Hi Tony, congratulations. You did very well on your debut. Your friend’s lead guitar and vocals had a very good accompanying rhythm guitar. I think that the extra time you spent being sure you had those three chords nailed and working on a steady rhythm gave you a lot of reassurance that you were ready for the presentation.
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@dobleA Thank you. As you say by the time the day came, most things were on auto-pilot as I had done them many many times. This allowed me to enjoy the moment.
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Already giggin’ 
great stuff 
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Hi Tony, congratulations on your debut gig. You provided a steady rhythm support for the lead and thats a great accomplishment for where you are in your guitar journey. I can tell you are having fun.
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I do sometimes wonder what I am thinking of! Justin in the online guitar group has given us a challenge (not as hard as the ones my friend Clint gives me) of recording playing a song from start to finish and posting it in the guitar group. Personally I find that easy as I have done this several times.
So I thought I would add to the challenge ( remember my middle name is MUG!). I have decided to learn a new song and post it before the 30 June deadline.
Easy… no… I have chosen the Beatles number ‘Get Back’ which is a fast song and I have to master playing 4 different chords A,G,D,A in 2 seconds. Not once but about a dozen times in the song.
Stupid or what… 
It should be fun though
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Not the piece I planned on for the monthly challenge, but holiday got in the way of practicing. So, jamming along to a recording of my friend playing Johhny B Goode. The rhythm guitar has been mixed slightly loud so that I can hear what’s going on. I noticed that I am still hitting the lower E string when strumming the A chord. Also I nearly lost the pick halfway through, but managed to get it back in place without dropping it.
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Excellent work on that one, Tony! That rhythm was nice and solid, keeping your arm moving steadily and completely in the groove. Well done, sir! 
In case, you’re still going for “Get back” - good luck with that one, I love that tune and would really like to see you master it. You can do it! You’re on a very good way from all I can see/read in your Log. 
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Hi @Lisa_S , thanks. Yes ‘Get Back’ is still work in progress. I will post a video once it’s done.
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Week 23 review
2 July 2023
Looking back over my practice log, not a lot has happened, practice wise recently. With concentrating on the debut and then on challenge3, not a lot of learning and practice has been done. I have started grade 2 / module 10 and have just started to get used to the A mini barre chord. I feel this will be better for me in the long run as my fingers are still too large to do the open A chord with 3 fingers in one fret happily. I have also finally found another rift that I like it is the La Bamba rift. I usually don’t bother too much with the rifts at the moment because the tunes didn’t inspire me, but this tune I like. Later I might learn the whole song.
Still working on songs with the G chord in them. I am using “Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Get Back” as the songs to practice the ADG chords.
This week, I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I feel that it was worth it. Justin published a link to get a discount on Guitar Pro. At first, I thought I would just get it now while it is cheap as I know he uses it later on in the course. However after playing with it for a couple of days,
I have found it’s a great tool for practicing songs and rifts. I can get it to imitate the songs app by playing the tune and showing the chords to play at the speed I a comfortable with at the moment. I did need to transcribe the songs into the software using Justin’s app as the master, but it did have the added advantage of me studying the song more as I put it on the system. I will later add more of my songs out of my song book onto the system so that I can use it to practice them.
The advantage I find of the Guitar Pro program over the app is that I have a large screen on the computer so it’s a lot easier to read what is going on with the big screen.
I hope now to start to get back to the lessons and move further on.
Well, that’s it for this review. Onwards and upwards.
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10 July review
Another week passed with some successes. The first one is gear related. Due to me not wanting to upset my wife or the neighbours, I practice using headphones. These are plugged into my Focusrite audio interface. Unfortunately, I have nearly pulled the interface off the desk top a couple of times when I move around with the headset on. Something had to be done about this, so I bought a cheap Musicians Wireless ‘air bridge’ designed to allow the musician to move around and still use headphones in a similar way they do on stage.
This was only a budget set but they work very well. There is a bit of hiss when not playing but that disappears when playing and there is no noticeable latency. The only problem I have found with them is that if I also use my budget wireless guitar transmitter it there can be short drop outs when the two seem to get confused, so I just use the normal guitar lead and all is OK.
Still practicing module 10 and the Hammer on fingering is coming along well as well as the F chord. The La Bamba rift is still a long way from being good! On the whole I am please with the way it is going. I am finding that structured practicing is still hard to get back to after a few weeks away from it, but it is getting there.
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Loved watching your videos and seeing your progress. Looks like you are doing great. I am also hanging in module 10 at present and am considering moving ahead to 11. I just have to make the decision and do it.
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Not a lot to talk about at the moment as the guitar has taken a back seat over the last week due to me doing my other passion, visiting air shows and photography. Back now and having to really put some practice in this week as I will be doing two songs with my guitar mate on Saturday at a get together in front of a group of people who I only know half of. To make it more interesting, I am not just joining in with him, but also his mate who is the rhythm half of his band. This could go SO WRONG!
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Or SO RIGHT Tony 
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Well, I did the 2 songs and boy was it fun. I really enjoyed it. The video can be seen at Johnny B Goode and Further up the road. - TonyHS
Back to consolidating different chords now. to start playing more songs.
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Week 28 review
31 July 2023
Wow I am about to start week 28 of my guitar journey. Never in a million years did I expect to get this far. I have just done my 2nd appearance with Clint at his birthday party in front of 120 guests, many of whom I didn’t know. The half hour leading up to the ‘performance’ was full of nervous tension, but the minute I got up to walk to the stage, it all went, and I had the time of my life. I did say at the beginning that I would do the 2 appearances that Clint asked for, as he got me into playing the guitar, and then I would just play for my own enjoyment. However, I must confess if he asks again I will definitely not say no.
Watching the video back in the cold light of day, I can see that I was getting too much into the zone and bouncing around like a demented puppet. I will have to learn to tone that down a bit.
Well it’s back to practicing and learning now to improve my playing. I have decided to move onto module 11 as the F chord, although rings out OK is still holding me back on speed of change to it from other chords. I will just keep practicing this as part of my practice regime.
Module 11 involves sus chords and fingerstyle. I have watched the sus chords lesson and decided to come back to them, as when I watched the finger style lesson it was a revelation. Who would have thought you could do that on an electric guitar! I have got half of Happy Birthday down and I am hooked. I then heard some finger playing on electric guitar on the AVOYP section of Justin Guitar and boy do I want to play like that. I found that my new strat has too low an action to play finger style well, but the original guitar the Clint gave me has a lot higher action so that works really well for that type of playing. Just wait, soon I will be putting up a video of me doing finger style. Well when I say soon I mean in a couple of moths or so
Really enjoying this journey. Onwards and upwards.
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I love the typo Tony at least I assume you meant ‘definitely’ not ‘defiantly’ 
I suggest retain that. Feeling the music and bouncing around is a good thing in my book. Stiff as a statue concentrating intensely, I’d say tone that down.
Keep doing what you are doing!
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Oops yes I will correct that.
Re the bouncing around, I will try to tone it down a little, but it will be impossible to loose. When I love the music, I find it very hard to sit still. The only time it will be cool, calm and collected will be when I am concentrating on a solo, which is still a little way off yet.
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14 August Review
Well it has been a few weeks since a review as, to be honest I don’t feel that a lot has happened. There have been no new songs mastered, I find sus chords difficult, so it is just practice, practice. The sus chords are do-able on their own, but trying to tie them into the upstroke when strumming is impossible! I am enjoying learning Happy Birthday finger style and that is starting to come together. La Bamba is slowly getting there and I am now incorporating (or trying to) the 2 string plucking in that rift. House of the Rising sun (Am, C, D Dm, E and F chords) is now at 60% speed with few errors and Old Time Rock and Roll C,D & G chords) is up to 80% speed.
I have started playing at transcription to get my ear to recognise notes and where they are on the fretboard as well as getting used to using Guitar Pro. I do this once a week in theory for 30 minutes, but it usually goes on a lot longer than that before I realise it I enjoy this and again look forward to the lessons on how to do it properly.
So there you have it, a temporary halt on improvement, but slowly getting there. I suppose the frustration is that I want to finish the current module and the next one, so that I can get on to learning to play the Blues as that sems to be one of the foundations of Rock and Roll.
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It has been a busy 2 weeks since the last update. No real practice as such as I had to prepare for another appearance at my friends 90th birthday party. Things did not go well in the run up to the party. Clint gave me the chords to learn to do the backing of Apache. They were Am C D Dm F and G. Now I can play all these chords, but do you think I could get them to change accurately and up to speed? NO WAY!
In the end, 3 days before the party, I emailed him and told him that Apache was not on. He said that was not a problem, he gave be 4 songs which can just be done using ADE. 3 of them I had never played before and one ,Sweet Caroline, even used a capo. However, as these all used ADE chord shapes there wasn’t a problem.
On the day everything went great. Here is a video of 2 of the songs. https://youtu.be/AnmA260xqFA
Now back to getting Apache up to speed before the next time. At least there is no time limit now.
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