Moose408
Forum Replies Created
-
You should start with the 30 Days to Play, then move to the 5 Day Challenge. If you started with the Daily Challenges, there is a check-in every 90 days where you evaluate where you are in your guitar journey. That may be what Tony was referring to.
-
Too hard won’t cause dead strings unless you are pressing directly on the fret. The finger should be slightly behind the fret.
Dead strings can be caused by pressing too lightly, but the most common cause is one of your other fingers touching the string. When playing a chord it is very common as a beginner for a finger holding down a string to touch adjacent strings causing them to be muted. Fixing this just takes practice and time. When fingering a chord you should play through each string individually, all strings should ring clear. If a string does not then you should do micro adjustments with your fingers until all the strings ring clear. Rinse – Repeat.
-
For me it was right at 80 hours of practice, which was about 5 months in. I felt like I could consistently make chords, play a few songs, my strumming still sucked. Strumming fell into place at around 120 hours. That being said, everyone is different and it really depends on how you approach practice. I have a very strict practice routine that varies for each day of the week, each routine is timed (3-5 mins), and I use a metronome religiously. When I don’t do that level of “focused” practice it takes much longer.
When I have a problem with a chord I will include focus time on just that chord into my routine, 3 mins of slow motion placing my fingers without strumming, 3 mins of alternating which finger goes down first without strumming, 3 mins of picking each string and doing micro-adjustments so each string rings clear. It took a week of doing this everyday to get the Dm chord and 5 weeks of doing this everyday for the C chord. For strumming I do 3 mins of a given pattern with the strings muted. This may be overboard for most, but it is what it takes for me to feel like I’m improving and it works for me.
-
I felt the same for a long time. I would spend a few minutes everyday doing isolated practice on strumming (mute the strings with the fretting hand and just focus on the strumming hand). I didn’t feel like I was making much progress and then suddenly at the 8 month mark of my guitar journey I could suddenly strum. It was a very binary thing. On Tuesday I was struggling and on Wednesday I suddenly could strum with complicated rhythms. I’m not sure what was different but on Wednesday I was playing with feeling/emotion instead of just concentrating on the mechanics.
Don’t know if this is helpful other than don’t get frustrated, and practice what is hard.
-
There is no way to search for past lessons. At the end of each month the lessons disappear unless you save them in your favorites, or copy the links to your local computer. I use a spreadsheet to save all of the lessons.
Here are the Fast Car lessons
<google-sheets-html-origin></google-sheets-html-origin><google-sheets-html-origin></google-sheets-html-origin>Convenience Store
-
Have you checked your browser’s history? If it’s only been a day it should be there close to the top.
-
Most TABs don’t contain pick direction. If they do it is indicated by a “Vl for up and a “[“ rotated 90 degrees (so it looks like a roof or hat) for downstrokes.
The real way to tell is to look at the musical staff that Tony has above the tab. Whole and half notes are downstrokes, if there are 8th notes, the note on the beat is a downstroke and the off-beat is an upstroke.
-
The idea of TAC is progress over perfection. The idea is if you tried the first two weeks to just move on. You are not expected to perfect anything in the 30 days to play. So no need to go back and review. Overtime the repeated exposure and repetition will cause you to improve on the techniques being taught.
The 10 mins is just a minimum, the idea being that if you said you said you were going to practice 45 mins each day you might find it hard to schedule, but everybody can find 10 mins. Once you get started you can continue playing until your fingers get sore then come back again tomorrow. I tended to do around 12-18 mins each session for my first couple of weeks. Once the calluses built up I would often be surprised that I had been practicing for much longer.
-
Welcome back. Getting restarted is often the hardest part, so you are over that hurdle.
-
I’ve struggled with this as well. Here are my thoughts.
– Buy a travel guitar. Donner Hush is reasonably priced
– visit a pawn shop at your destination and buy a used guitar, donate it or sell it back in 3 weeks.
– do Fretboard Wizard, a lot of it can be done without a guitar
– learn music theory.
– Tenauto is a good app to practice ear training, learning notes on the fretboard, and reading notes
– enjoy your vacation and start back up refreshed when you return
-
That’s great! I attend a weekly jam and I learn so much at every session.
-
Everyone struggles with the C chord. It will get better and over time your finger span will increase as your fingers loosen up. Daily stretching helps. Also you are only 2 weeks in. It took me 3 months before I could consistently do the C chord. So don’t fret about it too much (see what I did there, I crack me up 🙂 )
Here’s what I do when struggling to learn a new chord shape.
It takes time. Basically you want to move the finger positioning routine from your conscious to your subconscious mind or what some people call muscle memory.
There are practice steps you can do to accelerate the process. The brain creates these routines based upon the amount of the attention you apply when learning and the how often you repeat the process.
The secret for me is to do dedicated, isolated practice for 10 mins every day, for a little over a month.
My steps are
– position my fingers and pick each string, if I have a muted string then slightly reposition the offending finger and repeat the above until every string rings out clearly.
– keeping my hand positioned I will then press down hard on the strings and then release the pressure, but keep contact with the string. Repeat this 20 times
– I then lift the fingers off the strings about 1/4” and repeat step 1.
– once I am consistent with that I will place one finger at a time, starting with my index finger, then middle, then ring. Do that 10 times, then start with the middle finger, then index, then ring. The start with ring finger, middle, index. I go through all permutations of first and 2nd and 3rd finger down. Then I move to trying to place 2 fingers at once and then adding the 3rd. Go through all of those permutations. Then go for all fingers at once.
You should notice slight improvement each week and then one day suddenly all your fingers will go to the right position. It takes me a month of this daily practice to get where the chord is automatic.
-
One of the benchmark songs will be one of the weekly challenges this month. As @TerriG said, this month’s is Ain’t No Sunshine.
-
I used Ultimate Guitar or YouTube lessons from Lauren Bateman or Justin
-
There are many famous guitar players who can’t read musical notation. So I guess the answer to your question is technically none. 🙂
Learning the durations of notes and various things like rests, ties, accents, etc is probably more beneficial than know what each actual note is, but again it’s a bonus and not necessary