[Alisa]

Magic 7! 😀It’s great that your wife is so supportive. That makes a huge difference

[Alisa]

🍾💃🤗

[Alisa]

It sounds like the QuickStart, where you set your goals and stuff. That’s the first place it takes you when you first log in. I remember losing it as well. Like staustin said, click on your picture; you’ll see it there.

The website is pretty self-explanatory: there are the daily challenges and the courses. You kind of have to figure out for yourself if you want to concentrate on the challenges, courses, or a healthy mix of both.

[Alisa]

Nice! Celebrate the progress!! 😎🍾💃

[Alisa]

That was so beautiful and inspiring! Thank you for sharing!

[Alisa]

I hear you. I start all of the challenges at 0.5x even if I feel good about them. It’s too much to be able to do them at 1x speed at once. My fingers need a few goes to catch up with the brain. Needed the notes sheet on several of them, as well.

[Alisa]

Thanks, @JeffM.22 I bought the strings on stringjoy and this is what they wrote to me:

“It sounds like your instrument’s bridge intonation was set up with .012 gauge strings in mind. The lighter tension would also change the neck’s pull, these two factors combined lead to a guitar that need to be set up by a tech.”

I’ll try the pencil lead trick you told me about. Thanks for the tip!

[Alisa]

I think that calendar on the screenshot is just showing you which days you played (i.e. pressed on the complete button). It’s not links to the challenges (I think). Go to today’s challenge, start it, you’ll see a list on the left side, you can click the past challenges there.

[Alisa]

Thanks for your question, Ross. I never even stopped to think there are other styles, so you’ve expanded my horizons 😀 I asked google, and it said that alternate picking is the best method for beginners: it sounds smooth and allows to build speed. The picking style where you pick up going to lower strings and down to higher strings is apparently considered advanced and hard to master. Knowing how much troubles I’m having with alternate picking, I think I’ll pass 😅

[Alisa]

Hi all, I reached out to ask about the course and this is the reply I got:

“Fretboard Wizard is open for enrollment twice per year. The next enrollment opportunity is coming very soon, so please stay tuned for all of the details.

We are ironing out some wrinkles from our recent website migration and then we will proceed with this. Once we have more details on the exact date, it will be announced in our Newsletters and on the TAC site.”

Thank you everyone for your input, I wasn’t considering the fretboard wizard course, but after reading this thread I do. That’s the danger of procrastinating by browsing forums…

[Alisa]

I’m on day 12: still in the ouch-phase. I feel the skin getting thicker but not there quite yet. Shorter time periods are definitely better than longer while your fingertips are tender, but even then, don’t overdo it. When your fingertips tell you to stop, stop. Try again later. If you get blisters, you’ll have to stop for a few days to let them heal, and that is really, really annoying.

[Alisa]

Hi Noggy,

I’m in the same boat. I do the daily challenges; they are fun and not too difficult. You can attempt them at 0.5x speed, and the goal is to try something new each day. Besides that, I’m supplementing with learning songs that I think I can handle. Those are long-term projects; the challenges and lessons have priority (in that order). But it’s fun and motivating to work towards playing a song. I’m currently working my way through “runaway train”. It’s almost within reach; if it wasn’t for that one F chord in the chorus 😂It’s also fun to play using the boom-chicka pattern like in the 30 days course. I use guitartricks and ultimate-guitar to find song tabs for beginners, but google will probably work too lol

[Alisa]

Thanks, @SoCal_Ian that makes a lot of sense. I think I’ll treat myself to a setup next time I change the strings (I might go up a gauge, not in love with the extra light ones) and make it my one-year goal to learn to do this by myself.

[Alisa]

Hi @Loraine, thanks for the tip, I did. The strings are a couple of weeks old by now and remain stable during a playing session, though I still tune them every time before playing. Sometimes I think one of them is off during playing, but it’s usually just me messing up a chord transition 😂

[Alisa]

Thanks, @dr_dave, for the tip; I’ll check it out! The new strings are extra light gauge, so I probably went to a lighter gauge. Previous strings were the original strings, and I have no idea what they were. Old and rusty, that’s for sure. I’m sorry to say I neglected this guitar for several years. After the previous comment, I tested the tuning again and concluded the problem was mostly with the lower E string. I applied pencil lead as recommended, and it miraculously helped!