Hi Toby!
Yes! Iām super excited about this lesson with Justin. It truly is a great opportunity, and a total surprise. I want to make sure to absorb as much knowledge as I can!
I just watched the lesson/video on Justinās 10 steps for singing and playing. Iām going to start with those steps with tomorrowās practice! I canāt wait to get the song down and post an AVOYP of it.
Live Long and Prosper,
Todd
Itās great to read that you are already working on memorizing songs that use the chords that you have learned so far in the course.
Progress! 
. Yep, that lesson on guitar position was super important.
The seating/footrest/strumming position thing. Iām about a year in and I remember it being quite hard to find the ārightā spot. Now itās easier. So that does get easier, but experiment. A footrest might be useful. What I did was have my chair really low, and then prop my right foot on its toes, seemed to have a similar effect. I do something different now.
Some chairs were really hard to play in! And still are. So experiment, see what works for you that allows you to hold the guitar in a fixed position without your fretting hand holding it up. 
I also used to strum over the neck of my strat when I had just started (although I didnāt realise it). Donāt worry about that one too much for now, you can sort that later - probably during grade 2.
Hi James!
Thanks, man! Iām trying! 
I was actually going to ask, somewhere on here, if anyone had tips on memorizing the chords of a song. Like, is it helpful at all to try to memorize them by just reading them or doing flash cards or something? I found, with this song, it basically just started to stick because Iāve played it so many times now, and listened to the song many times, and counted off the bars of the song many times while listening, and strummed muted strings while listeningā¦ and all of that good stuff. Just lots of interaction with the song.
Grace and Peace,
Todd
Hi JK,
Thanks, man! Youāve given me a lot of thorough comments, and I really appreciate it.
Regarding the right leg/foot position, Iām sort of propping my foot up on something right now. The one problem came, when practicing my song just nowā¦ I started wanting to swing back and forth to the music. Look at me, just getting all wild. Then the position sort of went out the door, but, I tried to consciously bring it back and stop swinging about.
Grace and Peace,
Todd
I just posted my first, non-Beginner-Safe-Space AVoYP. 
I know thereās plenty to improve on. Iām basically a neonate, in the world of guitar playing, but, in a way, this felt like taking my first steps as a performer. I can now sing and play this song simultaneously, without a backing track or songbook to guide me. (For this performance, I did have the songbook open as a fallback, but I didnāt stay wedded to it. I looked away or even closed my eyes at points when I was really feeling the song.) So, Iām going to proudly post this and go to bed. I am sooo happy to have gotten this far, and look forward to going so much further. I can perform a song! 
Grace and Peace,
Todd
āThe unexamined life is not worth living.ā - Socrates
Hi Todd. To memorize the chords Iāve found useful to first break down the song in sections letās say Yellow Submarine, than I am working on, is Verse 1, Verse2, Chorus, Verse 3 (like Verse 1), Chorus, Instrumental and voices (like Verse 1), Verse 4 (like Verse 2), Chorus and Coda. When tried to memorize the chords of the full song it, looked an impossible task, but when I wrote the chords for each section on a sheet of paper without the lyrics it was not that bad, each verse has only four chords that repeats in the same order and the chorus has two chords only. You should mark when the chords stay for more than one bar. Some songs are more complicated than others. Once you memorize the chords, practice could be easier. Learning to play a song involves some work, but it is very rewarding when the song starts to sound good.
This lesson of Justin explains a typical song structure. You donāt need to jump into this yet as your focus should be building a sound foundation, but it may help to understand what I wrote above.
For me its simple repetition, just keep playing each song over and over until its engrained. There maybe some āscientificā way but I have personally found churning them out night after night gets them dug deep down in the sub-conscious. 
yup and learning it in chunks i.e. intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro.
One bar at a time if needs be !
Hi AndrƩs! Thank you for that! That all makes sense. Some songs can get very complex, so, it makes sense to break them down into digestible chunks.
Thanks, Toby! That was pretty much how I got my first one down, just repeatedly listening and playing it. That was a big takeaway for me from JGās lesson on singing and playing, ālistening to music is how we learn it.ā Listening to the song repeatedly, then playing it with the recording, really helped me get it down.
Thanks, James! 
So, it sounds like everyone is pretty well in agreement. Repetition (both repeated listening and playing), and breaking things in to chunks, especially in longer or complex songs, is the way to go. In other words, practice, practice, practice.
-Todd
āLife can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.ā - SĆøren Kierkegaard
A couple of interesting happenings of late, regarding my guitar practice, so, I figure Iād place them here in my learning log.
One, I have a friend who is a bassist who would like to jam sometime, after he saw my second āThree Little Birdsā performance. I pointed out that Iām completely new at this, and thatās the only song I could play from memory at this point. He replied that he hasnāt picked up a bass in six years, so he probably couldnāt play anything either. 
So, I donāt know what might come of thisā¦ will we just sit around his basement looking at our respective guitars and drink a beer? I mean, thatās okay.
I have a friend who wants to do a duet recording, me playing and him singing. I gave him a list of beginner-level songs from Justinās program that I was confident I could play already. He chose āThatās All Right Mamaā by Elvis, which is in the Beginner Songbook, the app, and has a video, so, Iāve got plenty of material to work with here. I can already play it fine with the simple, quarter-note down-strum, but, Iām going to start practicing the boom-chuck pattern that Justin shows later in the video, to give it a more country feel.
So, thatās sorta cool.
-Todd
āArt distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning.ā - Miguel de Unamuno
@SocratesDiedTrolling. Todd, I listened to both of your posts of the song Three Little Birds and think that you are making great progress for the amount of time that you have been practicing. You have inspired me to trying to post some more of my playing.
I saw that you have a Presonus DAW. I havenāt got one yet and that is next on my list to get. Have you used it with your recordings?
Hi @SteveL_G99!
Thank you so much! And, Iām glad if I can help inspire others to put themselves out there. Especially here. Itās a very friendly, warm community, so, the risk is very low.
Yes! I do use the Presonus AudioBox USB 96, which comes with their software, Studio One 6. I have enjoyed it so far without any real problems. It works well, and all three of my videos were recorded with it. It was a bit hard to figure out at first, but, there are a lot of videos out there explaining things, and that got me through.
Let me know if you get one and have any specific questions!
Best Wishes,
Todd
Your enthusiasm is indeed contagious Todd and kudos to you for putting yourself out there so early in your journey and doing so well in your playing and progress too. 
@Nancy15 Thank you so much!
I figure I should update the log, since itās been a couple of weeks! Do not fret, for I have not given up guitar!
Iām still practicing Grade 1, Module 5. The chord for Module 5 (Cmaj), and the chord for Module 4 (Dmin) are still my two slowest, and I feel like they can still use some work, so, Iām still repeating this practice, and making sure to pick songs with those chords involved for the end of my practice sessions. Iām planning to stick with this module for a couple weeks more. Itās a busy time for me with school and work, so, I didnāt practice as many times last week (once, instead of the usual 4-6 times). Final exams are next week at university, so, who knows how much practice I will get in this week or next, either. But, hopefully Iāll get in a little.
Some of us only update our logs every few months 
.
One practice a week though - if you can, try to pick the guitar up for just 10-15 minutes a day if youāre busy. Or even 5 minutes if thatās all youāve got. 6x 10 minutes beats 1x 60 minutes hands down.
Yeah, that makes sense, as far as trying to get some time in, even if itās just five minutes or what have you.
There is a thread here
with several good suggestions, especially mine
Seriously, a lot of music is written in 4-bar chunks, so I find writing out the chords, 4 bars per line on the page, often reveals patterns that help a lot with memorisation.
Thanks! Iāll check it out. So far, Iāve memorized one song, and that was just via repetition. It was a fairly simple song, though, āThree Little Birdsā by Bob Marley. I like your idea of breaking it down into 4-bar chunks. That would work pretty well for that song, actually, as the intro, chorus, and verse, are each multiples of four bars (Intro: AAAA, Chorus: AADA AADA, Verse: AEAD AEDA).