I’ve started taking Justin’s guitar lessons and want to keep track of what I’m learning so I don’t forget it. Does anyone have tips or examples of how they document their guitar journey? I’m thinking of writing down what I learn after each module — maybe including techniques, songs, challenges, etc. Curious how others approach this!
I’m pretty sure that I want it to be a physical notebook, not digital.
I’ve been writing down my practice routine each day. Nothing too detailed, just 2 or 3 bullet points and the bpm speed of any exercises I do with a metronome.
I agree writing it in a notebook is more useful. There is a digital practice assistant on the website but I found It’s easier and faster to write things down. Admittedly I’m totally tech illiterate.
Hello Matt,
try something and you will see.
I can remember when I was first grader I used to do “worksheets” for myself, so I know exactly what to do, see below. After passing it I dont do it anymore, because lot of things I do on auto or I can remember them, but of course there are materials that I forgot and I would need some refresh… I think it is part of journey, to forget things you dont use and in later stage you wont focus things you dont need. Like learning some country lick, when you are blues player… but I might be wrong. That is just mine point of view.
I think sooner or later you will start to make your own song book and that could be the only thing you need - Justin also recommend to make your own chord book, but I did not make it.
For song book I am more like writing down TABs to one or more A4 sheets, then print, laminate and keep them in “grab area” when I dont know or I need refresh.
How I did it as first grader:
How I am doing it now:
I just got much more free sessions. Key for me is not to focus on many things at once…
When I learn the part from some time I simply rewrite it in Excel with new topics and throw the old one to bin. I can remember Joe Robinson and many others keep their practice diary, so they know all the history.
So I’m going to disagree with you all who think it has to be a physical notebook. I think a digital solution is much better.
Personally I use the default Apple Notes app on my iPad.
Advantages of this method…
I can organise my notes dynamically with the use of hashtags. A physical notebook is stuck in the order you wrote it
Made a mistake? Easy to correct without the notebook being messy with crossings out.
Want to insert an image? Use the iPad camera or take a screenshot
Got a YouTube tutorial? Embed the link into the note
Want to hand write notes instead of typing? There’s the Apple Pencil for that
Wanted a physical copy too? Connect a printer and away you go
Not got your iPad with you? It’s also on your phone or via Apple Notes on the web
What about fire or flood? Your digital notes exist in the cloud too
But an iPad is really expensive? I have the iPad anyway, I didn’t buy it just for a music notebook. In fact it’s my main computer
If people want to stick with a physical note book that’s fine, just don’t tell me they are superior
@mattswain I agree with you that having modern way to do it is great way too. 
For this purposes I have tablet where I have PDFs, where I am learning from, so I dont print everything - back in the first grade it really motivated me to have it on paper and now I got it more like from time to time… I got pretty decent mind about “where I am”.
I can see really big advantage of having some note app where you can tick and untick the box of what you practiced that day.
I started a log here on the forum and … thats all 
I store a lot of guitar stuff in Notes on my iPhone.
What do you mean by this….
How does it work?
I have a pretty good idea what I should practice/learn, and on the rare occasions that I decide to act upon it, I simply go back to the JG lesson, covering it and do it again…
On the other hand, I do find making notes (in Word) for song ideas and lyrics helpful.
So on iPhone, in the Notes app, if you go to the Folders view this is where you can make this happen.
In any of your notes, put a hashtag e.g. #acoustic or #musictheory (or multiple tags) then in the folder view at the bottom there’s an option to create a new folder. You give your new folder a name and click the option to make a Smart Folder and then pick the rules for the folder - maybe in this case you pick “tags” and then tell it you want anything with #acoustic in it.
The beauty of this method is that Smart Folders are just a view. It’s not physically moving files about. So if you had a lot of tags and some songs met multiple rules then you’d see them in each of the appropriate folders e.g. #acoustic #blues would appear in both folders if you set them up that way.
If you had a paper notebook that you’d been making for years, you couldn’t easily reorganise your notes into different folders without writing it all out again. Here you just alter the hashtags, update the rules and everything is updated for you
In my screenshot, the folders that have a little cog next to them instead of a normal folder icon are smart folders
Ah right! I wasn’t aware of that feature. It could come in useful.
Many thanks! 
Yeah, this is what I do.
While when I was earning degrees, I organized things more thoroughly (and my method changed over time), I don’t do that with my guitar stuff.
I do have a collection of files on my pc that are a lot more scattershot. Most of them are just songsheets. Not necessarily of stuff I know. But of things that are options.
I have a songbook for myself in the app Songbook Pro. I have a library of well over 4,000 songs in it, but I have a “folder” (it’s more like a tag, since a single song can live in more than one folder) for “my” songs. Some I know well and play regularly. Others I’m working on. It syncs that whole song library to my Google Drive so I can access it on my desktop pc at home, on my laptop, on my Android tablet, or on the ipad. I tend to use the Android tablet to take to song circle jams and I’ve got most of the songs that folks might choose.
I have a physical binder with some paper copies of things. It has a very miscellaneous assortment of things in it. Some of it dates back to my first private lessons in 07/08-ish. I looked at a bunch of it when I picked up my guitar again in 2023 and had no idea what to do with it - that’s when I knew I needed to start my lessons all the way at the beginning. Some songs. Some exercises. None of it is organized. I should do better, but it’s low on the priority list.
I don’t keep a chord library. That one doesn’t make as much sense to me. Especially since I don’t know of a good digital way of doing this. Because let’s be honest, it’s more than just putting it in the book to say you “know” it, right? At least for me, there are multiple stages of learning/knowing chords and if I was going to do it right, I would want to account for that AND to be able to move a chord from one to the other as I learn it better. I do keep a chord chart poster on the wall, though.
I do like this method of organizing things. As I described above, Songbook Pro allows me to organize my songs this way. Which is cool because I have my own, personal folder for stuff, my wife has her own folder, I have a folder for my guitar group’s songbook, my wife has a folder for her ukulele group’s songbook, and they all pull from the same library of songs and we can add/remove songs from the folders. It’s not exactly tags as you describe, but that’s essentially what it is.
I use this method at work for organizing a massive collection of photographs. I’ve got something like a quarter million photographs (collecting more every day). I load them into software that lets me tag them with the information I need, so a single photo can be associated with several different things.
I document what I am working on about weekly in an MS word file with a preset template with the categories as noted below. I make notes on there what I need to spend more time on, or circle back to for practice, but I don’t write down a practice plan. My documentation is primarily so I can look back occasionally and see progress.
My Log is broken down by:
Practice Songs - What I have been playing that week
Listening To - What I have been Listening to that week
Theory - What music theory I grasped during the week or am working on understanding better
Practice Session - What I did during my practice sessions (including approximate time) and what I need to make sure I am working on going forward
Notes: completely opened ended . . . If I had a performance or a Jam session, what went well or didn’t. What gear I might consider purchasing. What other factors contributed to music during the week, I.E. travelled so didnt practice as much etc. etc.
I periodically review the history when I do so I will often see things that I want to bring to the front again or songs that I have not played in a long time, maybe I think I can get a bit more accurate on or so.
Well, I’m on the beginning journey myself (1 year in), and I’ve gone digital too.
I started off with paper, as per Justin’s suggestion, and have a few printed song sheets (in plastic so they’re stiff) in my guitar case (which I really, really need to memorize). But found that, as @Mustela wrote, this is not easily edited, nor searched.
Then I started using the Learning Log built into Justin website, and a separate to store my digital songs. I’m a bit of a less disciplined learner, and am not always at a big screen nor online so found I didn’t use the log, and extend the digital software for managing my songs to also keep notes.
I keep all music and most notes in Songbook Chordpro (LinkeSOFT SongBook Songs and Chords), that exists across all platforms (15$US license for each platform, eg iOS, Android, Windows, OS X). I’ve configured it to make a local copy of my files so it works even with no internet connection.
The software allows me to change the key on the fly too (but not for the PDF songs–though they’re searchable), and its It’ll also do play along variable speed Karaoke style (if you own the mp3 of the song).
it is simple to import songs in chordpro from websites, and I can import from Ultimate-Guitar.com too.
. .
The application stores songs using the “chordpro” format (an Opensource standard https://www.chordpro.org/ ) which also supports, PDFs, TABs, JPG, and plain text. Using this format means that I’m not hogtied to this software I’m using–I can use any software that follows that standard
Notes can go in there too – either embedded alongside the song, or separately as a text file (masquerading as a song)
It has the idea of “setlist” (eg “lesson 08”, “aspirational”, “Current”, etc), “tags” (#folk, #intermediate, #easy, etc) , utterly searchable, synchronized on my cloud site.
There’s also a ton of support, that I’ve not used, for pedal support, midi support, syncing everyone’s display in a room, supporting different instruments for the same song (eg Uke and Guitar)
If you don’t have the app (say, you’re at a friend’s house w/out your device), and you can get online, you’re online source files are readable by any text editor.
Hope you find a good solution that works for you,
Cheers,
Bruce
do you use the Windows version of the LinkeSoft program? I tried it out because it was the only one that was free, but it wasn’t going to work for my purposes. The tablet versions look great, though.
If the Windows version was good, I’d honestly switch because it at least has a more in-depth chord library.
I’m in the Mac universe, not the Windows universe, haven’t tried the Windows version of SongBook Chordpro–use the desktop and tablet versions and like them both.
this is what the windows version looks like
I had high hopes because it has a better chord library. I do just about all of my editing on the pc, and also home practice. If it doesn’t look the same on the devices, I can’t trust it’ll behave the same (especially with regards to appearance and scrolling behavior). I was willing to try it, though, but it crashes more and more as my song library gets bigger. With as large as my song library is, it gives up entirely. But even with only a dozen songs loaded into it, it’s flaky.
It’s disappointing because Songbook Pro is actually a bit OVER simplified in many cases. It will only use a very small subset of the chordpro commands. Which leaves a lot of functionality on the table. But what wins for me is that it’s consistent across platforms and it’s stable on all of them. I continue to bug the developer with requests to support more chordpro directives (especially the one to define chords however you want them).
The autoscrolling pause functionality that linkesoft songbook has would be especially handy. there are definitely spots in LOTS of songs where a short little pause would help prevent the autoscrolling behavior from getting ahead of my playing.
If I was in the mac universe exclusively, I’d be considering OnSong. That one looks like it’s the best app of the bunch. A friend uses it for his online jams
I’m split here as I don’t like using digital devises in the AM and generally prefer notepads etc.
However for ease of use having a google doc I can check and tick off has been handy so I can just highlight it and not have to re wright my practis out daily.
on the other hand I have ADHD and a laptop can be super distracting.
My daughter likes to use a notebooks for everything and finds it rewarding to log her progress.
as far as not forgetting I have a “photographic memory” so I’m sorry but I can’t relate.
it is actually a hindrance and not a blessing when it comes to learning guitar as I can learn considerably more mentally than I can use or perform practically leaving me somewhat aimless sometimes in practical terms as my knowledge far exceeds my ability.
As I said my daughter uses a physical notebook and spends about 2 mins on it after each session and makes notes while playing, this seems to help her map out her own learning and progress very well. She is 10
Though I’m over 6X her age, I think this would help me to solidify what I’ve learned…
I do believe that physically writing something down engages different neural pathways and reinforces the newfound knowledge.
(oh, for a photographic memory…)
From your screen captureI notice that it is not licensed. It must be partially hobbled, or few would purchase it.
Perhaps the hobbling inadvertently introduced instability? It’s a small shop and is very responsive to feedback, and all platforms are in active development.
I’ve recently added to the SongBook ChordPro application a trove of over 1000 beautifully crafted ChordPro files (in styles of music I like) that I found on line (see post FREE downloadable ChordPro formatted songs ) and both the iOS and OS X apps are stable and format in the same manner.
[now I need to up my skillset to be able to play them]
I use the {pause:} directive frequently, particularly above the sections lacking lyrics so that it scrolls appropriately. Karaoke is a big plus for me too.
Check out how the guy in the link above formats his files, it’s for ease of use and gigging. Really makes sense to me.
I totally agree with writing something down.
I have ADHD and Autism and need to physically write a list every morning or it doesn’t get done.
I tried digital but doesn’t work for me at all. maybe its an age thing.
this book may help you
Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing
its by Molly Gerbrian.
Someone here in the community very kindly recommended it to me and although I don’t struggle with memory the interleveled practise has helped me beyond my wildest expectations with not getting bored.
I read it rather than doing the Audio as I find reading vs audio books to be the same as physically writing vs typing.
You can get it on amazon very cheap, I read it on holiday when I couldn’t practise 
