Witkatz' learning log

[witkatz]

25.10.2025
I have decided to start a learning log, which may help me on my way to achieving the goals I have set myself.
I’m an engineer in my mid-50s. I have been strumming around for myself on a cheap Keiper acoustic guitar for more than 30 years now. A year ago, I tried to improve my skills with Simply Guitar app. I haven’t learned much, but it has sparked my passion. Since the beginning of 2025, I’m on track with Justin’s courses. In a few years, I would like to have acquired enough technique and confidence to be able to entertain an audience of friends and family with my music - at the latest When I’m Sixty Four

Gear
I recently replaced my Keiper with a much better sounding Takamine GN51CE, and playing is now even more enjoyable.

I will try to document my journey through song recordings. There are many additional challenges for me to overcome, such as singing, singing in English – a foreign language for me – and recording and publishing. Hopefully, this will give me enough self-confidence, and I am grateful for any honest feedback. I have a list of campfire songs, I can play and sing from memory, and some of them I work on to develop.

Songlist
Bad Moon Rising
Baker Street
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Hallelujah
Happy Birthday fingerstyle
Heart of Gold
I Walk The Line
Wish You Were Here
Kiedy Byłem Małym Chłopcem
Sailing
Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay
Walk Of Life
Wenn ein Mensch Lebt

There are of course plenty of songs more that I love and want to learn to play some day. Many of them I find in Justins Lessons and Songbooks

Module 12
26.10.2025
I started Module 12 six weeks ago and am now almost finished. Now, a week or two of consolidation and simply playing songs with what I’ve learned.

And this is my practice schedule and timer.

28.10.2025

Module 12 is now complete for me, with moderate success, and I’m giving myself another week or two to consolidate what I’ve learnt. I now know what power chords are, had fun with them on the acoustic guitar, and may be able to use a power chord in a blues song now and then. However, I don’t plan to play a power chord rock song at the moment. Once I’ve bought an ES-335 or a Pacifica in a few years, I will definitely repeat all the modules, especially Module 12.

04.11.2025
Module 12 onsolidation is progressing well, power chords are gradually improving, but it will be a long time before they really flow smoothly. Muting the chords is fun and opens up new possibilities, e.g., adding dynamics between verses and choruses. I tried this in Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

09.11.2025
End of Module 12 consolidation with the promise to repeat this module intensively in a few years, especially the power chords with electric guitar. Today, I’m doing the routine exercises completely for the last time. In the next weeks/months, I’ll practice the power chords on the acoustic guitar for a few minutes every day so that they come fluent and become a habit.

[witkatz]

25.10.2025
Song Work: Bad Moon Rising
I love songs by CCR and inspired by @LunaRocket’s great solo performance I added Bad Moon Rising to my songlist, thanks Rebecca
This is my first AVOYP of a whole song I publish. I’m actually working on the song. I’m currently on module 12 and practising palm muting I need for the intro. That’s why the version with the intro is still a developer. A version with a solo is a dreamer
Bad Mood Rising 20251025

01.11.2025
worked a little on the muted chords in the intro, a 1% improvement done
Bad Moon Rising 20251101

[Prof_Thunder]

That was great. Lovely guitar. I’ve been looking at a similar Takamine model. I’d be interested to hear how you find it. It certainly sounded good.

I think your singing in English is fine. I’m a native English speaker but I’ve tried a couple of songs in Spanish and it was ok. Easier than I expected doing it in another language.

I saw that one on your list is in Polish. Are you going to sing in Polish?

Keep up the log!

Ian

[witkatz]

@Prof_Thunder

I’d be interested to hear how you find it. It certainly sounded good.

Would you like to give your Telecaster an acoustic companion? very good idea! Takamine is a good brand and the guitar has a beautiful sound, very balanced, making it easy to sing along to. With D’Addario Phosphor Bronze strings, it sounds great for blues. I didn’t have to do any setup, Takamine came well adjusted from the shop. What I also liked was the pickup with the built-in preamplifier. I have an old amplifier and the guitar sounds wonderful with an amp.

@Prof_Thunder

I saw that one on your list is in Polish. Are you going to sing in Polish?

This is my plan. German and Polish are my two native languages, and I will have some german and polish songs in my song list. Kiedy Byłem Małym Chłopcem is a very well known polish campfire-blues-song, I’ll record it when I go on with Module 13 dealing with blues.

Thank you for your encouraging words. It’s good to know that I don’t have to hide my singing. That gives me some confidence, and things can only get better.

Cheers Withold

[Silvia80]

Hi Withold…starting a LL is a great idea, I’m a big fan of LLs, I’m sure it’ll be much beneficial for your guitar journey! Let me say that your new guitar is a real beauty (…well, as if you didn’t know already )

The recording sounds really good! I remember Rebecca @LunaRocket rendition too!

@witkatz

I will try to document my journey through song recordings.

I do the same, using both my LL and the AVOYP section. I find it useful to watch and listen back and be self-critical or pat my shoulders by myself

[witkatz]

Thanks Silvia

@Silvia80

I do the same, using both my LL and the AVOYP section.

I know, I was falling in love with your fingerpicking
Cheers Withold

[Silvia80]

That’s very kind of you Withold…thank you!
I need to learn to rename a link, the way you did here, I will try…if I don’t understand how to do it I might ask you for some help!

[witkatz]

29.10.2025
Song Work: Wenn ein Mensch lebt
A reflective song by the East German band Puhdys from 1973, which I always enjoy playing in autumn, especially around All Saints’ Day. For a long time, I played the song very simply. I also practised using the F chord well with this song.
Wenn Ein Mensch Lebt 20251026

Recently, reworked it a bit to give the rather monotonous song a little more dynamics.
Wenn Ein Mensch Lebt 20251029

[roger_holland]

Hi Withold,
Nice
That’s a happy tune for me and a nice song to start the day with … in my opinion this is one that you should keep close with you for a long time and slowly "perfecting " and making it yours

Greetings

[witkatz]

@roger_holland

this is one that you should keep close with you for a long time and slowly "perfecting " and making it yours

Hi Rogier, thanks for your kind words. Actually, this is a song that is close to my heart, and like my other campfire songs, I know it from memory so I can sing it wherever I am - in the car, in the bathroom, or on my bike on the way to work. You don’t often see cyclists singing loudly in the Netherlands, do you? You’d have to come to the Lower Rhine region in Germany for that
Cheers

[martzon]

Lovely; really enjoyed the dynamics you bring to the song. Thanks for introducing me to it; it’s great to have something from another language/culture/time that I’m unlikely to have found on my own!

[witkatz]

@martzon

it’s great to have something from another language/culture/time

Here’s another time, culture and language a song that’s almost as old as I am.
Kiedy Byłem Małym Chłopcem
A simplified version of a Polish blues classic by the group Breakout from 1971, which I would like to use for learning blues in Module 13.

[witkatz]

Module 13
09.11.2025
The practice schedule sheets for six weeks have been printed out, and the module will not be left until the shuffles, chord progressions and simple solos run really smoothly from the pick.

I watched the first videos for Module 13, and they are real eye-openers. I have been familiar with open seventh chords for a long time, but now I finally understand how they are created. The explanation of the shuffle rhythm and chord progressions is also very good. I will now listen to blues recordings in a completely different way, with the feeling that I am finally beginning to understand something about them.
I immediately tried to apply the shuffle to the blues I know: Kiedy bylem malym chlopcem 20251109 Well, chord fingering looks wonky and the shuffle percentage still sounds very irregular in my playing now, I can compare it in a few weeks

[domi7]

Hi Withold,
I enjoyed to read through your log and liked to listen to your campfire songs!
For example, I was really happy to hear your nice performance of “Wenn ein Mensch lebt”.
Had lived in the western part of Berlin and I think we got more contact with the GDR (and Poland) and the culture on “the other side” than those germans in the deep west, like where you live now.
I also knew this polish song, but don’t remember which had been the occasions where I encountered it. Maybe polish or GDR films?

And it’s nice how you do the verse playing fingerpicked versus the chorus in Baker street. Always liked the song, but I think I only looked it up at my very guitar beginning and found myself not ready. Did you decide on the picking/strumming on your own or did you find a lesson which did it this way?

And although you had spent quite some time before with the guitar you started at Justin’s beginning which I think is a really good idea!

I am wishing you lots of fun in your continuation!

[witkatz]

It’s very kind of you Dominique, thanks for reading and listening.

@domi7

nice how you do the verse playing fingerpicked versus the chorus in Baker street

I was lucky to find a guitar club not far from where I live, organised by the German Red Cross (DRK). Eight people play and sing together once a week with a guitar coach. There are no guitar lessons, but there are lots of song sheets, tips on song arrangement and lots of fun singing and making music. We played Baker Street just like that and I didn’t think anything of it.

[witkatz]

2025.11.16
Module 13
The first week of Blues Basics is behind me, mainly with 7th chords and blues chord progressions in A, G and E.

• Chord Work
  I practise chord changes with a metronome for all chord combinations, especially the critical ones with B7 and C7 and 4-finger E7, started at 30 bpm, now at 45 bpm, almost error free. The open 7th chords work but B7, E7 (4 fingers) and C7 still a little unreliably. In addition to the chord change exercises, I am doing the exercise with my fingers in the chord position, holding it briefly above the fretboard and then pressing down. The chord changes are slowly becoming more confident and faster with less mistakes. To learn the blues progressions I use the Blue Shuffle pattern in the Loopz App.
• Justins Beginners Blues Solo
  Works reasonably well at 75% speed, but there is still a high error rate and I have to read the tablature. I will now memorise it to reduce the error rate and then increase the tempo.
• Song Work
  I started with Hound Dog as a work song for the Standard Blues progression.
  Additionally I started to learn Let it Snow and plan to learn Rocking Around the Christmas Tree too, with the intention of being able to stand up play and sing both songs from memory, to add them to my Christmas Songbook

[witkatz]

2025.11.23
A few impressions after a very productive week
other ressources
I have tried the free basic course by TrueFire, simply to compare it with Justin’s site and possibly have additional sources of knowledge. The courses seem to be very well structured according to topics or learning paths, the site is synchronized with the app, and visually well done. However, in the basic course teaching guitar basics, five basic chords and chord progressions for five rock songs, I only saw very brief explanations and demonstrations of 1-3 minutes, in total perhaps 20 minutes of explanation. As a complete beginner, one might be lost. I’m glad to be learning with Justin, and maybe someday I’ll book a single course for $5 from TrueFire on a specific topic or song.

song work
Lieven’s video about singing with guitar was very informative for me. It seems to me that I have learned songs too quickly and left too many things on a conscious level. I have started working on some of my campfire songs and will try to learn the two christmas songs in this matter, to bring the song structure and chord progressions below the subconscious line. This is hard work and difficult at first if you have never practiced a song so intensively, but maybe it will give me extra self-confidence.

Module 13

• chord work
  
  
  
  With my 3-minute timer per key (A, E, G), one minute for each chord change combination, with the metronome currently set to 50 bpm, I estimate the error rate to be <10% if the chords don’t sound perfect.
• blues chord progressions
  I try to get the standard, slow and quick chord progressions below the conscious level. When practicing, I walk around the apartment with my guitar or look out the window to distract myself a little.
• beginner blues solo
  I had some fun with the solo
  https://youtu.be/6M5kQrQG2Ms
• blues shuffle
  I started with the 12 bar shuffle riff. It’s still very tiring, especially the my ring finger muscles, which I notice after a few minutes, and it requires my full concentration. I have no idea when I’ll be able to sing along to the shuffle riff.

[brianlarsen]

@witkatz

With my 3-minute timer

and you can follow on by brushing your teeth straight after…

[witkatz]

You may laugh about it, but it helps me with my daily routine. The timer and schedule are on my desktop always to hand and the guitar stands nearby, so starting a 3-minute practise unit is now as easy for me as picking up a sweet, its about good and bad habits.

[theryanbamford]

@witkatz

other ressources
I have tried the free basic course by TrueFire, simply to compare it with Justin’s site and possibly have additional sources of knowledge. The courses seem to be very well structured according to topics or learning paths, the site is synchronized with the app, and visually well done. However, in the basic course teaching guitar basics, five basic chords and chord progressions for five rock songs, I only saw very brief explanations and demonstrations of 1-3 minutes, in total perhaps 20 minutes of explanation. As a complete beginner, one might be lost. I’m glad to be learning with Justin, and maybe someday I’ll book a single course for $5 from TrueFire on a specific topic or song.

Indeed, I haven’t tried TrueFire personally but one of the things I’ve found so good about Justin’s material is how much detail he goes into with everything. Even if it’s something you may think you understand completely he usually brings up some kind of consideration or reason for something that you hadn’t thought of before so there’s value in everything he demonstrates.