About Me

First Name	Cliffy
Last Name	Bachison
Nickname	CliffyB
Why I'm Here	I studied classical guitar in my youth. In 2019I bought a Yamaha FG-TA acoustic guitar and decided to learn to play it. Steel strings are way different than nylon! The narrow neck of the acoustic guitar also is taking me a long time to get used to. So I noodled around for a long time until I found Tony’s site in the fall of ’19. I bought the annual membership at the beginning of January ’20. What a difference this has made in my playing! Am I any good at acoustic? Not yet but I am getting there! I love Tony’s teaching philosophy.
City	North Ogden
State	Utah
Country	USA

My Guitar Goal

What I'm Focused On Now

I like to have two goals, a normal goal and a star goal. A normal goal is one I am confident I can achieve. The Star goal is my “You gotta be kidding me!” Goal. My success rate with normal goals is pretty high. My success rate with Star goals is pretty low, but the more I work toward a Star goal, the more it becomes a normal, achieveable goal.

My normal goal is to be able to play all 12 major chords from memory in at least 3 fretboard positions. My Star goal is to be able to play all 12 Major, Minor and 7th chords in five positions.

My second goal is to learn to finger pick Arlo Guthrie’s cover of “The Train they Call the City of New Orleans”.

My Star goal is to play it from memory.

The timing is pretty tricky and the fingerpicking pattern varies a lot. I am pretty sure I can achieve the first goal, the second goal is a real stretch outside my comfort zone!

My Guitar Routine

This is How I TAC

At least for Monday through Friday, my guitar routine starts at 9a and goes at least 30 minutes.

Most days I start by running through all the major chords in as many positions on the fretboard that I know, this is tough because a lot of the barre chords are difficult for me to make. After that I do the daily acoustic challenge, spending at least 10 minutes on that. If I still have time to play, I fingerpick “Blackbird” because it is kind of easy for me and gives me confidence that I can actually play something. After Blackbird, I work on whatever song I am trying to learn. I try to stick to measures of the song that are difficult for me to master. After that, if I still am hungry to play more (which is most days) I play songs I already know and work on new songs that I am developing.

COVID has allowed me to work at home so I am somewhat master of my own time now. I try to confine my playing to between 9 and 10 am. I will often come back and repeat this whole process during the evening if it does not interfere with other life events.

CliffyB