For anyone interested Dr. Gebrian has a YT channel where she demonstrates some of the techniques in the book.
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GRADE 2 CONSOLIDATION WEEK 11
Week Ending Friday 15 November 2024
Target: 7 hours of practice. Actual: 6.25 hours
Summary Progress and Observations
Getting back into a regular routine this week after a few weeks disrupted for work. Starting to incorporate ideas from the books I’ve been reading: I’ve split practice up into 2-3 sessions of 30-45 minutes each day (after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner) and taking time at the start of each session to set targets for that session. Now have the target of completing 3 consecutive repetitions of an item before moving on and if I mess up on the 3rd rep then it gets set back to zero - it MUST be 3 consecutive error free reps to count!
I’ve seen noticeable improvements in most areas this week, which may be because I’m just being more specific or setting more realistic goals, but it feels like progress is being made 
Chords: spent the week focusing on the ‘weak’ G changes and have just 4 of these left at 80bpm. I was reminded from Justins stream this week to split chord practice into getting accurate fingering as well as the speed of the change. I was only doing the speed part and wasn’t really seeing much progress in chord quality. We’ll see if there’s an improvement next week.
Scales: started the week making errors in the Major scale at 70bpm but progressed up to 85bpm by the end of the week with no errors (3 consecutive sets of 3 reps up/down the scale, alternate picking, no mistakes). Minor Pentatonic is up to 120bpm and some reps are now without looking at either fretting or picking hands.
Rhythm: continued with Old Faithfull at 100bpm but have started using the metronome with bar breaks (3 muted bars + 1 sounding out). A bit inconsistent to start with but it’s getting better. Same deal with Accent 2&4 strumming so still some work to do to tighten these up.
Fingerstyle: continued with playing Pattern 1 but introduced chord change C to Am to save being on the same chord for too long. Improved speed to 80bpm but pushed this higher today but w/o metronome, just to see how fast I could go. Will look to increase speed next week and maybe introduce pattern 2.
Alternate Picking: using the chromatic scale and moving it across the neck and back and up the neck between frets 1 and 9. Mostly without error but haven’t managed 3 consecutive reps yet - keep working on this at 80bpm until I get 3 clean reps.
Repertoire: focus on Working Class Hero this week. Had an issue where Am chord was stopping the high E when wrapping thum around to mute the low E. Mostly sorted by the end of the week after a couple of sessions ironing this one out in line with suggestions from the book. By the end of the week the strumming is pretty automated and I’ve started to include the lyrics. Need to learn the words properly now, so that will be focus for next week. Playing Margaritaville from memory as a warmup and this is starting to get comfortable now. I seem to be using the afternoon session mostly for songs - good tips from Justins stream too so I’ll be having a think about Campfire, Developer, and Dreamers.
Griff Hamlin Blues Guitar: continued to work through this and completed the Fast Walking Blues exercise with the alternate picking at full tempo.
Singing: continued to sing major scale whilst playing on the guitar. No specific goals for this, just to practice trying to hit notes and checking them.
Takeaways and Goals for Next Week
- Continue increasing the tempo on the scales exercises but don’t increase tempo until I get 3 consecutive reps of 3 up/down sets. Click up by 5bpm.
- Continue the metronome bar breaks exercises for both strumming patterns. Focus on hitting the ‘1’
- Continue the fingerstyle pattern 1 practice. Try and find a song to work on, rather than just rather bland exercises.
- Alternate Picking: continue 1 more week with this specific exercise. I’m also doing scales with alternate picking so can probably better use this time elsewhere. Can come back to it later if needed.
- Learn the words to Working Class Hero before moving on to the next song. It’s taking longer to get to 10 songs that I can sing and play from memory but I feel I need to focus on them individually until they are playable, rather than rotating them in and out of my routine. Working Class Hero will be the 2nd song I should be able to play and sing at the same time if I can learn the words next week. Will use some time to play these through as a ‘set’ every couple of days and add other songs to them when I’m comfortable with them.
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Use of Flashcards
I tried using a flashcards app this week to help me remember lyrics. I was a bit skeptical it would help much but I’m shocked at the effectiveness of doing this. Previously I really struggled to remember the words to songs beyond the first verse and chorus but a couple of weeks doing this seems to have made a big difference. I also thought I might have to do it for ages for things to stick but I started to notice the difference even after the first couple of tries.
I used an app called “Brainscape” that you can get for Mac, PC, IoS, and Android. Also, it’s a free app and isn’t infested with ads. It’s pretty easy to use to setup your own flashcard decks and I can see uses for testing notes in chords, notes in scales, key signatures etc as well as lyrics. Good way too to always have something on your phone that you can ‘play’ with when you don’t have your guitar handy.
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GRADE 2 CONSOLIDATION WEEK 12
Week Ending Friday 22 November 2024
Target: 7 hours of practice. Actual 5.5 hours (+ 7.0 hours of other guitar stuff)
Summary Progress and Observations
I thought I’d done a lot of practice this week but the total hours was fewer than last week. I seem to have spent time doing other guitar stuff so must concentrate on doing the practice items first. Still seeing improvements since I revamped the routine. Introduced flashcards this week which has been really useful for memorising lyrics, super-effective in fact. On the whole it’s been a pretty good week, feels like I’ve achieved a lot
Purchased Guitar Pro 8 as it was 30% off for Black Friday. Just starting but it seems simple enough to operate.
Chords: Completed all the remaining ‘Weak G’ changes up to 80bpm. Need to be mindful of too much tension in fretting hand and shoulder, particularly with F chord variants.
Scales: Major scale started the week at 85bpm and was at 100bpm by the end (3 sets of 3 repetitions w/o error). Min Pentatonic reached 190bpm and switched to playing 2 notes per click once I reached 160bpm on 1 note per click. Both scales are alternate picked.
Rhythm: Both ‘Old Faithful’ and ‘Accent 2/4’ are played with metronome playing 1 bar then muting for 3 bars. I find high tempo (>140bpm) and slow tempo (<90bpm) tricky to keep in time during the muted sections.
Fingerstyle: Picking is more relaxed and consistent this week. Can almost get through 5 minutes at around 100bpm w/o too many errors.
Alternate Picking: I use the chromatic spider exercise between frets 1-9 with the aim of completing it w/o error. This is proving very tricky to get 3 runs in a row w/o error. I can usually manage 2 but then mess up the third. Review next week - is it lack of focus or tiredness?
Repertoire: Worked on Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver this week. By the end of the week could play and sing from memory at a reasonable tempo. F chord to C chord change in the bridge is a problem spot. F chord is generally OK but have a problem getting to C cleanly at tempo.
Griff Hamlin Blues Guitar: started work on Hideaway Blues. Have most of the notes down so need to put pieces together and play from start to end next week. There are a couple of tricky triplet spots to work through.
Singing: continued singing to the C major scale and intervals. Getting a little more comfortable now but voice still has a limited range.
Takeaways and Goals for Next Week
- Put focus on the major scale as it’s lagging behind the minor pentatonic.
- For strumming focus on slow and fast tempo
- Learn another fingerstyle pattern to complement the one I have to make this section more interesting
- Review the alternate picking exercise and figure out why the errors are creeping in
- Flashcards have been a real help. Think about what else I might use them for
- Continue exploring Guitar Pro 8. Copy out some material from old magazines to get used to how it works
- Make sure I complete the defined ‘practice’ items before I do fun stuff
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GRADE 2 CONSOLIDATION WEEK 13
Week Ending Friday 29 November 2024
Target: 7 hours of practice. Actual 7 hrs 45 mins (+ 4.0 hours of other guitar stuff)
Summary Progress and Observations
Reviewing the takeaways from last week I did focus the scales part of my practice routine on the major scale shape and managed to get the tempo up to 200bpm and be able to play it starting from the top E down rather than from the bottom up as is normal for scales practice. This was tricky to start with, even though I have always played the scales both up and down. I saw somewhere that playing ‘from the top’ is important so you are used to this when soloing.
On the strumming side I focused exclusively on tempo above 140bpm and below 90bpm – this was quite problematic but there was an improvement by the end of the week. I did start to learn the second fingerstyle pattern from Justin’s Grade 4 lesson and by the end of the week managed to combine this with the first pattern at a moderate tempo, although it still needs much work to automate it at anything like a reasonable speed.
I moved away from the alternate picking exercise I was doing as I’m covering it in other exercises, particularly scales. I may go back to it later, we’ll see, but I’ll give it a rest for now. Continued getting to grips with Guitar Pro 8 and have downloaded another couple of blues courses that were on sale. At least one of them won’t be started until 2025 but it was a good deal, so I got them now.
Chords: Working through the remaining chords from Grade 1 to get them up to 80bpm. I have 8 from 94 remaining and hope I can get them done next week. The B7 changes were quite tricky to get to clean changes and took a few sessions to get them done.
Scales: Concentrated all on Maj scales this week. Need to pay attention to tension in fretting hand and shoulder (I tend to grip to hard and it makes fast changes harder). Also need to be conscious of string muting as I play the scale to stop unwanted string noise. Came together well by the end of the week and tempo is up to 200bpm (2 notes per MN click) whilst alternate picking with 3 consecutive repetitions with no mistakes before clicking up the MN. Started playing from the top E and at various starting frets.
Rhythm: Continued both ‘Old Faithful’ and ‘Accent 2/4’ are played with metronome playing 1 bar then muting for 3 bars. Concentrated on tempos >140bpm and <90bpm. These remain tricky to keep in time during the muted sections. Accuracy was better toward the end of the week but I’m still frequently at least slightly ahead or behind the beat when it comes back in. More practice needed.
Fingerstyle: Added pattern 2 to pattern 1 and am working the tempo back up. Tempo is currently 80bpm playing 1 bar of p1 then 1 bar of p2 and cycling this around, including a chord change from Am to C.
Repertoire: Worked on Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry this week. By the end of the week could play and sing from memory at a reasonable tempo. Still looking for a more comfortable range to sing this in and capo on 1st or 2nd fret seems to be favourite right now. Move to a new song next week.
Griff Hamlin Blues Guitar: continued work on Hideaway Blues. Still a couple of tricky spots to work through but can play whole thing from memory now.
Singing: continued singing to the C major scale and intervals. Continue to improve but voice still has a limited range. Singing the songs as warmup exercises also seems to be helping.
Takeaways and Goals for Next Week
- Bring back the minor pentatonic scale into the routine now that major scale is at a reasonable tempo. Play the min pent Box 1 in reverse. Perhaps start to learn ‘Box 2’ of the minor pentatonic?
- Continue to pay attention to body posture and tension in hands and shoulders. Make a conscious effort to review posture at the start of each exercise.
- Start to count out loud more for each exercise.
- Remember to ‘slow down’ if you can’t get an exercise right within 3 or 4 goes.
- Need to improve chord changes during the fingerstyle. Remember to get all fingers as close to frets as possible to stop buzzing and to be accurate with fingertip placement. Fretting hand grip is too tight to allow fast changes – need to relax.
- Next song will be Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
- Beginning Blues Guitar move on the next piece, Little Mary’s Lamb. Keep Hideaway as a warmup song.
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Practice Logs
I noted a few weeks ago that I had gone back to doing a written log, so I thought I would share what I’ve done on here. I split my logs into a Weekly and a Daily log.
For the Weekly I have bought a nice A4 notebook with decent paper and will use a 2-page spread for each week. The left side of the spread is a log of the items I’ve practiced and the right side contains my reflections on the week (this is where I get the info to write the Learning Log on here). I bought a nice notebook to encourage me to write in it each week.
For the Daily I just use an ordinary A5 notebook as I don’t intend to keep these. I just record the targets for each session at the start of the session and then note anything significant. The writing is more ‘chicken scratch’ in this book but that’s OK as long as I can read it at the end of the week!
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GRADE 2 CONSOLIDATION WEEK 14
Week Ending Friday 6 December 2024
Target: 7 hours of practice. Actual 6 hrs + 8 hrs 10 mins of other guitar stuff
Summary Progress and Observations
Reviewing the takeaways from last week I did bring back in the minor pentatonic scale but started using different picking patterns rather than learning Box 2. I’m using a pattern that plays 3 notes of the scale, backs up 1 note, then plays the next 3 and so on, up and down the scale and still using alternate picking. This is harder that it sounds but I’m confident with it now and I just need to get back up to speed with the scale.
I still find myself in bad posture so need to make more of an effort with this and not slide back into bad habits. I’ve started to do more counting out loud during practice exercises and have remembered to slow down on things where too many errors creep in and build back up to tempo. This happened mostly in the chord changes and scales exercises.
I finished all 94 of the Grade 1 chord changes and have moved on to the sus chord changes. I now have 5 songs that I can play and sing all the way through from memory (mostly). I still stumble over some of the words and fluff the occasional chord so just need repetitions to get these ‘automated’ and sounding good. I will look to play these as a ‘set’ outside my normal practice routine a couple of times a week.
I’m continuing to explore Guitar Pro and have started to learn Reaper DAW software as I was having considerable trouble with Garageband not recognising my audio interface. At least the interface works with Reaper so I should be able to progress to recording some of my playing next year.
Chords: Finished of all 94 Grade 1 changes and have moved on to sus chords where I have 14 of 61 remaining. Need to stay aware of tension in the hands and shoulders and general posture.
Scales: still working both major scale and minor pentatonic scales with alternate picking. Trying out different picking patterns to break up the linear nature of the scale to improve dexterity and not get into the habit of just playing straight up and down. This requires more subtle movements in the hand/wrist than just straightforward playing the scale to quickly reach notes. Had to slow the tempo down on both scales so next week’s focus is to bring the tempo back up but with the different picking pattern.
Rhythm: still using the muted bars patterns in the metronome app and have focused on slow and fast tempo this week. Most improvement in the faster tempo which seem easier to stay in time to during the muted sections.
Fingerstyle: combined patterns 1 and 2 together and worked up to 100bpm. Learned patterns 3 and 4 this week and have them at 80bpm. Chord changes are cleaner now and picking is more accurate with less involvement with the fingernails.
Repertoire: Worked on Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison this week. It’s quite a fast tempo so the chord changes were not clean initially and are still not fully clean even now. Had a real problem singing this with the recording so am using the capo at 2nd fret to make it more comfortable. Need repetitions to get comfortable with this one.
Griff Hamlin Blues Guitar: finished off a couple of exercises this week: Little Mary’s Lamb (based on the Stevie Ray Vaughan song) is a fun tune so will probably keep this around. The other exercises were just chord progression stuff that I’ve covered as part of Justin Guitar modules so passed quickly over them once I was satisfied I could do them adequately.
Takeaways and Goals for Next Week
- Try and get the remaining 14 sus chord changes knocked out
- Pay attention to thumb position. I noticed that it was slipping up the neck and sometimes rests at the knuckle joint rather than on the fleshy pad making me grip harder and making faster changes problematic. Figure out why this is happening.
- Get both the major scale and minor pentatonic scales back up to at least 160bpm with the new picking patterns and maintain at 200bpm for straight picking pattern. Pay attention to hand/wrist position during the transition from low to high strings.
- Continue to pay attention to body posture and tension in hands and shoulders. Make a conscious effort to review posture at the start of each exercise.
- Try to improve consistency in strumming at low tempo below 90bpm using muted metronome beats. Use counting out loud to try and get the feel at slower tempo.
- Combine all 4 fingerstyle patterns (6th and 5th string roots) into a progression with chord changes and bring up to a moderate tempo.
- Next song will be Half The World Away by Oasis
- Next ‘Griff Hamlin’ piece is practice on moving barre chord shapes around and using major, minor and 7th barre chord shapes on the 6th string root.
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