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Slow progression
I’ve been playing since december. I’m a member here for a month a week.
I find it hard.
I’m learning to play country music.
Working on my G D C transition with or without the bass walking.
I have no speed. My fingers doesn’t change fast enough to play a single song.
How did it takes for you to play a song correctly?
What is your progress?
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10 Replies
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Hi Eric, and welcome to the TAC community! Guitar is not an easy instrument to play. It takes time and dedication and lots of practice. Keep practicing your chord transitions, and they will get better. Have you taken the 30:days to play course? Suggestion for better chord transitions — use a metronome, and start at a very slow speed and start by playing one chord, and switch to the 2nd chord on the 4 beat. Once you have it down slowly, begin increasing your speed by say 3-5;beats per minute. Then do the same at that speed by starting with the first chord and then switching to the 2nd chord on the 4 beat. Again, once you’re able to smoothly transition, increase the metronome by another 3-5 bpm and start again. You’ll build the muscle memory you need for the chords and transition to the 2nd chord. Hang I there and just keep doing what you’re doing.
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Hi @saybaw273gmail-com , welcome to TAC. I have to kinda echo Lorain’s comment that guitar is not easy. That being said there is a hard way and an easy way to learn. I know, I tried both. Here at TAC I found the easy way. By having fun everytime I picked up the guitar I stayed motivated and engaged all the while picking up the kinesthetic awareness, and strength necessary to make the guitar do what I wanted it to do. To get to your question? how long to play a song correctly. As long as it takes. Your time and my time to learn the same song will likely differ and if we compare it to the prodigy kid down the street who can play a song after hearing it once it may not serve our interests at making progress. My progress today is joyful progress, it never happens fast enough and yet it is alway happening. I have a great time so I don’t really sweat it. When I was solely focused on the time and not the joy of the process my progress was hard and slower and in many instances unpleasant. What I learned is when I put effort as my priority and not the results, my progress happened faster and my experience became wholly more satisfying.
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<div>Hi @Eric B</div><div>
Welcome to TAC!! Congratulations on a great beginning to your guitar geek journey!!
Sorry to hear you are having some challenges with your G-D-C chord transitions- Have you checked out the “30 Days to Play” section here at TAC? (I see that @Loraine has already wisely suggested this 🙂
Week 2 of this series contains a nice lesson on those 3 chords including a section on improving your chord transitions. I put the link to it below here in this post or you can find it in the menu bar, just look for “30 Days to Play”
Hope that helps you and best wishes with your studies!! Have fun 🙂
C
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https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/30-days-to-play/
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Carol-3M-Stillhand.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by
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@Eric B, good advice here. In July, it will be two years since I purchased my first guitar and started trying to learn from some youtube videos. I was a bit arrogant and figured in a year or so, I would be belting out some fun campfire songs and be fairly proficient. Well, after a year and a half struggling with the guitar, and how slow my progress was going, I could see it was going to be many years if I stayed on this path. I joined TAC in December 2021, and also enrolled in some in person lessons. I’ve come further in six months than I did the first year and a half. I have had to develop my personal guitar practice plan, and TAC has given me the tools to create this. Also, having members at the ready, willing to offer advice, makes this even more special. Keep up the chord changing practice, and start adding more chords once you start getting better at the ones you are practicing. There are a lot of songs you can learn with just the C, D and G chords.
One thing that really helped me a lot when first learning chords, is to make the chord shape pressing the strings, and then take them off and just “hover” your fingers above the strings for 30 to 60 seconds. Then, once you get more proficient, just hover your fingers without pressing the strings. This will build muscle memory, and with practice you will be able to make the shape before even fretting a string. I cannot believe the difference this made for me in my speed in changing chords. I keep a record, and in just 4 months I went from 15 BPM to 40 BPM for most chords.
Keep coming back, and spend at least 10 minutes a day with the TAC routine, and progress will come.
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I play everyday more than 10 minutes. Sometimes, I keep working on the daily challenge a whole day.
Thanks for the advices. I wont quit. I know it’s gonna be hard even with a lot of practices.
I have a metronome. It doesn’t work very well. I’ll buy another one. It’s a great idea to work with one.
It is true that TAC is a good way for learning. I’ve made more progress in 5 weeks than before with random youtube channels and bass cours I took when I was working on bass.
Thanks to be here for me.
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If I can piggyback on this thread, I too am having difficulty with my chord transitions. I’m on the 30 day course, but wonder if I’m doing some things wrong. For example, I’m working on strumming technique where I’m transitioning between G,C, and D chords. I start out slow and am supposed to speed things up but I find the chord transitions are way too slow.
It just seems that each lesson requires so much more time and I’m spending days on each lesson and progressing too slowly, -
To continue, should I be “mastering” each lesson before moving on to the next?
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Hi Slickrick. I, too, have slow transitions. I get discouraged for it seems I take 1 step forward and 2 steps back in progress. It seems to me that I need to lower my expectations and slow down my speed. If I recall correctly, Tony has said he doesn’t expect us to ‘master’ each lesson, just work though it to be familiar with the lesson knowing you can go back to it at any time. I’m approaching 70 and keeping all of the info in my head is a little challenging! So I go back and forth in my playing the lessons hoping to improve each time but it is slow for me too. I have trouble stretching my fingers to reach some frets, too. Keep on truckin’.
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@slickrick, no, you should not be “mastering” each lesson before moving on to the next. Spend at least 10 minutes (or as long as you want really) and move on to the next. I know it sounds counter intuitive, however spending too much time on a lesson may actually slows your progress. Move on to other lessons, skills courses, etc., and then come back to them after a while. Variety is the key. You will be amazed at the progress you have made without realizing it.
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Thanks Sky. Appreciate the input. It does seem counter intuitive. But I’m having fun. Been playing some Jerry Jeff and Hank songs. They’re pretty slow but getting there. It’s amazing how many 3 chord songs there are. I’ll get there one day.
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