand could do at this point without resting 
Those barre chords sounded good to me Steve. Well done.
