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Skills vs Daily Challenge
I signed up with Tony a bit over a month ago. I completed the 30 days to play and the 5 day guitar routine, but I had trouble playing along even on the slowest speeds. I started working on the daily challenge and its more of the same. I can (with a bit of time) complete the challenge although if I had a dog he would be howling. So should just forget the challenge and start working on some of the skills courses?
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16 Replies
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Hi, @MississippiJeff ! My recommendation would be to do each daily challenge for ten minutes and see what you can do. Slow the video way down on the playalong if you need to. At the beginning they all won’t come easy, that’s for sure!
On days where you don’t groove on the daily challenge and you have a little more playing time, the skills courses are really nice. There are flatpicking and fingerpicking kickstart courses that I found really helpful when I was beginning, and those helped me with some foundations for the daily challenges as well.
Congratulations on finishing the 30 day challenge!
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@MississippiJeff – welcome to TAC! I think how you travel your guitar journey is personal preference. I found doing both types of lessons helpful for me when I started over a year ago. However, I didn’t spend much more than 10 minutes on the Daily Challenges each day and concentrated on the skill courses that interested me the most. I did complete the original Fretboard Wizard early on. It really provided a “roadmap” as I eventually spent more time with Daily Challenges. Don’t think you will miss out not doing them at first as they are on a somewhat cyclical rotation each year month to month. TAC offers such a wealth of instruction. I had to explore the site before I fully settled in MY routine.
Wishing you much success in achieving YOUR guitar goals. Join in on the live 90 Day Progress Party on January 4. It will help to orient you further and maybe get the opportunity to speak with Tony directly.😁
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It’s different for each one of us, so it’s tough to decide sometimes what to suggest. But I know for me even after 7 months of TAC (and 4 years of dabbling overall) I come across the odd challenge that just won’t work at all for me, so I shift gears and work on something else. The skill courses are a great place to find alternate paths.
If one of your main goals for guitar is to learn songs and play along, there are tons of YouTube tutorials for relatively easy 3 or 4 chord songs – and I always find it’s more motivating to learn songs than to just do repetitive drills.
Good luck with your guitar journey – you made a great choice in joining TAC!
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Hi @MississippiJeff and welcome to TAC and the TAC Community. Congrats on finishing the 30 Days To Play and the 5 Day Guitar Routine. When I started TAC, the 5 Day Guitar Routine didn’t exist, and the philosophical emphasis of the site was quite different than it is now. There was no single clear path and the choice was yours (and it still is your choice now), although I believe Tony is pushing new members to get to the Daily Challenges sooner than later. That wouldn’t have worked for me starting out here on this site. In fact, many of the senior members at that time had suggestions that new people should go to the skills courses before starting the Dailies. IMHO, that was a great path to follow. After the 30 Days, my path had me go to the Next 6 chords and then the Jumpstart courses (pick one that interests you most to start there, but do all 3). From there I did Fretting Hand Tool Box, Foundations Of Fretboard Navigation and then Fretboard Wizard. Then I started the Daily Challenges, with a little more skill and a much better understanding and confidence in my playing abilities. That’s how it worked for me Jeff and that would be my recommendation, but the choice is yours – it’s always your choice here. Best wishes to you and your guitar journey.
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Hi @MississippiJeff and welcome to TAC. Folks have given you some great advice here. I would offer the following as well:
First: Play at least play the number of days and time that you set in your 90 day plan. A couple of the foundations for TAC are to follow your committed routine and that even short amounts of time (eg 10 minutes) pay cumulative dividends. Regardless of what you choose as your focus and journey – do it with a routine consistent with your own commitment to yourself.
Second: make sure you are having some fun as you are learning and feeding off that energy. It really does help to log “what was most awesome about my guitar playing today”. Small successive wins fuel the fire to continue your journey.
We are glad you joined the TAC community! Keep on picking and strumming!
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@MississippiJeff , Congratulations completing the 30 days and 5 days in the Skill Section.
Just jump into the daily challenges. Go slow if you have to, but you’ll soon realize that you are getting better and better. There is a lot of times I have to do the challenge at my own speed because I just can’t keep up with those chord changes. Or my fingers just don’t stretch that far. Give it time and Good Luck and you’ll do fine.
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Thanks for the feedback everyone it is much appreciated!!
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MJ-
My two cents–
Try & remember to do the warmup stretches- (and try to keep your fretting arm as straight as possible for the most effect)— but don’t overdo it with the stretches– you can hurt yourself.
I must confess I don’t stretch for as long as the Skills-course(?) lesson suggests to— but I still do some stretching every session. It helps.
Oh, yeah!- Welcome to TAC!
theoldcoach
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thanks
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I am with you. Just a bit confused. I signed up just over 2 weeks now and I finished the 30 days to play and then what? I started looking at the 5 day’s challenges. Not sure if that was what I was supposed to do but I didn’t know what else to do. When I finish the 5 days boogie, not sure if I need to find a different 5-day challenge or go to the daily challenge. I wish there were a better guide to let me know where I am supposed to be.
I am enjoying learning though.
Have a great time.
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Everything I read said after 30 days to play and the 5 day challenge start the daily challenge or the fretboard wizard. If you do the fretboard wizard then move on to the daily challenge after you finish. I am doing the daily challenge as best I can then working on the 5 day skills challenge for fingerpicking which I won’t finish in 5 days I am doing it at my on pace. My plan is to stick with this and see where it leads. I had gotten stuck in a rut and I have to say this has helped. I am starting to see improvement with fretting and cord changes. Good luck
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The important thing to remember is the Daily Challenge is not meant to be easy….it is meant to be a challenge. If you are having a tough time with the daily challenges it is by design, know you are not alone. They were designed to be tough, but not impossible. All the advice to slow down is spot on. If in Ten minutes you only get the first measure that is a win. If you get the first note in time consistently that is a win. This session builds on the last session and the next session will build on this session. Hit the lesson for 10 focused minutes and you are on your way to improvement as a player. Do this day in and day out for a few months and then look back and see how you have changed as a player. I have seen extraordinary results even here on the Play For Us section. It is really fun to watch, especially my own progress over time. Watching others progress is pretty cool as well.
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@DHeaton and @MississippiJeff ;
There is a bunch of really good advice here, and much of it is pretty much the same. Don’t get overwhelmed, just put in your 10 minutes TRYING then move on. The choice between skills courses and Daily Challenge is pretty much a personal choice with no right or wrong answer.
So why am I bothering to add anything? Simple. The disorientation you are feeling is pretty much universal. All of us came here expecting some kind of miracle of teaching. Most of us had already experienced how ineffective other ways of teaching were and thought this would be different… well, better that is.
No, the first word was the right one. Different. Many of us feel it is better, but others find the traditional methods of either teaching skills or teaching songs “better”.
So, what is it about TAC that leads me to say it is the best guitar teaching site on the internet? Because of the METHOD that Tony uses. The method of building a routine and learning a complex skill is supported by research and experience. Those who have put enough faith in Tony to try this method have found remarkable results.
I have known a number of people for whom TAC didn’t work so well. When revealing greater detail about their time with TAC, it always comes to light they never really bought into the program and JUST DID IT. They say they did, but it takes 2 things they never gave it: commitment and time.
If you give the dailies 10 minutes every single day, 5 days a week, for 3 months, you will see more improvement than you could have believed possible. That’s when you go from hoping it works to knowing it works and ready to dive in head first. That will be the first real set back. No matter how much you know this really works, you CAN’T SPEED IT UP.
But, now that you KNOW it works, you will be willing to take the next step. If you take this next step, you will be on a journey of slow but steady progress that will take you farther than your wildest dreams. That next step is to join one of the 90 day guitar progress parties on Zoom and use the interactive guitar routine journal to set your own 90 day goals.
Within the first year, if you just have faith, put in the “work”, and have fun, you will find a way to have the guitar be a part of your life forever. You will have what Tony likes to call an “Acoustic Life”. I have an acoustic life. I would never have found it without TAC.
I hope this helps.
MG 😀
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Thank you for the reply.
I have been doing far more than 10 min. a day and I do feel like I am learning something. Then, just out of the 30 days to play, it was overwhelming. I am sticking with it and hope I will eventually get better. We will see. Thanks again for your time and for making a reply. It helps.
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Hey @DHeaton ;
Studies show that making mistakes is crucial to learning. Basically, the 2 most important components to learning are repetition and making mistakes. So, that’s what the Daily Challenge gives us. That’s what @Loraine meant when she said “welcome to the world of TAC”, get used to repetition and mistakes and just have fun.
Here is a recent YouTube video discussing “Learning Skills Faster” and it talks about how making mistakes fits into this process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30sc4TpZtt8
Number one rule: Have Fun.
MG 😀
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I won’t really add to the suggestions, because there have been so many good ones that covered everything. There is no right or wrong direction to go in. This is your journey. Congratulations on picking up a guitar and completing what you’ve already accomplished. Celebrate having done so. Welcome to the world of TAC 🙂
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