Pick advice

[Philb]

Hello, and welcome. With the 30 days to play; take as much time as you need. Many take longer than 30 days, some less. Don’t look for perfection. Do it to where you feel comfortable that you understand it, and are playing it. It does not have to be perfect, or at speed to move on.
With the daily challenges, Tony designed the program to put in at least 10 minutes a day of practice on those. Just try to be consistent in playing every day. You can spend more time on them if you’d like ; but just do the best you can in that time, favorite some if you like to return to them; and move on. The lessons come around again. There are some that I couldn’t handle well the first time, that I was able to do decently the next time they showed up.
There are also Skill Courses. Do them at a pace that works for you.

With daily practice, you will find your skills coming together, as you go through the Daily Challenges and Skill Courses. Day by day your hand strength, accuracy, and speed improves; your technique will improve; and then you will be applying them to songs.
Have fun as you play guitar daily, according to where you are at. You will see improvement that will surprise you.

As far as your strumming; check to see if you are hitting another string as you strum. Maybe just work on pick control by hitting one string over and over, up and down stroke, adjusting and getting control of your movement. It is really hard to say without seeing you strum.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by  Philb.

[AnneD.]

Thanks for the advice, Phil. Fighting my own perfectionism while actually seeing skill progress is a new experience for me.

Also good to know that 30-days-to-play doesn’t mean mastery in 30 days…I think mastery is in another timezone on my guitar journey 😆

And pro-tip on the daily challenges and marking favorites! Thanks again!

[Cadgirl]

@AnneD, You can work with the 30-days as long as you like. You could also go back to it at a later date and see how much you have improved. To help you out there is a course in the Skill Courses called “Strumming Jumpstart” that might help you out. There is a collection of 9 songs to practice with. I have to say, I was horrible with strumming, especially with a pick. Now, I’m much much better. It’s just practice. Good luck to you and I hope my comment helps.

[AnneD.]

Thanks, Cadgirl! I appreciate the encouragement. I’ll take a look at the strumming course.🙌

[Kitman]

Welcome to TAC @AnneD. In addition to the great advice from @cadgirl and @philb : if you are finding you are having fretboard or picking hand accuracy problems – slow down the tempo (beats per minute) to let your hands and mind build muscle memory. For a number of the challenges and when I am learning new techniques or songs I start off really slow (eg. 40 beats per minute) to get the technique or chord changes under my fingers until I am happy with the resulting sounds Inal making with the guitar. Then I bump up the BPMs incrementally and get that under my fingers. The process continues until I can play it well (not necessarily perfectly) at the targeted BPM.

Take the time you need and have fun!

[AnneD.]

Thanks @Kitman. Slowing down is great advice. I’ll remind myself of that when I feel like I’m in the right lane on the highway 😆