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Lost
I bought the 30 day challenge in Oct of 2021. It’s totally new for me. I was learning, practicing almost everyday, enjoying myself and enthusiastic. Now a few months later, I don’t know where to go and haven’t picked up the guitar in weeks. Not sure how to enthusiastically get back on that pony…
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5 Replies
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Hi Felicia, first great win for picking the guitar back up! I know that once a habit is broken it takes weeks to build back up to a routine. The best way to do that is a day at a time, Commit to picking up your guitar for at leastn10 minutes per day. As for where to start, you can either pick up where you left off, or return to the start of the 30 days to play. Once you complete that, move onto the Next Six Chords, and the daily challenges. The daily challenge alone will give you 10 minutes if practice, and you’d be building foundational skills. There are plenty of Skills courses you could try. I suggest the Jumpstart to Fingerpicking, Flatpicking and Strumming courses. The motivation has to come from within you. Why did you pick up the guitar initially? Do you still have the desire? Set up quarterly goals and track progress towards them. It could be to play a C note clearly, improve chord transitions, learn a song, etc. Join us for the next quarterly Progress party. It’s in July and you should receive an email. Most of all, enjoy your journey and have some fun.
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Hi Felicia,
First off, lots of tremendous advice from @Loraine .
I am new to TAC as well (day 11). I am doing the 30 Days to Play (in the second week) and also learn and practice through the Daily Challenges. These are both fun and challenging. I typically have to slow them down to a very slow speed (ie. 60 BPM) to learn and practice them using my metronome. Once I have it down at that speed I bump 5he metronome up a bit (eg. 5 BPMs) and repeat. It feels gratifying to be able to see my improvement with this method.
I also noticed the 30 Day teaches us the G, C and D chords. As Tony points out, there are many, many, many songs that use these 3 chords. Would electing a song your really enjoy and would like to play be energizing for you? Perhaps doing an internet search of “songs that us G C D chords” would be a good place to start. Once you pick a song do another search for “song title chords” (where song title is the title of the song you selected) and you will find the song with the lyrics and chords charted.
I am finding that what I am learning in the Daily Challenges can be applied to songs I know or want to learn.
Finally, the “Play For Us” forum is a great way to what other TAC family members are doing and seeing lots of playing styles.
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Thank you all! I reached out because I’ve been feeling so low and unmotivated. It’s a good question that Loraine asked. “Why did you pick up the guitar initially?” My inner critic is trying to bring me down and make light of my desire to learn to play. I would like to play well enough to accompany myself and sing. I think I’m just buying into notions of “being too old.” Thank you all for the encouragement!
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@Felcia S, glad you posted. Just keep it up and enjoy the times you can play. I started at almost 60 years old and have some similar goals. I do get down and unmotivated thinking I will never “get it”. Sometimes just coming here and reading the advice of the TAC family helps keep me motivated and going. So many positive folks here.
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