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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.
My main reasons for not progressing further in acoustic guitar were long work and commute hours and I play in an amateur classic rock band. So any free time I had was spent learning and memorizing my bass and vocal parts for the band. I am now retired and have more time to focus on more aspects of music. I am pleasantly surprised that, even though I do know how to play chords, strum and even finger pick an acoustic guitar, I have learned new things this week! Thank you!
Great lesson, have to go over and over again to get up to speed but having fun learning what I need to achieve my goals, your explanation of simple does not mean easy will stick with me always, thanks
Really enjoy how the lessons are connected together. Looking forward to learning more about how playing scales connects with rhythm chords.
MY FINGERS ARE BLEEDING – I’m lovin’ it !
Bar cords. I can do them, but not up to tempo for most songs.
Alright I’m in!
After four days it’s obvious that I am already beyond where I was last week at this time. To say I was skeptical would put it mildly, because I started my guitar journey almost 4-1/2 decades ago right after high school with an unknown dreadnought with high action that actually sounded decent but was a finger killer. The guitar allowed me to sing along enough to and try to impress the girl that I was chasing after at the time. An Ovation was gifted to me a couple years later which I still have.
Fast forward a couple years and I met the woman of my dreams but after showing my limited rhythm chops, she didn’t seem overly impressed. I soon discovered her previous boyfriend was a professional musician whose livelihood came from the guitar.
Well I won her heart, but lost my love of playing guitar however I never lost my love of wanting to play.
Retiring early in the pandemic, I picked up a cheap Yamaha for $100 & started tinkering again. We moved to a 55+ community a couple years back, and I discovered that several members were getting together and having a jam session. I went in and realized I probably could keep up, so now play relatively regularly but still stuck where I’ve been since the early 80’s.
Looking forward to Tony’s lessons and seeing how his methods work on an old rhythm guitar player!
The rhythm part is easy, and I have that down. My issues are: 1) the requisite finger work for the earlier lessons; and 2) difficulty is when I need to move down the neck to do the other work on chords/notes further down the fretboard. That is not an easy thing. I mostly just play by ear, can’t read a lick of music notation. While I can strike some good sounding notes further down, I just don’t have a clue what they actually are. So, that’s my dilemma as we stand today.
I actually feel like I have made progress in these challenges so far. For me, if anything it’s schedule that sometimes makes consistency a little bumpy. My big concern for example is that I’m traveling to Japan for 3 weeks in November/December. That’s a lot of missed challenges. I’m hoping my travel schedule over the next year won’t mean that I’ll be wasting resources.
Awesome rhythm lessen, I made music on the guitar tonight for the first time ever!
I have tried to play for years. I can do chords and chord transitions but get la Zy in understanding and incorporating rhythm. I am not practicing anything really consistently. I am actually behind on my lessons. Today is day five I am still working on the previous days lessons and day four. I am enjoying them though especially day three. Here as we enter the days between- Jerry Garcia born August 1rst, 1942 died August 9th,1995.
I feel my lack of progress in my guitar playing is due to both not playing daily and not learning new skills. Playing the same d songs.
Consistency is my biggest challenge. Having the time and energy to play every day and learn something new every day is a challenge for me. This week has been great, as I haven’t missed a day, and I’m enjoying learning again.
Nice basic strumming lesson, an area I need to improve. I’ve enjoyed the first 4 parts of the 5-day challenge. Looking forward to tomorrow to see how it all comes together.
In TAC, do you introduce a new song each week? How do you choose which songs to use for TAC?
Clear direction for sure. So much out there. Where to start first, next and so on. Building on previous lessons learned.
Definitely a lack of clear direction. I feel like I’m just making stabs in the dark at times.
I’ve been playing chord progressions for years (and years)..this is the most impressive change in my playing in a matter of 4 days!!! It’s amazing what a little focused practice can do for one’s playing (and ego). Thank you, TAC team!
Great lesson today. Boom Chicka is how I learned way back when I started guitar, but tying it all together now within this 5 day challenge makes me feel like I am more of a musician now than before.
Chords in general and changing chords has been my biggest source of frustration. I have short fingers so on the ones where I have to reach I tend to mute other strings, especially the high E. It’s getting better but it really slows me down when changing chords.
Not doing the repeats? I am kinda confused.
This #4 lesson was the easiest for me since I mainly just do chord changing along with trying to learn bar chords. I’ve never had much experience doing scales. But after the first three lessons I can see I really need to start doing them. My slowest chord change is from G To C. It’s gotten better over the years but there’s still a hang up there.
John,
one thing that can help is to make your “G” using different fingers. Instead of using first index and middle, try middle, ring and pinky. It may seem a little awkward at first but trust me, you’ll get it down in short order. What this does for you is make the “G” to “C” transition easy because all you do to switch from “G” to “C” is keep your middle and ring fingers in exactly the same position they’re in and move them from the 5th and 6th strings down to the 4th and 5th strings. Your first finger frets the “C” note on the 2nd string and there’s your “C” chord. It really is a lightning fast change. To go back to “G” just move your middle and ring finger up to the 5th and sixth strings again and add your “G” not on the 1st string with your pinky. Super fast!!! Believe me, it’s worth the effort.
I’m really impressed with Tony’s teaching method, especially the way he starts right off with simple scales and a little “down-up, down-up” flatpicking runs. Very nice!
That was the easiest one for me since that’s basically been my bread and butter for me for 40 years. For me I’d get stuck when things got hard, so I wouldn’t do scales or solos, and just settle on doing chords in the open positions or barre and then capo as needed.
I don’t like to use a pick so my lack of progress is getting over that. I went back and did the exercises again without a pick and I can knock the lessons out pretty easy.
Ahhh! This was the most fun lesson so far! I was so excited to see I already knew all of those chords. Still working on smooth chord transitions though but I’ll get there.
I just don’t think my playing sounds great and I really struggle to make smooth transitions so I lose time.
That, and pressure of life.
Some things you can do to help on chord transitions: visualize the chord before switching to it. Don’t play the fourth beat of the measure before the new chord, use the time to switch chords instead. Focus on getting part of the chord for the first beat, and only strum on those strings, then finish moving the rest of your fingers (or getting them out of the way of any open strings). Keeping rhythm is far more important than hitting the right notes, and these tips will help you keep the rhythm while you get better at making the chords!
Enjoying these videos and seriously considering buying in with the current discount making it affordable. I primarily play a 1977 Takamine Classical guitar and also have a Taylor Mini. I prefer the nylon strings and fingerpicking. I have issues trying to use a pick. Does your course have significant information for learning to use a pick?
Hi Rae! Great question. TAC does teach flatpicking (using a pick) as well as fingerpicking. So you will learn this. We’d love to have you join us.