Well, it’s true that it’s hard to focus on many genres at the same time. So, I understand your dilemma between your acoustic and electric guitars.
Wow ! Blackbird, Dust in the Wind. That’s iconic classics for fingerpicking. You have some great achievement on the acoustic ! Last time I had time to work on acoustic fingerstyle was in December. Justin has some nice Christmas songs arrangements.
With your interest for the blues and your start of grade 4, you will be ready when there will be a next cohort of Blues Immersion. Today, I signed up to the first cohort of the course, so I’ll let you know how it goes.
I may have to pause my rock guitar project for the duration of the course. But I will come back to it after. I won’t give up as I know @SILVIA would be disappointed of me
Yes, I would be disappointed because you’re very good at that stuff! And I do enjoy the rock videos from you and the other guys such as Jk!
aww … I wish you a lot of fun with the Blues Immersion…who wants to play the Blues is so very lucky at the moment as we know Justin has been putting so much effort in the course and since it’s something he definetely loves I believe it’s going to be amazing stuff all the way through!
Let us know how it goes…sure you’ll do great!
@SteveL_G99 Yes, please let us know here how it goes as I would be interested to see feedback. I have this as a goal for me for next year to have completed Grade 3 and be in a position to do Blues Immersion at some point. Would be interested to know how hard you think it would be for a Grade 3 player + some consolidation time to complete the course.
Also not sure how the live classes would work in future years. Will the course be run in full each year with new live sessions for those of us that weren’t ready this year? Perhaps the mods or other teachers (@Richard_close2u) might be able to answer if this has been considered or is the full experience a ‘one off’ just for this year?
@ziggysden Hi Stuart, it was @math07 who was going to take the blues immersion course. I am interested to see how that goes also. Grade 4 has a lot of blues lessons already and I have a wealth of blues specific and artist specific DVD tutorials to look at so I will probably wait to take the blues immersion course later.
As an example of all the blues related lessons on DVD I have collected over the years:
I have some of this available online but I just wanted to feel like I am finally getting some use for all of this stuff I have collected over the years.
Hi Silvia, I decided not to do the blues immersion course since I am still working on transitioning to intermediate level and more importantly I can’t immerse if I am interested in too many styles of guitar. I am slowly working on the Werner classical course and I continue to be inspired by others playing classical guitar. I mentioned that Guitar Techniques has a column on classical guitar and this month the piece was especially inspiring - J. S. Bach - Sleepers Awake. Perhaps many years from now I can attempt just the intro part since it is considered moderately advanced:
This is very beautiful Steve, thanks for @ me!
I’m happy to read you’re keeping going on the Classical Guitar Method…it doesn’t matter how slow or fast, what counts is that you’re enjoying it! Now…I’m curious: what are you working on the Classical Guitar?
@SILVIA Silvia, I am happy that you enjoyed the link. I am currently practicing the song lessons (Jazz Cat and Au Clair de la lune) on pages 30 - 34 of Werner Classical Guitar Method book 1. Since I have much experience with sight reading in the first position, my focus is on my right hand tone. I have decided that I must allow my fingernails to grow out a little. When I recorded “Morning Has Broken” I plucked the strings with my finger tips and no fingernails. But modern classical guitar tone requires the use of the finger nails. I found the lesson on maintaining the fingernails in the Werner website, outside of the book lessons.
I confess that for reasons of nostalgia, I have also played through the corresponding lessons (notes on the first 3 strings) in my old Solo Guitar book 1 by Frederick Noad. I discovered in Wikipedia that F. Noad had some televised lessons in the 1960s that were released in color in the 1980s. I found a lesson for Greensleeves on YouTube, which has a chord melody version Frederick Noad Greensleeves classical guitar lesson. It is interesting to me to see the lesson, but I like the version in his Solo Guitar book 1 better, since it uses 2 note chords.
There are differences in approaches (for instance, the Noad book emphasizes the rest stroke at first) so I will mostly follow the Werner books. I bought 2 intro books and also the techniques book and the grade 1 and 2 repertoire book. I don’t play classical guitar every day (I do play guitar every day) but every 4th week I focus on classical guitar and play every day. On the other weeks, I play just a few (1 or 2 times) per week. It is not optimal, but I will very slowly make progress. Of course, seeing what I have written, I think I should practice the right hand exercises for 5 minutes every day until I am satisfied with my tone. I have moved my guitar case from the closet to next to my music stand.
Hi Steve I’m glad to read you’re progressing well! I think growing a little bit of fingernails is a good idea, I feel comfortable to have them not too long…but I know someone can do without fingernails as well.
Have you checked Justin’s arrangement of Greensleeves? I learnt so much from it! And it sounds pretty sweet on the Classical Guitar too, only you need to adapt a little bit the fretting hand technique. Also Werner has a nice lesson on it. I checked your link but my poor ear is getting confused as that doesn’t sound like the Greensleeves I know
@SILVIA Silvia, my apologies. I should have said that you need to skip the first 5:30 (5 and 1/2 minutes) of intro, guitar tuning, and special fingering explanations. Then you will see the melody played while the standard notation is shown on the screen. Then at the 9:30 point in the video, the chord melody version is explained while the standard notation is shown on the screen. It is a very old video from the 1980s, but it is interesting to see someone who studied under Andres Segovia via workshops. According to Wikipedia, Segovia had contact with Francisco Terraga to arrange to take classical guitar lessons, but Terraga died before Segovia could take those lessons. So seeing this video gives a direct link to the origins of classical guitar.
You can have a more direct connection to the masters of classical guitar by looking at a video of A. Segovia playing on the classical guitar: Andres Segovia - 1975 video
I love all Tarrega’ s pieces
I haven’t formed my own opinion on Segovia though, because in an interview I heard him say things I didn’t like, such as Classical Guitar needing to be saved from the hands of Flamenco players…and…he also used an adjective for them which I can’t remember and it wasn’t nice! Ok…I know he’s among the greatest… I still ignore too much of Classical Guitar hystory…can you name a masterpiece composed by Segovia? But Tarrega!
@SILVIA My knowledge of classical guitar history and repertoire is very weak, so I didn’t know much about Segovia. I probably focused on Segovia because many of the classical guitarists in the US were taught by Segovia or students of Segovia and tend to promote Segovia in the US guitar magazines. When I started to learn classical guitar in1977, one of Segovia’s favorite students, Michael Lorimer, wrote a column in Guitar Player magazine on classical guitar. I saw online that some consider Tarrega the father of modern classical guitar. From what I have learned online about Segovia, I think of Andres Segovia as the father of modern classical guitar tone and technique, since students of the Tarrega school played with the finger tips directly over the sound hole that resulted in a softer sound, while Segovia played with the finger nails with the hand located between the sound hole and the bridge for a louder brighter modern tone. I agree that Tarrega is definately the better composer of classical guitar music and I hope to learn more of his pieces in the future. Segovia mostly had other composers write for him and is known for transcriptions of Bach and studies of F. Sor. I read in Wikipedia that “ Segovia was aware of Flamenco during his formative years as a musician but stated that he “did not have a taste” for the form and chose instead the works of Fernando_Sor, Francisco Tárrega and other classical composers.”. Perhaps growing up in Spain, Segovia thought of Flamenco as dance hall music and only wanted to focus on “serious” classical music for the guitar
I have practiced the Greensleeves chord melody song in the grade 3 lessons, but I had a problem with a muted or dead string when the chord shape changed from an F to an Fm chord. I will practice on this more this year as I work on consolidating grade 3 skills while learning new things in grade 4.
@SteveL_G99 I’m a fan of Bruce Emery. I used to have several of his books but gave them away when I had my hand situation, pouted, and sold my guitars and books. I enjoy his way of explaining things. Very down to earth.
@WonderMonkey Michael, I am a big fan of Bruce Emory too. I spent a year during lunchtime at work 10 years ago going through his guitar music theory book Musical Principles for the Skeptical Guitarist volume 1. I see it is still available on Amazon. I also had a chance during that time to take about 4 lessons from him at his home. I noticed that he was pretty low tech and I guess that almost all of his books had been created on the old Mac Plus or SE that was in his home. They were probably all handcrafted in a drawing program. I was happy to see that someone had helped him get onto YouTube: Meet Bruce Emery
I still am working through his Fingerpicking from Scratch and Blues from Scratch books, using them with the downloadable audio files. I saw that someone had done a book review on YouTube of the Fingerstyle Guitar from Scratch book: Review of Fingerstyle Guitar from Scratch book
I learned from the book review that I will be learning James Taylor style intros as I advance, some Travis picking and surprisingly some Bossa Nova.
I have been practicing classical guitar some for the last few months, about 1 week per month and decided to post my first practice piece from the Werner Classical guitar method book 1:
I was inspired to start learning classical guitar again after looking at @SILVIA learning log. My progress is slow since I don’t practice classical guitar every day, but I had a year of practice back in 1977 and picked it up to play some over the years. This is a simple piece that focuses on legato and staccato picking technique. I can find a lot to improve on, but I just started learning this piece on Monday and was mostly sight reading for this recording. I also just started growing out my fingernails in the last month to get better tone and I’m still getting used to picking with fingernails. My legato is stiff and tense sounding and I was surprised to see I was using left handed muting for the staccato, since I am supposed to use adjacent finger muting on the picking hand, but it gives me a starting point to work on for the future.
James, no, I am actually only working on classical guitar for 1 week out of four each month along with fingerpicking and Rockschool Graded exam songs for electric guitar on the same week. When I am recording something, like this week, I may focus on only one of the three outside activities. I thought that it would help my fingerpicking and it certainly inspired me to grow 1 to 2 mm fingernails on my right (picking) hand and I can already hear an improvement in my acoustic guitar fingerpicking tone.
I just added a post today (1st of July) that shows my updated weekly guitar focus schedule and you can see that I have added classical guitar to the week with methods outside of the Justin Guitar curriculum.
Blues is still my main focus, but in the next 3 months of summer I am finishing up grade 3 and working on my 10 songs to record to complete grade 2 consolidation. Since grade 2 is more focused on beginning blues, I will include a couple of blues songs. Then I will be able to move forward and devote a lot more time to the blues in grade 4. I have spent al lot of time in May and June going through a lot of the grade 2 songs and selecting my 10 songs for grade 2 consolidation. In April I did a lot of beginning blues related to grade 2 and other sources. I had a post on April 7, that had a video of my Harmonizing Blues Shuffle example from the Blues from Scratch book. I am doing Blues from Scratch in my Grade 3 Module 22 daily practice routine as a timeboxed activity. I finally posted my Grade 2 blues studies on April 18 and 20.
Also on Aprll 22 I recorded the Rockschool Electric Guitar Debut exam piece playing the melody line to Hoochie Coochie Man with backing track. So I am still learning the blues, I just had to go back to fill in some gaps that I had skipped over in going to quickly to grade 3.
Very very nice Steve! A lot to like in your short clip: first you looked relaxed and enjoying while playing and that I could hear also in the playing… this is enough for me to say that the Classical Guitar is doing you well!
I’m unsatisfied most of the times with my Legato, not much when I’m playing but when I record and re-listen I always wish the notes wouldn’t vanish in the air so easily and that they could ring out longer. Just this week I was thinking that since Method 2 is also focusing a lot on single melodiy lines that I should start and try the technique where you press more to sustain the note; I need to check the site to see if Werner has a lesson on that.
On the other side well done on your left hand Staccato! I wasn’t able to do that but I didn’t do too bad with my picking hand, which I suspect, for some reason, I can have more control on than the fretting hand.
Thanks for sharing your progress!
I was forgetting…I noticed your thumb is curled in a way I see many Classical guitarists curl it.
Silvia, thanks for looked at my short clip of my initial classical progress and for your encouraging words. I think that it takes many years of practice to achieve a smooth legato line without effort.
I have had others comment on my thumb, but it is the thumb I was born with
It is curved even when relaxed.
Here is a reply I had sent in Nov. 2023 to David_P on my thumb:
You can especially see that on my very first post of Feb. 28 playing on my recently restrung classical guitar:
aww … I wish you a lot of fun with the Blues Immersion…who wants to play the Blues is so very lucky at the moment as we know Justin has been putting so much effort in the course and since it’s something he definetely loves I believe it’s going to be amazing stuff all the way through!
I’m glad to read you’re progressing well! I think growing a little bit of fingernails is a good idea, I feel comfortable to have them not too long…but I know someone can do without fingernails as well.
I still ignore too much of Classical Guitar hystory…can you name a masterpiece composed by Segovia? But Tarrega! 
I probably focused on Segovia because many of the classical guitarists in the US were taught by Segovia or students of Segovia and tend to promote Segovia in the US guitar magazines. When I started to learn classical guitar in1977, one of Segovia’s favorite students, Michael Lorimer, wrote a column in Guitar Player magazine on classical guitar. I saw online that some consider Tarrega the father of modern classical guitar. From what I have learned online about Segovia, I think of Andres Segovia as the father of modern classical guitar tone and technique, since students of the Tarrega school played with the finger tips directly over the sound hole that resulted in a softer sound, while Segovia played with the finger nails with the hand located between the sound hole and the bridge for a louder brighter modern tone. I agree that Tarrega is definately the better composer of classical guitar music and I hope to learn more of his pieces in the future. Segovia mostly had other composers write for him and is known for transcriptions of Bach and studies of F. Sor. I read in Wikipedia that “ Segovia was aware of Flamenco during his formative years as a musician but stated that he “did not have a taste” for the form and chose instead the works of Fernando_Sor, Francisco Tárrega and other classical composers.”. Perhaps growing up in Spain, Segovia thought of Flamenco as dance hall music and only wanted to focus on “serious” classical music for the guitar