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Great discussion! On Jan 3rd I will be 18 months into TAC and about 22 months since starting from ZERO on my electric guitar. By Tony’s definition I know I’m a player, but I still don’t truly play songs and sing along to them. I don’t consider myself could enough to perform as I’m very mistake prone and I have to take several runs at the daily challenges before I can do a decent take. There are still a number of them that I absolutely suck at. On the other hand I have come a very long way from ZERO and I still feel progress regularly.
I think the biggest obstacle right now is my fretting (left) hand is slow. I want to play Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd which I selected because it’s only 3 chords, but I can’t make the changes fast enough! Especially C to G.
I am doing 3 finger (folk) G; so I only have to move the middle and ring fingers up one string each but my pinky tends to get stuck (or blocked by the ring finger) and not make it down to the high E string. Then I remember that when I started TAC I couldn’t do this 3 finger G to save my life, the pinky was bending funny and kind of spasming. Now I can not only do it easily but I can hold it for hours so it helps to look back at where you came from. Why am I beating myself up for not getting there quickly enough?
Similarly when transitioning from the G to A minor, the index finger is lagging in finding the B string. Someone said 1000 changes: I’m sure that I rehearsed these transitions more than a 1000 times because I’ll do it at least 10 times every day that I attempt it (which is pretty near to every day) and I’ve been at it for well over 100 days. Probably closer to 200.
I have got to remember that while I won’t be an expert player next year, this doesn’t mean that I am not getting better with each session and I am absolutely a guitar player!