Moose408
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t have the answer, but my session count has never been accurate. I been using the app Andante to keep track of my actual time practicing and my session count.
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The common suggestion for up-strums is to hit the bottom 3-4 strings. It’s not exact but should be more than 1 and less than 6. The tab will typically show four strings.
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I tried power chords during the 30-day challenge and struggled and moved on. I recently had to learn them for another course I’m taking as they are part of an assessment needed to progress in the course. It took me roughly 3 week to be able to play them correctly and consistently. I ended up doing my assessment on my acoustic as I found them easier on it than my electric.
I would say move on. They haven’t really been used in any of the daily challenges I’ve encountered since I’ve joined TAC.
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Seriously, this is a common issue with beginning guitar players. I would recommend doing some finger stretching exercises, Tony has a couple in the Skills Courses.
It does take time, it took me 5 months to get the C-chord comfortably, so don’t beat yourself up that you can’t do it after only 3 weeks,
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Ok, I won’t tell you. 😀
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Yep, if you click on Forums in the left-hand navigation bar it will take you an overview of all of the forum categories and there is a “Search Forums” text box at the very top.
Here’s the link https://tonypolecastro.com/family-forums/
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I’m going to elaborate a little on my play left-handed comment. Sorry if I go a little too deep into neuroplasticity and the brain.
It should not matter which hand you learn to fret with. It is a new skill that your brain has never encountered. The brain learns new skills through focused activity and repetition. When these two things occur it actually changes the neural pathways in your brain and creates routines in your subconscious. Many people refer to this as “muscle memory”. You could learn to play with your feet for that matter, it doesn’t matter to the brain. The key is to have focused regular practice for the skill you want to learn.
You could learn to modify chord shapes to accommodate your injury, the challenge is that you will be somewhat on your own trying to figure out those modifications, as most lessons make assumptions about chord shapes. As you learn music theory and the fretboard modifications will be come much easier, but it is probably 6-9 months into your guitar journey and it’s going to be frustrating getting there.
Justin of JustinGuitar, has played his guitar right-handed for 30+ years, but to validate his beginner course he went through the lessons playing left-handed (they are documented on YouTube under Nitsuj, Justin spelled backwards). He had the same struggles as any beginner but eventually developed the “muscle memory” in order to play proficiently left-handed. So it’s not impossible, it’s just what you practice.
There is a great book on how the brain learns and talks about learning stringed instruments, “The Laws of Brainjo” by Turknett. Highly recommended for understanding the process of learning a new skill like the guitar.
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I did not have that in my list, it must have been pre-August of last year.
However I played around with the URL using the word Lucille and found the 5 challenges.
https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/bb-shake/
https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/lucille/
https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/kings-court/
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Well done.
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Very well done, both the guitar playing and the singing.
My only comment is I wish I could see your fretting hand in the video.
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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 and 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.
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Play left-handed.
Easier to compensate with the strumming/finger-picking hand than the fretting hand.
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I mistakenly replied to the original message from Barbara and not yours. See below for the BB King links.
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Improv normally means making it up as you go along. However there are phrases of 2-5 notes that you will often repeat, and most people have a few of their favorite go-to phrases, so in that sense it is something not necessarily created on the spot. Still have to decide where to insert that phrase.
Improv took me awhile to get, but it’s now my favorite part of the week. What got me over the hump was learning that you can improv with just a single note. You don’t have to memorize the entire scale before being able to do an improve. Just one or 2 notes is enough.
Be patient, it will come with time.
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You can access old challenges if you marked them as favorites.
I started copying the links to the daily challenges and added them to a spreadsheet, so I can access them anytime and keep them more organized than the Favorites list.
I have saving the links since end of July of last year and I did not see any BB King song, but it sometimes hard to tell because Tony rarely mentions the song name in his titles. Do you know when it was or the name of the song?