TIPS FOR TODAY
If your chords are buzzing, your fingertips hurt, or everything feels clumsy — that’s not failure. That’s the normal breaking-in process.
Rhythm guitar asks a lot from your hands: new shapes, new pressure, clean strings, steady strumming. Your fingers simply haven’t built the strength or calluses yet — and they can’t build them without days like this.
Remember the science of motor learning: the goal is not to get each challenge perfect before allowing yourself to move to the next one.
We want regular, imperfect exposure to things just outside our ability.
So don’t chase perfect chords. Chase small wins: one clear note, one smoother switch, one pattern that feels a touch less chaotic than yesterday.
Those micro-improvements stack faster than you think.
Stick with it. Your hands are learning even when it doesn’t look pretty.
YOUR SAMPLE WEEK OF TONY'S ACOUSTIC CHALLENGE
5-Day "Stop Dabbling, Start Playing Guitar" Challenge
- THU: Rhythm
- FRI: Transitions
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3-Steps to Stop Dabbling and Start Playing
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Hi Tony,
I’m struggling to keep up with the timetable. As a novice (struggling to remember finger placements for chords, struggling to move my fingers to a new position quick enough, and get it right, then working with Tabs is all too much for me at the moment), and I think I am looking at a slower pace. I can see tiny daily wins but feel that there is still something missing. It is also a struggle to ride along when you can’t actually see what I am doing and offer guidance as may be appropriate at the time.
If you can get back to me with some suggestions, it will be appreciated but not just with words of encouragement. I am looking for guidance of the basics at this stage. We have not touched on posture, hand placement for fretting or techniques for strumming and finger picking. There is a whole heap of other things that I probably don’t know about what I am dong wrong either.
I look forward to your reply.
I am just wondering is the course just for beginners ?I am enjoying the five day challenge and found some exciting things in it but,I am not really a beginner,just a little rusty from not playing for a few years.Is there more challenging content in the course as you progress?
Not where I want to be, yet, but my strumming is beginning to become more confident. I guess I have been playing for myself for so long that I have lost confidence in my pick action – both the double picking from tomorrow’s lesson and strumming from today’s. My Tak has an easier string action that the Fender – maybe the acoustic strings on the Tak make a tension difference. I will replace the electric strings on the Fender and give them a try.
But, the point is that my strumming is beginning to sound more consistent and more confident.
Day 4 – why do I think I haven’t been making progress?
Despite the thousands of YouTube videos and the couple of guitar courses I’ve tried I find my self going over and over the same few things and never movings forward.
The idea of having no clear path makes sense to me. Having to think about what to play each day means I gravitate back to what feels comortable and thinking that perfeting one or two things is ‘progress’. I haven’t perfected anything yet and I certainly haven’t made progress. I feel I’ve made more progress in the 5-Day challenge than I’ve made in months.
I definitely get information overload. I try to learn too many songs, or too many different ways, instead of sticking with one. I hit that intermediate plateau and tend to waffle.
I’m using an electric guitar, a PRS SE Mira. I’m hoping it will translate well with these acoustic lessons. What do you think?
I seem to always be start something new but never actually finishing anything
I have never flat picked before . This helping very well.
Alsoi haven’t played much in the past 20 or so years I just kept playing the same few songs.
My biggest impediment to progress is my short attention span. I’ve worked on it a lot this year, and my focus has improved somewhat, but it is still a challenge and has hindered my progress. As for a specific problem area, chord changes have always been a real challenge for me.
I’m a complete beginner. I have a hard time getting my fingers on the right strings and only on one string when fretting cords. My ring finger does not want to cooperate. I am going to keep trying.
Hey, I’m enjoying the lessons so far so, I am wondering, if I joined the group, do you pay annually or can it be on a monthly basis?
I like the structure and the micro lessons. Fortunately I have more than 10 minutes because I spend at least 45 minutes on each days lesson. Your insight and tid bits are also important to learning guitar.
I understand the end goal and can play these 4 chords (after taking way too long to get my fingers in position) but what trips me every time is switching from chord to chord.
That frustrates the bejesus out of me.
I was more comfortable with today’s challenge because up until now I had only been playing chords, with the exception of the intro to Wish You Were Here. However, it was almost 2 years between starting TAC and my previous consistent guitar playing. I am not familiar with the fret board when playing notes so I spend a lot of time looking at it. I have probably spent at least an hour each day on each challenge. That’s possible because i am retired. However, it’s also resulted in very sore fingers and me falling behind. It’s Friday and I’m just finishing up challenges for Days 3 and 4. Thanks for the tip about how to play chords with my fingertips. My palm is quite a bit away from the neck of the guitar. I’m going to work hard to change my form. I expect my chords to be cleaner once my callouses return and I adopt an improved form.
I like what I am learning and the method. I have taken lessons and noodled around on the guitar for years. . . and have made very little progress. Time is a factor for me; and I ran behind even in this first week, but still I made it a point to keep up viewing the daily lessons even if I didn’t master the practice exercises. I am a little fearful about getting behind and feeling frustrated.
This program is challening me in a good way, so I am interested in continuing and becoming part of a learning community instead of going it alone. Maybe there are even opportunities for getting together with other students? Anyway, I am planning to give it go.
I’m certainly being challenged! Having not played for years along with arthrititis and Dupuytren’s Contracture, my laft hand doesn’t function the way it used to. But I’m not giving up!
Finally, something I can do easily – chords I know and common strumming. It may make up for some of my earlier misteps.
I’m really enjoying these daily small lessons, and it has encouraged me to pick up the guitar outside of the lessons. I was looking for something to get me interested in playing more, and this is the perfect way to learn.
Hello Tony- So I am considering joining in for the fun but have a question about today’s lesson. I cannot make the print out of notes and tab match what I see you playing. On paper I read, G, G, C, C= repeat, D D Am Am- repeat, D D. What I think I see you playing is G G G G, C C C C, D D D D, AM AM D D D D and ends with G. Please enlighten me. Thank you! Connie
I’ve been dabbling for a couple of years, starting on and off, with no direction. I learned to strum chords but had no idea of where to go from there. I like your structured lessons. I feel like I really made some progress this week in four days!
I think having a clear path will be huge for progressing in my playing. When you don’t know what to practice, it’s hard to make good use of your time. And then having the time to commit each day. I’m still at the point where my fingers can’t hold up for practicing as long as I’d like to.
I started learning how to play guitar two years ago very energetically and being very optimistic. I reached some relative good level for about a year and since then I’ve been plateauing for another year. I could provide tons of reasons and excuses for this, but I prefer to start again from the point where I stumbled
Finding the practice time to keep up with new skills Tony is teaching everyday.
I can’t master playing a guitar solo technique, in my 45 minutes of practice time I have each day. That said, I am very intrigued and playing every day to keep up with the course, so I am playing which is the most important thing.
Lack of discipline and focus.
Love blues, but information overload caused me to put guitar away for a long while!
For me it is unrealistic to think I can master each challenge in ten minutes and then do something else the next day. I drive truck and have my guitar with me in the truck and try to play some each day.
My impediment has always been lack of direction due to too much information and not knowing what to pursue. I think this course may work for me.
How do you get the 45% off?
I loved learning the chords. Suddenly I was 17 again playing with my brother! I was not intimidated by 4 chords.
I still need to go back and do the scales. Plan for the weekend is to go through Days 1-5 and get ready for week 2! Thanks Tony, this is awesome.
Nancy Jean
Tony this is me I just found out that I need to start at the very beginning so I will get the basics of learning cords and get fingers broke in and I will come back when I know more about what I am doing. Thank you for a review of what I am doing. thank you so much
Ok so I have small/medium woman hands, I cut my nails, rounded my fingers & still struggling with strings muted. What should I try next.
Hi Bruce, Please reach out to us through TAC Support: support@tonypolecastro.com They will be happy to assist you.
probably some lack of progression are my small hands and fingers especially my index, that make it tough to get 3 fret chords like major C for example and major barre chords are looking like a major hurdle right now. Then i realize i’ve only been playing for 7 weeks. i’ll get there with patience and practice. My hands are not the boss of me. lol
I have been learning for 3 years. What hold me back is not having a clear path to practice. I tend to stick with the things I know over and over. I have bits and pieces of skills I understand, but lack clear help pulling them all together.
Biggest impediments to my progress are:
1) Lack of patience & commitment. Expecting to go from barely walking to supersonic flight in one lesson.
2) Choosing pieces to learn that were beyond my skillset. Learning “Mean Street” should have never been on my agenda in the first year.
3) Lack of direction.
I like what you have going on here. Enough so to commit to the challenge. If I haven’t progressed at the end of this I feel like I have no-one to blame but myself.
Ok doing a bit today Friday on Day 4…
I think that I lacked a clear path forward. Practicing the scales just discouraged me. I couldn’t visualize how scales and theory made me able to play better. I got discouraged and thought I could never be good enough to play in front of people.
I played consistently for about a year and a half and then life happened. I tore up my left arm and couldn’t play and about the time it was healing I started a new business that has been my focus for the last twelve years. I would pick up the guitar every now and then but had lost most of the progress I had made, which then snowballed into just looking at it. I’m 60 now and the business is still a focus, but it’s time to either do this or move on. I want to do it. Always have.
I get overwhelmed with all the information out there, especially how to learn to play a certain song – there are so many excellent players out there and I am terrible.
I do not see any other comments from today. Did folks drop out?
The biggest thing that has hindered my progress has been playing the same things over and over. This has been a nice break from that, and over the last few days, I’ve even spent time learning some other new stuff outside of the challenge!
I tried taking in-person lessons with the only instructor in my small town. He wanted me to read music and play “twinkle twinkle little star” and “red river valley” LOL. Obvi not that exciting!
I believe that there are several factors to lack of progress. I did a course with another online teacher and signed up to their community which was great at the start. I was able to learn a capo version of Hotel california, Stand by me etc. But the teaching whilst good was mainly directed around rhythm and strumming with not much else. Also the songs that were posted wasn’t always something i would want to learn and generally based around one genre which was 90’s indie. Which i like but found there wasn’t enough variety and too much content for bands like Oasis. Which again i like but too much of that stuff. Next i became looking for new stuff to learn but got lost in the amount of content out there and very distracted to different things. Also this deciding what to play thinking everytime i picked up the guitar was uninspiring and pushed me to thinking of this is work not fun and all i would play would be what i already knew I.E Standy by me by Ben E King over and over.
My biggest frustration is trying to keep tempo while changing chords. I really struggle with certain transitions and I go through this cycle of getting so frustrated that I would put up my guitar for a few weeks before trying again. This interferes with consistency and it goes back to Tony’s comments earlier this week about it feeling like work instead of being fun. Today’s challenge was exactly that, a challenge, but the other exercises from the week allow me to step back and do something different if necessary without going to my tried and true method of guitar “time-out”. I like these smaller chunks of information as it’s not as overwhelming when it’s a skill I struggle with.
My problem is I want to be an expert in everything. Lead, Rythm, Theory, Speed, Chicken Picking, CAGED, Finger Picking Blue Grass, Rockabilly, Blues, Jazz, Folk, Rock, Metal. I want to be able to play everything and anything. Plus Electric and Acoustic Guitar. I’m all over the place.
well I am not to quick at changing chords but I know I will get better.
Looking forward to oncoming lessons.
My problem is a lack of clear paths. I am enjoying this course!
Will these videos be available to me next week?
Learning things I didn’t know. Will these videos be available next week
Instead of just making good chords sound good together with no beginning or end I find some structure and anticipation for the next days lesson. Is there some lessons in how to read music or tab? I have always played from memory and since that is starting to slip a little….. well you know the 60 and 70,s
I think my lack of progress historically has been due to lack of structure, which in turn leads to endless pointless noodling or half assed attempts to learn songs.
I’ve found that the five day challenge has given me the structure and the building blocks that I need to move forward – plus Tony’s teaching methods just seem to work the same way that my brain does.
One comment I read yesterday was that it takes more than ten minutes.
Personally, I can do the lessons in ten minutes BUT!!!!! because I’m enjoying playing and learning and, can see progress, I take a lot longer and can quite easily lose an hour
struggling with quick chord changes
My rut is, I don’t know what to practice next.
I think my biggest hang up with progress was that I put it down for a decade and am just coming back to it. I’ve learned to play a bunch of songs but never actually felt like I understood what I was doing. That plus not having a clear path on how to build my skill made me feel like I was mostly just stumbling through chord progressions and half learning songs without really understanding how to get better, and then I’d end up overwhelmed with everything there is to learn. Now that I’m an adult, life gets busy and it’s easy to get tired, which makes it easier to chalk it up to something that’s just too difficult or that I don’t have enough time for outside of work and other responsibilities. But this has been a fun week and I’ve had a good time following along with these lessons so I’m hoping I can stick with it now.