What is the hard-for-you thing you're currently working on?

[mfeeney0110]

Good plan and pleased to meet you. I am 66 and first picked up a guitar in Sept. 2022. Justin Guitar is full of wonderful music and people. If you haven’t yet discovered the clubs https://www.justinguitar.com/clubs and you’re so inclined, try one of them. There is a great group of elders in the Vintage Club. You could spark quite a discussion about what constitutes “senior citizen music!”

[DaveTC59]

I set myself a task of playing the lead for Apache by memory. Tabbed it all out first. The hardest part for me was/is the ‘Gallup’ riff, it requires speed and a very light touch, and good timing. The rest is pretty straightforward. Nearly there with the gallop too. Just a little inconsistent on occasion .
Dave

[JokuMuu]

Sounds like a solid plan, Nancy

[Daphne20]

Switching between barre chords and open chords with a metronome.

[Richard_close2u]

@Lisa_S

This little thing is giving me headaches:

e---X----|
b---8----|
g---7----|
D---9----|
A---10---|
E---X----|

and its usage in context

Lisa.
It is a curtailed C-shape chord.
Root note at fret 10 = G chord.

A full version would have your index barring across strings 1 to 3.
Practice improving it by playing a regular C chord in open position without your index finger. It will help train fingers 1, 2 & 3 to do their jobs.

[LunaRocket]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

and learning guitar ain’t as easy as it looks.

What? I Never thought it looked easy! And I’m right, unfortunately.

But as to what is hardest for me right now, reading TAB. I understand how to do it, but my brain doesn’t want to wrap around the idea that it’s upside down. But just like everything else, I suppose it will get easier. At least I hope so.

The other thing I’m having trouble with is tapping my foot on the beat when I’m doing fancier strumming patterns. I had no problem before. Some songs with the Old Faithful pattern I can do fine, but others, nope. I realize it’s just supposed to take practice, but it’s a bit frustrating.

And going from Am to the F barre. Just can’t do it fast enough.

Practice, practice, practice.

[sequences]

Maybe the Am barre to the F barre would be easier than from the Am open?

[mattswain]

@LunaRocket

And going from Am to the F barre. Just can’t do it fast enough.

Maybe you already do this but when I look at tricky transitions like this I look at where my fingers start and where they need to get to and look at how I can achieve this is in the least amount of movement. For Am to F my middle finger is key. It slides across one string and everything else pivots around it. And then as you say, practice, practice, practice

[Lisa_S]

@Richard_close2u

Practice improving it by playing a regular C chord in open position without your index finger. It will help train fingers 1, 2 & 3 to do their jobs.

This is an excellent advice, Richard. Thanks a lot.

Sometimes, the most obvious thing to do never appears to me until someone mentions it. That will be a nice little workout for my stubby pinky.

[Richard_close2u]

@Lisa_S

a nice little workout for my stubby pinky

If the reach is too much, place a capo somewhere further along the neck.

You will never uses this fingering in open position so don’t need to have the extra stretch and ache of practicing it at open position.

[Jwaters]

I am working on power chords right now and a few power chord songs and riffs. My problem is going down near 10th fret and lower my pointer finger doesn’t lay down and get a buzz. I am also working my e shaped Barr chords my same finger lift a little when doing em shape further down like 10 fret area.

[artax_2]

@LunaRocket

my brain doesn’t want to wrap around the idea that it’s upside down.

Same!! I can process the top and bottom strings on tab, but as soon as I start looking at the middle ones, my brain glazes over. I kind of want to seek out some basic tab exercises, like how I had with piano when I was a kid- basically drilling easy easy easy single note melodies on tab or even single string note patterns just to build that hand eye coordination for each string.

[sequences]

@LunaRocket

my brain doesn’t want to wrap around the idea that it’s upside down

tip the guitar backwards so you can see the fretboard. if you kept tipping it back, the tab would be in the same orientation as you looking at your guitar. So I just think of the tab as being MY viewpoint peeking over the top not someone else’s or a mirror.

[LunaRocket]

@sequences

tip the guitar backwards so you can see the fretboard.

Yeah, I understand that, but then I’m reading right to left instead of left to right. lol

[LunaRocket]

@mattswain

For Am to F my middle finger is key.

I hadn’t thought about anchor fingers except when relating to the A, D and E back in Grade 1. I’m about to start practice so I’ll check this out, thanks for the tip.

[Tbushell]

@mattswain

For Am to F my middle finger is key. It slides across one string and everything else pivots around it

@LunaRocket ,

I recently discovered the same thing while learning to play Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again”.

Though I prefer to think about it as “middle finger drops down from D string to G string, and hand pivots to F barre.”

Potato po-tah-to, I suppose - the net effect is the same - it works!

[pyradise]

I’'ve been over to the Vintage club but mostly corresponded with one person. I hope u don’t think of yourself as vintage, my son would b very upset; he turns 60 this July!
I have always loved music but the music I wanted to play & sing, and did for awhile in my 30’s, were the songs that told stories. It was the music during the Vietnam war & after. You aroused my curiosity & I looked up John Denver (one of my favorites) & discovered that we were the same age & that he joined in the protests against the war. Did u know, “Sunshine on My Shoulders” was written at that time to bring joy to our boys that were over there in the war dying? I didn’t know until I did some research; I just knew it had a special meaning.

[pyradise]

Oops! I haven’t joined a club, usually, just chatting!

[mattswain]

Good luck. I find this approach helps me with all my transitions to F, a lot more so than plonking 4 fingers on the fretboard and hoping for the best. I’m also learning songs that go D to F and G to F and if I get that middle towards its home on the 2nd fret then the rest of my fingers largely fall into place. I still need to work on speed so it’s more of a single fluid movement rather than the middle finger hitting then the rest following but I’d say the time gap between them is coming down

[mfeeney0110]

Thank you for sharing some of your musical self Nancy. I didn’t know the John Denver song’s backstory, but it has a nice, slow finger picking pattern to practice! I grew up on music of the sixties and early seventies, and it influenced me profoundly. Son of a conservative career US Air Force man, I was profoundly anti-war and liberal and long-haired by age seventeen. I blame it on those rabble-rousing musicians - John Denver, Joni Mitchell, that incorrigible Bob Dylan, and one of my favorites, Ten Years After. “I’d Love to Change the World” is on my learn to play list. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEQNb17BSd0