2Aug2025 - This is an addition to my 3 year anniversary planning notes. I have decided in my first phase of grade 4 consolidation to also focus on trying to play solos from blues and rock songs that I enjoy. That is my plan going forward, rather than focus too much on improvisation. If you go to the song lessons on the JG website and choose the genres blues or rock, there are a lot of video lessons grades 4 and higher where the solos are explained note for note by Justin. There is TAB available and I plan on purchasing the TAB subscription, but sometimes I learn by just following the video and do what Justin says to do with placing my fingers. If you learn a lot of solos, then you are doing what a lot of the great guitarist did in the past. I read that Eddie Van Halen learned to solo by learning Eric Clapton’s Crossroads solo. See Eddie Van Halen and Crossroads - Guitar Player magazine . He had to transcribe off of records (vinyl), but I have the advantage of having Justin demonstrate all of the solos. There are a few solos in the grade 4 level and many more in the grade 5 level. I will probably start with grade 4 Sunshine of Your Love since I already learned the riff, although it is technically blues-rock and grade 5 The Thrill Is Gone by BB King. The TAB for The Thrill Is Gone is in the JG Blues Lead Guitar Solos book that I purchased. The TAB for Crossroads is also in that book, but that is more on my dreamers list for later. I am also going to learn the grade 3 blues Born Under A Bad Sign which is riff based rather than solo, but it does have TAB in the lesson, so I can have something easier to work on when I get frustrated with The Thrill Is Gone. I am also learning a lick from Justin’s grade 4 blues lick series on the website T-Bone Walker P1 Long frame lick which is one of the easier licks. Technically I am learning licks from Justin’s Blues Lick app. Finally I am learning the licks in Before You Accuse Me whch is Grade 2 but has some licks like the blues studies in grade 4.
8Aug2025 - I am in the mid-Grade 4 consolidation period that will last 6 months. I have been recording my WIP videos for the blues practice. Here is my 5 blues licks ( I have been learning iMovie editing):
I repeated all the licks 3 times except for lick 3, which I did 4 times and added some vibrato to the end of the bend just because it felt and sounded right.
I never got MatchMySound to work on my iPad in the default Safari browser, so I watched the song lesson video and played along with Justin while I learned the licks. The video is 17:33 in length and my learning sessions for this was 10 minutes, so I spent more time learning the first part of the song. I had to start the video later to finished learning the rest of the song. I did two 10 minute sessions per month for the first six months of this year. It is not good for memorizing the song, but it spreads out the learning so that I don’t get discouraged and give up like I usually have done in the past. Beginning the middle of July, I practiced Boom Bass with Licks for 30 minutes per day for 6 days in a row, finishing memorizing the Boom Bass with Licks acoustic blues study and then started recording the next week. That is a total of 9 hours that I have practiced these licks and this blues study. This is my first rough take recording:
Boom Bass with Licks first rough recording - 14July2025
I then spent a day practicing the licks in pairs to reinforce the transitions between licks, used iMovie to splice together the recorded sections. Here is the practices for the licks in the first section A of the blues study:
Here is the recording of part B:
You can definately tell that I needed more practice on part B.
Here is the recording done at the end of the practice session after all the licks practice:
9Aug2025 - I also practiced the acoustic blues study Vari-shuffle climb. I didn’t practice this as much but put in several hours of practice. Here is my first recording:
It was recorded on my Martin 000 guitar. I also decided to record on my Taylor GSmin Mahogany:
Even though it cost about a third of the price of the Martin guitar, I think that it sounds more authentic for early acoustic blues.
Finally, even though I hadn’t practiced this year except for today, I decided to record one repeated lick of the Bass Blues guitar, since I enjoy that type of playing:
I find that style of single line bass with repeated movable patterns easy to memorize and play.
Well, that is the last of the Grade 4 mid-term blues WIP videos. I only had a week of practice for each of the blues studies after memorization, so there is still plenty of room for improvement. I will continue to play periodically and record again before the end of the year.
Hi Steve. Good you’re keeping busy and entertained with your multiple parallel guitar projects. I’m somewhat going in opposite direction, but whatever keeps the wish to learn alive and the progress still happening is good.
1Sept2025 - Sept 2025 notes
We recently finished the “dog days” of summer and my practice schedule for this old dog has slowed down. I usually practice about 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise and then after sunrise we walk our dogs. The early sunrise this time of year throws off my schedule and some mornings I only squeeze in about 15 minutes of practice. With just a little bit of of time and because I am in consolidation phase I play something I have already learned a few times to get in the repetition that you need to fix the memorization and fluency of playing. I spent the last two weeks just playing through the Boom Bass with Licks one week and Vari-shuffle Climb the next week. That is why I know that I will have to do the BLIM course in the winter :-).
I started to put my name on the waiting list for the next BLIM and for some reason I did not receive a response. That is probably for the best, since I had a change of heart after I recently purchased an annual subscription to the JustinGuitar TAB (finally, after letting the JustinGuitar App subscription expire). I have just finished looking through all the grade 2 song lessons that I hadn’t already played. There are grade 3 and even some grade 4 level rhythm and techniques in some of the grade 2 lessons, especially the ones in the Intermediate Songbooks. I am continuing to look at the grade 3 song lessons, focusing on songs in the Intermediate songbooks. I realized that I have some unfinished business to complete. For example, I had intended to learn the entire song for Wish You Were Here, but never did. Now that I have the TAB, I also want to learn the grade 4 level solo for Wish You Were Here. There are other songs on my list, so I will focus on that along with the rest of grade 4 lessons next year.
After next year, I will have a natural progression to additional blues lessons and will start the BLIM. I guess that will be BLIM7 of Winter/Spring2027. This is just a recognition of where my interest currently are and allowing for my limited practice time. I am progressing slowly, but If I play a little every day at least i will make some progress.
I have recently turned 70 years old and I have thought about my future goals. Mostly I want to accompany myself singing with more sophisticated accompaniments (e.g. James Taylor style). I also want to be able to play some blues standards/solos and some classic rock solos. I don’t have a strong desire to learn improvisation or jam with a band, but I will learn the techniques to better learn the songs and solos that I want to learn for my own enjoyment. I really want to be able to play a few of the grade 5 and 6 songs and perhaps a few grade 7 songs/solos, perhaps not at original tempo for the grade 7 solos, but at least at a speed that the solos are recognizable. These are goals that I think I can achieve in a few more years. So I’ll keep checking on my progress each year.
13Oct2025 - October notes
I have spent 2 weeks in September learning Dust in the Wind. I had learned the intro at least 10 years ago, but now realized after Richard’s Vintage Club lesson that there is so much more to learn in the whole song. I ran into a couple of challenges in the chord changes in Dust in the Wind. I still have trouble fretting a clean Dm7 chord, since I have a tendency to mute the open D string, which you can’t afford to do when you are finger picking. I also found the suggested fingering for the D/F# chord a little challenging with the pinky and using ring finger anchor when changing from the Am. I need to add the pinky drill back to my practice for a week. The altered chords at the fifth fret was also a little challenging at first. I am continuing to try to memorize the song.
I finished listening to the intros for all the Justin Guitar Grade 3 song lessons for songs in the JG Beginner Songbooks 1 and 2 and making notes for each song. I will try to choose 5 acoustic and 5 electric guitar (rock) songs to play and record. I just purchased the Strumming Dynamics course so the acoustic songs will be a good test of what I learn. I am also trying to learn more about GarageBand and Moises and recording the 5 rock songs will give me some needed practice before I try to record anything from the JG Intermediate books.
I am continuing to practice and improve my playing for the two Grade 4 acoustic blues studies - Boom Bass w/ Licks and Vari-Shuffle Climb.
Boom Bass w Licks27Sept2025:
Vari-shuffle Climb 4Oct2025:
I think that they both show a lot of improvement since the recordings I posted on Aug. 8.
I am also finally taking the time to changing the strings on my guitars, which should have been done 2 months ago after my anniversary date. Sigh! It.takes me at least 2 days per guitar to change to strings - I remove the strings and clean one day and put the strings on the next day, plus another day when I spend extra time tuning up the guitar, since the strings go out of tune quickly the first day. I replaced the strings on the Taylor GSmini and used the 12s, instead of the 13s that were on originally. I think that they still sound good but with less tension on the strings and easier to fret. I am using the new strings on the GSmini with both of the blues studies I posted today. I used the new video that Justin has posted on changing acoustic guitar strings.
I had a painful muscle between the thumb and first finger of my fretting hand after too much barre exercises, so I took off a few days to replace the strings on my classical at the beginning of October. I found several new YouTube videos on changing classical guitar strings sponsored by D’Addario in honor of World String Change Day 
I found a difference of opinion on best way to attach the strings at both the block at the bridge and the tuning pegs. I used one technique with single twist on bass strings (which looks cool) and double twist on treble strings. I may use double twist for all the strings next time.since it is easier to me.
Hi Steve ,
yes you can say that… 
Like day and night allready …super nice to see (and hear) this…
I still play these blues arrangements with some regularity after my avoyp ( not all often but 3 certainly weekly) and I was talking to my wife last week about how much easier, neater and with more feeling it is played these days, and now I know that it can be even better, smoother etc.,
So never stop practicing/playing have fun with these lessons, they are great for so many reasons
You gave me a big smile ,
Greetings
Rogier, it was so nice of you to take the time to look at my learning log and listen to my update. Also, thanks for your encouraging words. You are certainly one of the more prolific titans of community posting I try to keep up with the new member introductions and respond to some of the questions in the beginning grades, but I could never keep up with all of your many great posts to the community, so my hat is off to you in respect.
22Oct2025 - Wow! My six months of unstructured consolidation time for the first half of Grade 3 and review and consolidation of the first half of Grade 4 has gone by fast. I plan to record some Grade 3 songs for this half of consolidation and more next year. This year I am focusing on the grade 3 songs in the two beginner songbooks. Next year I will focus on the intermediate songbook grade 3 or beginner songs. I am planning to record a mixture of acoustic songs with singing snd electric guitar with backing tracks.
Here is a list of the songs that I plan to record:
Grade 3 consolidation songs - part 1
The highlighted starred or bulleted songs are my first choice and the others are runners up.
Acoustic
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California Dreaming (finishing up an AVOYP that I posted earlier)
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Sound of Silence
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Fast Car
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American Pie
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All You Need Is Love
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Wonderwall
Dust in the Wind
Wonderful Tonight
Wanted Dead or Alive
Heart Of Gold - I had consider this song in order to play the harmonica, but the G harmonica that I purchased had a bad draw reed and i need a lot more time to relearn how to play the harmonica after 45 years.
Crazy Little Thing Called Love - this one needs to wait until I get better with Triads to play both parts and perhaps a little or the solo
Electric
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Fortunate Son (finishing up a song that I posted on AVOYP - redo with more practice and backing track)
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You Really Got Me
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Born Under a Bad Sign
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Summer of 69
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Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benetar
Venus - Shocking Blue - I may try to redo my cover on AVOYP with backing track if I have time
Come As You Are - Nirvana
Fly Away
Fade to Black
I’m not sure if I can make 10 recordings before the end of the year, since I am about 2 weeks behind the date I selected the songs last year. At least these ambitious goals will motivate me to record something and I will see what I can get done. 
Hi Steve,
Wow ,That is a lot you want …I would like to do most of it too, especially that solo from Crazy Little Thing…I’m going to seriously look at that next year…
I hope you don’t set the bar too high like I usually do…I’m usually the figure that hangs upside down… …but I do have a lot of fun 
… and shorter hair…and not a girl…well you get the idea 
…
Good luck have a great time and I look forward to your further progress
Greetings
@roger_holland Hi Rogier,
as you can see above, I edited the last sentence to make it clear that I will try not to set my bar too high My goal is to practice and record what I can before the end of the year. I want some of those recordings to be electric guitar with backing tracks.
23Nov2025 - Nov 2025 notes
I need to post these notes that i started 2 weeks ago before I run out of November 
I had an injured finger this month so I have only played the guitar 3 weeks in the last month. I did use the time to finish putting strings on my 5 guitars and work on creating backing tracks for my electric guitar songs.
I experimented this year with 6 months of unstructured time to:
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provide time to consolidate what I had worked on in the last 6 months
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to practice and master some grade 3 songs for recording.
I learned that I need to add at least 5 minutes each day of some technical exercises like 1 minute chord changes or pinky workout or scales to my practrice every day to keep my skills from going backwards. While working a lot on acoustic blues solos and minor and major scales that my chord changes are not as confident and my pinky is not as agile when doing chord embellishments like sus chords. One new exercise I added for some of the song I am working on is a 3 chord progression repeated for one minute, specifically G D/F# C and G D/F# Em.
I have seen or read that some members of the community complain about feeling like they are not making progress or being stuck a certain level. I have accepted that I know that my skills will actually regress or go backwards without constantly being refreshed, especially with just 30 minutes of practice per day on average. I think that next year when I start structured practrice, I will spend the first couple of weeks of revision or review to go back to grade 1 and 2 and review all the technical exercises and check the metrics to make sure that I am at least staying at my previous best performance metrics. So my goal going forward is to at least keep all previous skills at a useful level.
As the year rapidly comes to an end, I am also rapidly revising my goals. Hopefully I can select a couple of songs that are not too challenging to record and complete some unfinished songs.
11Dec2025 - I’ve been so busy practicing and recording songs that I haven’t taken the time to record my progress.
I think that I have learned how to use a pick to arpeggiate chords following the intro in Justin’s new song lesson video for Wonderful Tonight, I just recorded playing the chords for one verse of the song. I wanted to sing along, but i will have to get a lot more confident with this style of playing to also sing:
I have practiced Fortunate Son a lot but I still have problems with playing along with the song. I had problems with 50% of speed and changed my approach to the intro. Notice in the video that I am playing with hybrid picking which let me at least play at 70% speed. The intro sounds good, but the power chords don’t have a good tone, that I think is due to recording the mini amp with the phnne a;nd my electric guitar too close to the microphone and picking up the twangy sound of the strummed strings. I really need to record through my DAW, but I am sitill a little unsure about synching the recording with the video. I also don’t want to be caught in the rabbit hole of chasing tone
I can finally play the chord melody version of Greensleeves from Grade 3, but I had to revise the fingering to avoid an Fm barre, by playing two different partial F barre chords and playing individual notes for the place where the finger is raised to form the Fm barre. I only left out the first low F note, but it sounds good to me, This is a song that I am currently working on improving by playing along with a metronome (Justin’s app). I had to start with an excruciatingly slow 50 bpm and 3:1 meter. After a couple of days of practice (after recording this) I am already up to 60 bpm.
The only AVOYP posted so far this month (I updated an earlier unfinished post):
Hi Steve, you’re working on different techniques and for what I can see and say with good results in all of them! I love Greensleeves, you made me want to revisit it! While watching the video I was wondering if the metronome is really what you need to work with, sometimes I got the impression you just need to get more confident on a certain motorskill or memory skill and that timing was not 100% accurate because of those; to be honest it sounds really sweet already and you might just want to work out on how to refine it.
Hi Silvia, thanks for listening to my learning log recordings and your kind words. I don’t use the metronome a lot since it tends to make me almost as nervous as recording. I wasn’t using the metronome for timing issues but as a measure of my tempo. When I speed up the tempo a little it highlights or emphasizes the areas that I need to work on. When I was working on Greensleeves during grade 3, I had trouble playing the note with the Fm barre so I gave up playing Greensleeves. Now I play this chord melody version quite often. Greensleeves is also the melody for the Christmas carol “What Child Is This” and I was hoping to improve the consistency of my tempo so as to accompany my singing while playing the chord melody. If I don’t succeed in the next couple of weeks then I will just make a recording with a simple fingerstyle version.
21Dec2025 - I am still documenting the status of my grade 3 consolidation songs. I didn’t leave enough time to fully develop any of the songs, except perhaps Greensleeves sometime before the end of December. Fortunately, I am continuing grade 3 consolidation next year, along with finishing the grade 4 blues studies.
I still am practicing and working on mastering Greensleeves, which also doubles as a Christmas carol “What Child Is This?”. Here is another video take of Greensleeves done with my eyes closed. I still have problems going from the Am to the C with the high G played with the pinky, but I think that I have determined how to fix that. I still always play the wrong fret when I try to play the Am triad at the 5th fret with my eyes closed, so perhaps I should open my eyes at that point and not try to be a guitar hero
I hurt my index finger on my right (picking) hand about 6 days ago and switched to playing songs with a pick. Notice that I am using the Orange Dunlop Tortex 0.60 mm pick for all my recordings, instead of the Grey Dunlop Nylon 0.60mm pick that I used last year for all my grade 2 consolidation acoustic song covers. So I consider that some progress.
I started by recording the intro to Wonderwall:
I decided to record American Pie yesterday after a couple of days of practice. I intended to play from the Justin guitar songbook and just play the first page, but my eyes aren’t as good lately, so I printed off my larger print song sheet and played and sang the same part of the song spread over two sheets of paper. I just did one take. I will use this song to test some of what I learn from Justin’s strumming dynamics course. I had to capo to the 2nd fret and sang in a lower register since I don’t have as high of a voice register as Don McLean:
Later in the day yesterday, I realized that I didn’t have a great song to use for the finger strum course (although I thought of using California Dreamin). I had learned Blackbird finger style from TAB many years ago and practiced a little over the years, so decided that this is a good time to record what I know. Later I will play the whole song:
I guess that finger-style and strumming to support singing are my strong points, because that is where I have the most experience.
24Dec2025 = I finally did my last recording of Greensleeves/What Child Is This and a version where I try to sing. I also posted my Silent Night chord melody from last Dec. learning log which mysteriously disappeared from my YouTube content
AVOYP - Greensleeves/What Child Is This
As a public service to beginners who get frustrated in not being able to easily sing while playing, I offer 2 of my outtakes from trying to record What Child Is This while singing. I “went off the rails” in less than 45 sec. in each outtake, so this is a gift of humor to you.
Outtake 1 - What Child Is This
Outtake 2 - What Child Is This
I had about 18 takes to get an acceptable version of playing while singing, so technically these are about outtakes 10 and 12. It is not easy to sing and play something that is near the limits of your playing level
25Dec2025 - To continue with my video end of year progress report here is my cover of the intro and first verse of Dust In The Wind (no singing ):
Here is a picture of my picking hand finger nails to show that you don’t have to have long finger nails to finger pick, just a firm pick of the strings:
It is easier with long fingernails, but I had to cut off some split nails.
26Dec2025 - Here is the last of my end-of-year work in progress video progress reports. As you may noticed I have focused on acoustic, even though I had planned to include more electric guitar. When time has been tight, it was easier to pick up the acoustic and practice one of these songs. Hopefully, next year I can master the art of creating videos for electric guitar with decent tone.
The last song I have been practicing is Fast Car. The main acoustic riff carries through most of the song, so I have been trying to get it a little more automatic, but that will take a lot more practice. I have recorded 2 versions - one follows Justin’s video lesson - with the open B to first fret C picked:
The second recording of the Fast Car repeat acoustic riff for the intro and verse, hammers on to play the C of the first C chord. I think that sounds more authentic based on listening to Tracy Chapman’s song:
I’m sure that Justin picked out the individual notes to make it more of a beginner song, just like he did with the Wish You Were Here lesson. Also Justin mentioned in the song lesson that he used a fret fingering that uses the pinkie that is different from the way Tracy Chapman played live. I found that I prefered the Tracy Chapman finger placement of the 2 and 3 fingers for the G chord which allows the 3rd finger to slide to the 7th fret, which you can hear in the original recording of Fast Car. I use the 3rd and 1st fingers for the 2 note chords up the neck. I had only practiced this 1 time this month, the day I recorded, which is why the 2nd video sounds just a little bit cleaner than the first with less buzz in the chord notes. I need to slow this down next year and record several times to review my playing so I can work on a cleaner rhythm riff with better muting.
Steve
This already sounds good and I look forward to hearing more.
Brian