Hey good to see you back Todd.
Can appreciate university is going to be tough at times but should be the priority in setting you up for the future life. So take your time on the guitar front, there’s no clock ticking and its no race and no compulsory exams. So use it as pressure release from your learning load. Play some songs and just make baby step improvements as and when you can. Whatever you do take care.
Hi Todd, I already was asking myself, if you are still playing or if you’ve left the forum. Good to see you back. What I wanted to write would be pretty identical with Toby’s reply, so I won’t repeat, what has already been written. So take your time, don’t stress…
Really nice to see you around again, hopefully more over XMas period. 
R
I’m glad to hear that you haven’t, in fact, died trolling 
Hope to see you around more soon (assuming that your university has a winter break?). I had a couple of months this summer where I didn’t play much, but have been able to settle back in without too much loss of skill or callous - I hope it’s a similar situation for you!
Thanks, everyone, for your warm regards. 
Yeah, school comes first for sure. I’ve already had to eliminate other things that were becoming too much. (In addition to my primary employment as a paramedic, I was also on a volunteer fire department, for example, and I had to resign from that position.)
I’ve also been putting some focus into weight loss. I have a goal of losing 100lb (45.5kg) over the course of 2-4 years. So far, it is going well, as I’ve lost 20lb (9.1kg) in the past seven months, right on track with my plan. That has also become a bit difficult with my high stress from school. So, I am happy to continue to maintain my weight the past couple of months, with a slower loss.
Regarding guitar practice itself, I had been starting Module 10 (the third module of Beginner Grade 2) when I stopped practicing. As a bit of a review, I looked through all of the modules’ main points, and decided to re-start at Module 8 (the first Module of Grade 2). So, the past week I’ve done my Module 8 practice a few times, and practiced some Module 8 songs (e.g. Wonderwall 
). That has been nice.
I’ve been working on better time management with how tough school has been this semester. Clearly, I do have time I could fit in a practice. As a couple of you have said, guitar practice should be something I try to get in for fun and personal edification. So, even if I’m just picking up the guitar and practicing a song or a scale or whatever, I can always throw that in sometime in my day.
As far as songs, I want to get a couple of Christmas songs down and perform them with Christmas-time coming up. As a couple of you hinted at, I do have three weeks off of university coming up, so, that will be a nice way to spend some time. One of the songs I have performed before, Silent Night. It was a rushed performance for last year, I simply wrote down the chords and did one strum-per-bar while singing and playing, as I didn’t have any time to practice singing it with any more complex strumming pattern. So, I want to actually practice it a bit this year, perform it a bit better with a better strumming pattern.
I also want to learn to sing and play Feliz Navidad by José Feliciano (I don’t know if it is as popular in Europe, but it is fairly common on the radio in the USA during the Holiday season, and it is one of my favorites). Feliciano’s original version involves a Bm barre chord I haven’t gotten to yet, but there are some other versions that are a bit more approachable for me… so maybe I will learn one of these easier versions for this year. Maybe next year I’ll have the Bm chord down.
So, I have continued practicing, at least a few times per week the past three weeks or so. Last week I decided to move back up to Module 9. (I had left off earlier this year on 9, but moved down to 8 when I re-started to get some review.)
In Beginner Grade 1 (Mod 1-7), you can make a lot of progress just using the practice prescribed in the app. Once reaching Grade 2 (Mod 8-14), I think it’s useful to add things, even if they are not in the app’s preset practice. (For example, even though the Module 9 practice doesn’t include all of the stuck 3/4 chords from Module 8, I still like to practice them. The same goes for the Em Pentatonic Scale.)
That leads me to something fun. I like how the app includes a drum beat for scale practice now. I think, when I first started using it, it may have only used a plain metronome. Playing along with a fuller drum beat makes it feel a bit more fun to me.
Also, I started playing different drum tracks I find on YT while playing my scales. So, maybe a straight 80bpm, then played along to some swing drum tracks, and finally started falling apart a bit playing along with a 180bpm punk rock drum track. Lol. It was all sort of fun though. So, I recommend that for scales practice.
I started into Module 10 today. It actually seems pretty straightforward.
The idea of a chord push was a bit intimidating before, but just like anything else, starting with the prescribed rhythm and doing it slowly made it accessible. Improvising on the CMaj scale is fun. I had actually already done a bit of that on my own, having been practicing that scale quite a while.
Oh, and the “weak finger G” or “split 3,4 G” is very helpful. Like justin says in the lesson, it will take a lot of practice to make it feel as natural as the other G fingerings, but I can already see how much easier it is to switch to from certain chords, and is actually very helpful in the Christmas songs I’m practicing with many C and G chords together.
Wash rinse repeat for all new techniques ! 
I’m still alive.
I practiced Module 10 quite a bit over the Winter break from college. With college starting, though, I haven’t had as much time. I have watched most of the lessons for Module 11. I think this week I will try to watch all of the Module 11 videos and begin the Module 11 practice.
Module 11 introduces fingerstyle. I am very used to playing with a plectrum at this point, so that will be interesting. lol.
Oh, and I got a new guitar for Christmas. Maybe I should share a photo. It is a Fender electro-acoustic, a Malibu Player in “Aqua Splash.” I really like the color, and I like the size much better. I did have a very nice Yamaha dreadnaught, but having done all of my learning on a Strat, it just felt so weird and hard to hold properly. The Fender Malibu has a neck very similar to a Strat and a smaller body than my old dreadnaught (parlor size maybe?).
I think I want to set a project for myself of learning to play and sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” using Justin’s video. I’m a big Ska and Reggae guy, so that’s one of my favorite song lessons of Justin’s. If you’ve been following along at home, you may remember the first song I learned to sing and play was also Bob Marley, “Three Little Birds.”
Good to see you still ticking along Todd. Slow and steady wins the day.
Saturday night, I finished watching all of the Module 11 videos. The most interesting was probably the introduction to dice songwriting. I’ve already found myself just messing around playing different chords before, maybe I’ll try writing something using the dice method. Seems fun.
One question I have, how do you go about writing a melody to go with the chord progression? In the video, Justin uses dice to pick the chords. He then starts singing over the chords as he plays them. Do you build a melody out of notes from that scale (e.g., if that bar is a C Major chord, do you write the melody from notes of the C Major scale?)?
Also, I learned the intro riff from Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” It was actually really easy. I think I had put it off for a while because it seemed hard when I tried to learn it from the video a long time back. I think the main thing that helped is… it’s in C Major. I’ve been practicing the C Major scale and improvising on it for quite a while now. So, learning a riff based on that scale came pretty easily.
Hiya Todd, good on you and lovely to read your progressing along well still. Can you imagine a year ago that you’d be typing this
Great question regarding coming up with a melody, you probably want to think more about th ekey of the song overall, not just per bar, but in principle yeah basically follow the notes in the scale to get you started and build from there. This has been a real challenge for me so I’ll be curious in other’s replies. Whatever I’ve tried myself so far has either been in line with or mirroring the chords I play which frankly, to my ears anyway, sounds kinda lame and basic, hence why I’ve not put out an original yet! Will follow the responses here closely, thank you for asking it!
Hi Todd
At the risk of making it too complicated or seeming like I’m moving you to grade 3 too quickly… it might help you to look at Justin’s lessons like happy birthday - Greensleves -Yesterday - Waltzing Matilda …and there are more. …there you can clearly and easily see how the melody fits into the chords
Greetings
The college year is almost over! I had a long period where I felt overwhelmed, dropping many of my hobbies, not just guitar. I hardly got in any exercise, for example, normally being a regular gym-goer and cyclist. Seeing graduation approaching, I started practicing regularly the past couple of weeks. It has been nice to pick back up.
At the start of this return, two weeks ago, I recorded myself playing the Redemption Song riff, as I really want to get that song down and record myself singing/playing it. Then I just played the riffs that I’ve learned in Justin’s lessons thus far, while I had my acoustic in hand. Because this was basically the first time I had touched a guitar in over a month, it was rather rough. I like the idea though, of having a snapshot of where I was then, to gauge my improvement on. Heck, I’m already much smoother than I was in that video because I’ve been practicing daily the past two weeks.
(If you want to skip past the introductory talking, the actual playing starts around 3:20.)
I’m thinking of focusing more on bass. I’ve had one for… over a year? I mess around with it occasionally, but haven’t started any sort of routine for it. I totally want to learn both. I’m thinking of taking some private bass lessons. I think that will be fun. I’ll plan to continue using Justin’s program for guitar. I want to, eventually, get a drum kit. Basically, I want to be my own power trio.
Good on you picking up the guitar again Todd. Daily practice is what makes the difference, just picking it up every now and again makes the skills either stay the same or stagnate.
The multi-instrumentalist thing… I’m of the opinion that you make more progress focussing on one at a time as a primary. Otherwise you might just end up with entry level skills on all 3. So which is your main one - bass? Guitar? Drums?
All work and no play ain’t good for anyone, so it’s good to see you picking up the guitar again and having some fun. Agree with @jkahn better to focus on learning one instrument, the phrase jack of all trades, master of none pops in my mind, you don’t want to spread yourself thin, you want a nice healthy balance of practice and playing.
I did consider that, yes. I suppose it does depend on one’s goals. Sometimes one simply wants to play around and doesn’t really care about their rate of progress.
For practical reasons, one probably has to be the focus, simply due to time constraints. If I actually start paying a private bass instructor, that may have to be the focus. Then I’ll hopefully figure out how much I like focusing on that instrument.
Todd, happy to see that you are playing guitar again despite the time pressures of school. I thought that your Redemption Song intro sounded good and in rhythm. The other riffs will get better with practice. Since the lowest pitch strings on a guitar (strings 3 to 6) are the same notes as a bass guitar, but 1 octave higher in pitch, you can practice all the riffs you have learned so far on the bass guitar and the practice skills should be transferable.