[Alisa]

Huzzah!

[Alisa]

It took me about a month before my fingers could take more than 10 minutes. You’ll get there soon, have faith. You probably now have the initial superficial callus, but you really need a thicker layer of thick skin on the fingertips. That takes time. You will feel it grow. I find that playing shorter playing periods more often helps. Stop when it hurts and come back an hour later (if that’s possible with your schedule). If you’re only playing chords, try something from the song vault with flatpicking or fingerpicking, most people tend to press on the strings more when playing chords. Plus, you’re consistently putting pressure with all fingers simultaneously, whereas, with flatpicking, the fingers get small breathers in between.

[Alisa]

Fun song, I was singing along with you 🙂 Very consistent strumming too!

[Alisa]

Congrats! Funny how you say “simple chord changes” and my mind goes “no such thing” hahaha I bet if you go back to the first lesson in a few weeks, you’ll notice it’s gotten easier

[Alisa]

I had the same problem. When playing the G chord, my middle finger on the lower E is not muting the A-string when it is pressed down. But when I release the index finger, the A string goes up and it gets muted. Maybe the action is too high, I don’t know. I had to do weird, uncomfortable things to avoid it. I guess the longer your fingers are, the easier it is. Made me a bit grumpy, I have to admit.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  Alisa.

[Alisa]

Welcome to TAC 🙂 Definitely start with the 30 days to play. The 30 is a suggestive number. It might take you longer, especially if you never played before, or if you’re more advanced it might take you less. It is divided into 4 sections (or weeks) that loop through the major themes: flatpicking, chords, fingerpicking, and scales/improvisation (I believe in that order). When you’re done with that, you can start jumping in on the daily challenges, where you’ll see those themes come back.

A lot of people are advising to go to the “your next 6 chords” after the “30 days”. I’ll say, yes, but not as the only thing you play. Chords are tough, so the progress through that course will be slow, it is for me. Doing only chords is monotonous and tough on the fingertips. So I strongly suggest mixing fingerpicking and/or flatpicking into it. You can do that with the dailies, or with the jumpstart courses. You can start multiple courses at once and do chords on monday, flatpicking on Tuesday, fingerpicking on Wednesday, fretboard on Thursday, strumming on Friday etc… it is more in the spirit of this website to do something different every day. The progress in a single course is then slower, but you’ll have more fun exploring different styles of playing.

Final word of advise: don’t get stuck on lessons until they’re perfect, progress is not linear. You can hit complete if you kind of got it, or feel yourself plateau, then move on to the next thing. You’ll automatically get better by playing every day, and you’ll progress faster by trying new stuff. You can go back to completed lessons after a month and will see you are better at it even if you didn’t practice that particular lesson the whole month!

Good luck 🙂

[Alisa]

That was cool, refreshing to see an electric here 🙂 Beautiful guitar. The slides sounded great and very appropriate for an “icing” theme 😄

[Alisa]

Nice! The timing was tricky on that one, with the slide + pull off…

[Alisa]

Great win, @MJV 🙂 Welcome to TAC!

[Alisa]

I thoroughly enjoyed that 😀 There’s nothing wrong with your singing btw, I’ll save the roasting for the sweet potatoes later. I thought the fingernails strumming sounded nice with this song, it accentuates the laid-backness of it

[Alisa]

Beautiful! I loved how you started simple and then really ran with it

[Alisa]

Hi @jeanettelouisek You touched on a sensitive point there 🙂 The challenges get renewed every month, and if you don’t “favorite” them, you can’t access them after the 1st. I joined on the last day of April and witnessed on May 1st an explosion of outraged comments in the forums because all of April’s challenges were suddenly unavailable. It’s a new thing they implemented here. Nobody knows why exactly. I think it’s partially the philosophy of concentrating on something new every day and partially attempting to protect the content as the community grows. The dailies are not a weird place to start per se. They are the main feature of this program. They have a weekly theme, and they build upon each other throughout the week, so it will make more sense to jump in on them on a Monday (when you’re ready).

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  Alisa.

[Alisa]

Thank you for the encourangement @Guitargeezer 🙂 We’ll find out in another month if this progress is linear or exponential. Hopefully not logarithmic haha.

[Alisa]

Thanks @Philb 😀 Your son has a great taste in music haha. I’m going to move on to a song with less chords in it, so I can dial in on the transitions more.

[Alisa]

Thank you @pattyc 🙂 I’m working on the F-chord daily, with Tony’s strength exercise from the “your next 6 chords”, so maybe in 2-3 months I’ll get there lol 😂