That was an honest review you gave of your current progress which should serve you in good stead. Key points:
spend some time on each of the chord learned doing chord perfect exercises. Pluck from the lowest note in the chord down to the highest note in the chord ensuring each note ring out true and clear and then strum from the lowest note. This will help with accuracy of strumming the correct strings as well as ensuring that you are getting clean chords.
spend some time doing one minute changes. I wouldnât worry so much about getting as many chord changes as possible. I would focus on quality over speed. Check out this lesson.
Since you have purchased the Strumming Techniques Course I would work my way through up to pattern 15. That will certainly help you with rhythm and strumming.
spend some time reviewing this lesson again if you have any concerns about your posture. The strumming techniques course also covers posture.
Pick 5 easy to memorise songs. Work on getting them to a stage where if someone was to ask you to play them you could just pick up the guitar and start playing them. Try to get your selection of five songs to have covered all the chords youâve learned i.e. you can play a song with a C Chord in it, you can play a song with a Dm in it.
Thanks James, yeah solid tips all round, definitely going to be doing these things to get better at what I have learned so far.
The posture issue stems from looking at what I am doing, whether that is chord changes or if I try fingerpicking then looking at my right hand.
The thing that I am not sure is a big deal is taking the neck of the guitar in my fretting hand and letting the hand cradle the fretboard from the back as opposed to the pinch type grip that you need for barre chords.
I think this is a bad habit that probably needs to be fixed, although when you watch others play I often see the thumb poking up at the top of the fretboard and I wonder if the neck is touching the palm of their hand also.
There are a couple of shapes like C and Dm where I find I âneedâ to do this, but also when I dont need to like all of the other chords im letting the neck sit in the palm of my hand.
Should I just eradicate this by starting over slowly and deliberately?
When you start playing Justin recommends to keep your thumb placed behind the neck. Have it resting about 3/4 of the way toward the sixth (thickest) string, firmly planted on the pad of the thumb (not the tip). Your palm should not be touching anywhere. Itâll help build the muscle between your thumb and 1st finger, handy for barre chords.
When you get to latter stages of Grade 2 your thumb is ready to start exploring and moving around a bit! By hanging your thumb over the top of the guitar you can mute or fret the 6th string.
By the way with regards to this question I am a complete beginner with fingerstyle, never tried it before and saw it was coming up in Grade 2 but got a bit impatient and googled fingerstyle songs for beginners. Probably biting off a bit more than I can chew with this one.
I may as well just record where I am at with it, Iâm pretty bad but I quite like practicing it, so I donât mind sprinkling it in to my routine and doing a few minutes per day on it.
It is quite a fast song with an alternating bass in the arrangement that Chris has produced. By all means if it is a song that really motivates you to pick up the guitar and play stick at it.
Since you had Mad World on you song list, @DavidP reminded me recently on my learning log that Justinâs lesson for the song includes the fingerstyle arrangement (pattern T, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 2). That would be quite a good one to learn as you will already be familiar with the chord progression.
OK nice I will try that one too might be a bit easier.
I did a â1 takeâ effort at the green day song and i can see that i need to practice not looking, faster changes, clearer notes, and actually learn what is the strumming pattern as i totally forgot when i got to that bit, i seem to remember it started with an up strum and that threw me for a loop.
Anyway, can only get better from here right
Hi Tom, as you said you can get only get better from here. Keep working on it. You like the song and playing finger style. Playing it slowly and as accurate as possible will lead you progressively to play it more fluently and faster. Justin has a lesson about not looking at the guitar but he introduces it at the end of Level 2 maybe because trying it earlier may be not be an easy task while getting familiar with the guitar so I think you shouldnât worry too much about that for now. In the G chord you bend your annular and pinky of the fretting hand toward the fretboard. No that I do not do it sometimes when my hand gets tired but bending the fingers the other way like you were grabbing something is a better posture for the joints. Look at the lesson you are following and you will see the right grip.
Well done on your progress made, shared in the recording, Tom. You are getting the hang of it. As @dobleA said, I would slow the tempo down for practice, aiming for a tempo that allows you to make the chord changes without hesitation. It helps to develop the muscle memory to do that and fairly quickly youâll find yourself able to slowly speed up. Keep on keeping on.
Well done Tom. I think you did yourself some injustice on the write up to your progress. You will find those chord changes will start getting up to speed as you progress through your planned consolidation practice routine(s).
You have done the difficult bit and learned what strings to play, what finger to play them and in what order to play them. An exercise that might help with not looking at your picking hand is to practice playing the pattern repetitively over each chord while calling out the fingers as you play them (i.e. T, 1, 2 etc). The only thing you need to remember is the alternating bass notes played with the thumb change for each chord.
1
&
2
&
3
&
4
&
T
T
2
1
T
1
That is the way to look at it. Just aim to be a little bit better than where you were yesterday or the week before and you will see progress and feel good about how far youâve come along. I think you have done very well considering that you have breezed through the lessons. Just think how much more progress youâre going to make going back to consolidate everything youâve learned so far.
Hey thanks for all the comments guys!
I was practicing again today and trying to slow it down and get it more accurate as per your guyâs suggestions, then I remembered - the old friend metronome!! This gives me something to stick to and to view progress with, in a linear fashion.
I can now play it pretty accurately at 85bpm (up from first efforts at 80bpm)
The original is apparently 190bpm! So I doubt I ever get up to that before I get bored and move on but I now have a baseline that I can improve upon bit by bit, and this methodology of slowing right down until it can be done correct and then increase speed from there without losing quality is a really great tip so I will apply this to every song that I learn in the future.
Is there a method you guys use for increasing speed? So say you nail a piece once at a new speed, would you then keep on that speed until you can do it accurately many times over before bumping up the speed a notch?
Hi Tom, I tend to go with the approach of being able to play it four times in a row without making a mistake then increase the bpm gradually. I tend to go with 5 bpm increments. If I find myself struggling I reduce the bpm to previous bpm and repeat process. Some folk might increase in smaller bpm increments.
Hi Tom and welcome.
I moved to live in Ireland when I was 20 and had a blast (now reside in the Republic of Merseyside).
Your passions of gambling and music can make good bedfellows-
Dieter Meier, Swiss conceptual artist, professional gambler and frontman for Yello says âOh Yeah!â
Well done on yer first share n all. Letâs hope itâs the first of many on a long journeyâŚ
Thatâs an excellent song to get into the fun world of fingerpicking.
I remember it being one of the first patterns I could play in a decent and constant flow and I was very proud of myself
Speed is one thing, consistent picking in a smooth even flow is something else.
keep practicing this briefly every tile you do a practice session and youâll notice both consistency and speed will come in time. the âtrickâ (no trick) is to turn this into muscle memory over time so that your hands do it on auto pilot. On that way, you gain consistencyâŚand without consistency no faster stuff that sounds like real music for audiences to listen to.
I think youâre at a point that isnât to bad for somebody with your experience. It will have to be hard for a while before you can make it look easy.
Think back to what made you good at poker. I can imagine you develop some kind of reflexes, some kind of âthinking toolsâ that come quick and easy to you. You have no time to think and these efficient links between the neurons in your brain were built with practise, time and some good nights of sleep in between. Thatâs the same thing I see here. Youâre looking and thinking and I âhearâ that in your playing. This will only get better (even though youâll have some bad days, everybody does ;))
Hi Brian thanks for the words of encouragement!
Haha I love that song, first heard it in the movie âSecret of my Successâ when his auntie seduces him in the limo
Great wisdom, you have a lovely way with words man, thanks so much for the encouragement.
Actually had some break throughs with it today, the little and often approach seems to be working well, I think I passed the room with the guitar and nipped in for a few tries about 5 times today haha.
I just tried the achor finger technique with picking hand and I must say I instantly felt more solid in the fingering. My little finger on right hand is damaged from an accident and I cant bend it, its fixed in a slightly bent shape so its a bit âshorterâ than it would be fully extended but still seems to do a good job, gonna keep trying with this tomorrow.
With that and going through all the chord pairings to get a base level for my ~2 months of consolidation work plus some other practice I actually have more fingertip pain now than when I first started so gonna have to take it chill for a couple of days!
Sounds great, looks like youâre getting seriously hooked to the good stuff.
Sounds like it is on anchor duty then, which is the default job of the pinky on your picking hand when fingerpicking. Although, it is no necessary. Find out what is the most comfortable in the long run but I can imagine that it helps to keep your hand in place while developing your style.
Thanks; while English isnât my first language, I am to inspire!
OK Iâm reaching the end of my first week of consolidation for Grade 1 and revisited all of the chord changes to see if there was much improvement and to my surprise it was nice to see an overall boost in change speed. I know everyone has their own metrics on how they judge their changes but I switched from doing OMC where we are not bothered about duff notes, to strumming the chord and making sure it sounds good. Iâm not picking individual strings because thatâs a bit slow but I can hear pretty clearly if there is a string buzz or a bad note so if that happens I just re adjust and make sure it rings clear before the next change.
Iâm able to do about 1-2 hours per day at the moment broken down into a few sessions over the day.
Hereâs a little update on the finger picking tune, getting a bit more consistent now but there is huge disparity in volume across notes so yeah plenty to work on
Thanks for the update. It sounds like your consolidation is coming along well. Thatâs spot on thinking about the quality of the chords being played rather than trying to achieve as many as possible.
Good Riddance is coming along well mate.
Maybe focus on your right hand position and practice playing a simple pattern of T, 1, 2, 3 slowly focusing on the quality of each note played. With practice you will achieve a balance volume between the notes played with each finger.
