Yeah writing it out 4 bars to a line was a big help for me, like @jjw says, a whole lot of music is written with a 4 bar repeating pattern, so if you can identify that, the task of memorising is suddenly a whole lot easier.
I’ve found a lot of songs have a 4 bar repeating pattern with exceptions, so it’s the same 4 bar pattern, except in the bridge where it switches to a different 4 bar pattern (often with many of the same chords), or maybe they mix it up for the outro or for a guitar solo.
You’ll still find songs that are a struggle to memorise even with this technique, but it’s good for a solid majority of the stuff I’ve been trying to learn.
Once I’ve worked out the pattern, written it out by hand, and got to the point where I can play it without looking at the chord sheet, that’s when I start using Justin’s memory spacing strategy to get it fully baked in. Seems to be working pretty well so far.
Thank you for that! I’ll check out that lesson as well!
One of the songs from the app I’ve practiced before wouldn’t fit the 4-bar pattern. It’s easy enough to remember anyway, as it’s just the same rotation of three chords repeated for the whole song. It makes for nice practice, though, if you’re trying to work on one of the chords involved.
I have my one-to-one lesson scheduled for this Wednesday with Justin. I look forward to that, and will make sure to let everyone know how it goes. It’s still pretty amazing to me that I was offered such a lesson, so, I plan to try to just soak up as much as I can from it.
My one-to-one session happened, as scheduled, and it was pretty great! Thank you to the forum member who donated their session to me. I was downright shocked when I was given this opportunity, and I’m sincerely grateful! Because Justin never mentioned your name in the forum, I won’t mention your name here, because I don’t know if you prefer to remain anonymous. So, you know who you are. Thank you so much!
I’m getting back into the swing of things in the New Year. I had maybe only practiced once in the past couple of weeks, and practice was pretty spotty for a little while before that as well. I’m not going to delve into it here, but, December isn’t always a jolly time.
To break out of that slump, I finally played a song I had been wanting to try for weeks, Silent Night, a traditional Christmas ballad, in 3/4 time, at a peaceful 61bpm, only requiring three chords: G, C, and D7. Having recently gotten G and C, this seemed like an obvious, easy song to play for Christmas. So… here is me just winging it without having practiced for quite a while, or having practiced singing and playing it at all, last night!
Also, today, I got in my full, prescribed, practice, plus the othet little things I usually try to get in with practice (ear training intervals, riffs, songs that I’m working on [e.g. The Addams Family theme]).
One of my friends, when he heard I was learning guitar, said he wanted to do a song together, me playing and him singing. I’m pretty excited at the prospect, honestly! I gave him a list of songs from the first few modules of Justin’s program, as I was fairly certain I could learn to play any of them with some minimum level of facility. He chose “That’s All Right Mama”.
I can play it with a quarter-note strum pretty easily, but, that’s probably not the most interesting way to play it.
I’ve also tried playing it with “Old Faithful,” but, in his video, Justin says it sounds a bit funny playing this one with Old Faithful. Also… the song seems a bit slow, relative to how I’ve previously practiced Old Faithful… I keep running away ahead of the backing track. So, obviously, if I’m going to play that one, I’m going to have to work on slowing down and staying with the track.
Finally, I’m thinking of “boom-chuck”-ing it. I think, normally, a boom-chuck would be done at double-speed, and I’m not there yet. I just decided to try playing it with a slower boom-chuck, bass notes on the 1 and 3, strumming the higher strings on 2 and 4. Here is the video:
What do you think? Any advice? This is just a bare proof of concept. It’s the first time I tried playing this song through (or any song) with this pattern. I think, with some practice, I could get it a lot smoother (e.g., make fewer mistakes).
What a cool project, Todd. I think that sort of thing gives added purpose to practice, making the practice all the more fun.
Good plan to try a boom-chucka rhythm. I know you said boom-chuck but I think it will lift the level if you can add the upstrum after the down strum on 2 and 4. In theory just a matter of hitting the high strings on the way up to play the bass note. I’m not sure how far you into strumming to know how much of a challenge putting theory into practice may be.
I also liked your body movement in those moments when you were getting into it. Sure you can build on that as you keep playing the song and get more and more familiar with chords and the rhythm.
Thanks! I, honestly, hadn’t even thought about doing anything on the up-strums there. I’ll have to give it a try on my next practice time! I’m currently at Module 6, and this strum isn’t directly practiced anywhere (at least not with the app), but, it’s mentioned in Justin’s video on this song, which I found on YouTube. So, I just sort of picked it up from there.
In about 11 months or so, my friend also wants to try performing an original song of his together. He’s written the words and I think he has sort of made up a melody to sing it to, but he hasn’t come up with a chord progression for it. I might be working on that, and asking for some help here in the Community for that!
If you’ve heard of the cycling sub-discipline of cyclocross… that’s what his song is about. Both he and I are big cyclocross fans, and he even runs a cycling podcast, which he’s had me on before. Anyway… that’s what the song is about, cyclocross. With his podcast, he actually works as press/media at the big US cyclocross events. We wants to try to perform his song at one of the professional team tents at our cyclocross nationals. So, that could be pretty wild.
Hi Todd,
As David says this isn’t a boom chuck thing, because (or as I’ve learned)…that includes that up strum,…but now we’re going to talk about naming…whatever you does is a good start, and it’s just a matter of a lot of practice,…unfortunately for me, what that boom chucka boom thing looking easy to learn,…it took me quite a long time and if I don’t practice it for more than a month, I need quite a long time again,…but there are players who learn it with a much much shorter time,…I’m often a bit slow, but luckily I have a lot of time,
Greetings,Rogier
Thanks! That totally makes sense. I’m sort of imagining it in my head. I don’t think it has come up, the boom-chucka, in any of my lessons so far, so, I was just trying to imitate what I saw Justin do in his YouTube video on this song. I didn’t even think of the up-strum part, but, I’ll definitely give it a shot!
And, hey, we all learn in our own time, and all have different things and modes we are better with. I, for example, have some proficiency at learning Philosophy, hence why I went and got a graduate degree in it and teach it. Many people find it dense and useless. All that to say, I’m sure you’re doing awesome! Besides, it’s all about the journey! Just keep swimming, or, practicing guitar!
And once you have the upstrums worked in then try the alternating bass note. You’ll find that in the song lesson that Roger shared, I’m sure.
And I am sure it will be in this lesson which if I recall correctly was the song lesson Justin referenced when he introduced boom-chucka in the old Beginner Course. Not sure what chords you are playing abut given grade, I figure this will be right up your street, since it is simply played with A D and E.
Wonderful longer term project to work on an original. Sure there’ll be plenty of jumping in when the time comes if you post up a Topic and look for some help.
As for cyclocross … that is a new one on me. I assume it is like motocross on bicycles.
It’s most popular in Europe, especially Belgium and The Netherlands. It’s not as popular here in the US, but, still has a decent ‘cult’ following here. I don’t know if there is much of a cyclocross scene in South Africa. Anyway, it began as off-season practice for Euro road cyclists, riding their road bikes through the Belgian country-side in the Winter, but became a sport of its own around the early-to-mid-20th century. Basically, it involves riding bikes which are mostly like road bikes, but can allow somewhat wider tires, and the terrain involves a mixture of dirt, mud, grass, and even some human-made obstacles which often require dismounting the bike and carrying it. There is often some paved area, but it’s generally less than 10% of the course, usually the start/finish straight. The races are about an hour or less, so it’s a shorter, but therefore very intense, bike race. Oh, and it’s a loop, like less than 2km or so I think. So, the race usually involves anywhere from 4 to 10 laps of this loop, so, many cyclocross races have “grand prix” in their name, due to this grand prix format of the sport.
So, yeah, we’ll be working on this cyclocross song sometime this Spring/Summer, to get it ready for our cyclocross nationals in December.
Here are the requirements from Justin’s video on the app:
Memorize the 8 essential beginner, open chords: A, E, D, Amin, Dmin, Emin, C, & G.
Have fun exploring alternate picking.
At least 30 changes per minute between all 8 of those chords.
Strum well in 6:8, preferably with a metronome.
Play at least one song with a G chord.
I have learned all 8 assigned chords, and can reliably do over 30 changes per minute on all 28 potential combinations of those chords.
I have practiced alternate picking, both with the app’s practice assignment, and in some riffs I’ve been practicing.
I have practiced strumming in 6:8 many times now. It’s actually a fairly enjoyable time feel.
I have played multiple songs with the G chord.
I thought it would be good to actually check that I can do the 30-plus changes on all 28 possible combinations of these 8 chords, so, at the end of this evening’s practice, I used the app and did exactly that, tried every permutation. I then entered those results into a spreadsheet so I could do some basic analysis:
My average for all 28 chord changes is 63 changes/min.
My fastest chord change is Emaj & Emin at 95 changes/min.
Not surprising, it’s just lifting/placing one finger.
My slowest is Amaj & Dmin at 35 changes/min.
These are the averages for chord changing pairs for each chord (I figured this will help me see which chord is giving me the most trouble):
Amaj: 62 changes/min.
Dmaj: 66 changes/min.
Emaj: 64 changes/min.
Amin: 64 changes/min.
Dmin: 47 changes/min.
Emin: 71 changes/min.
Cmaj: 58 changes/min.
Gmaj: 70 changes/min.
Just from my own kinesthetic experience, I could have told you that Dmin and Cmaj were my two slowest chords, but, it’s nice to have the experimental data to confirm my own subjective experience.
Just read this bit. Totally do this. Follow diversions and stuff that isn’t in lessons - by learning songs, and the new techniques for them. Follow your interest
Thorough reflect on your current level, Todd. Excellent to be so through on self-assessment to determine whether or not to move on.
An observation on chord changes. I don’t think it is necessary to spend time on all of the possible combinations.
Initially speaking you’ll probably notice that many songs seem to be based on a common set of chords. I’ll not get into the theory as to why that is but for your purposes spending time working on changes between those chords may be better use of time than changes that may not crop up in songs, generally speaking.
For example, you may find the following chords often in songs G Am C D Em or C Dm Em F G Am, though you probably haven’t learned F yet, or A D E.
Based on that it may be better use of time to work Am-Dm rather than A-Dm for example. It will focus that drill on combinations you will encounter in songs. And I can’t recall changing between A-Dm … of course I only know a handful of simple songs.
@DavidP Oh, you’re right. It’s definitely not necessary to try every permutation of chord changes. I understand that some chord changes are more common than others, due to the chords being together in a musical key. But… there wasn’t a list of which chord changes to focus on; in the video (for moving on from module 6 in the app) Justin just says something like, “30 changes between all of them,” so, I just did all of them for my test here.
@DavidP Here’s an interesting find, and how timely, given our recent discussion! I began reading through the lessons for Module 7, and, lo and behold, Justin lists the 25 most common chord changes for beginners, which he recommends working on. This is a tad funny to me, since there are only 28 possible combinations of the eight beginner essential chords, leaving only three of them out of this list… but, here it is!
, and don’t be afraid, it is safely behind glass 
