[tailsawaggin]

First off, welcome. Yes, this program is aimed primarily at beginners, so the lessons are fairly ground-level. As time goes by, and a player develops more dexterity and comfort, they can embellish as they like.

The same thing kind of applies to playing songs. This program isn’t built around playing songs like some other programs are — it’s built around providing you the tool set to play songs. You’ll find a lot of this in the “skill courses” section, where you’ll learn chords, strumming patterns, and so on, so instead of learning to play “Heart of Gold” and getting the G, C, D, and Em chords, we go the other direction here. We learn G, C, D, and Em, then we play “Heart of Gold,” “One of Us,” “Last Kiss,” or any of the 10,000 other songs that use that set of chords.

If playing songs is more your thing, there’s nothing wrong with augmenting what we do here with song lessons as well. YouTube has a ton of guys who are very good at that — Marty Schwartz (Marty Music), Justin Sandercoe (Justin Guitar, though he’s more of a toolset guy too, and the songs are a means to that end), David Potts (Song Notes), Shane Simpson (Guitar at Work), and Shutup & Play all come to mind.

I’ve been watching all those guys for a while, and one thing is for sure — doing what they say to do got a lot easier after some time here with Tony. Tony’s program is sneaky, too — I just do the daily lessons, and songs get easier to play.

Good luck on your journey!

[tailsawaggin]

The first thing I did when I got my twelve string a couple years ago is start tuning it. I’ll let you know when I finish.

[tailsawaggin]

I also use Pro Metronome, and I found it got a lot more useful after I paid the $8 or so to unlock all the extra features. In its base configuration it will let you do different time signatures, and it will let you set accents for the beats, but it won’t count beat subdivisions — only the one, two, three, etc — and it has a very limited number of voices available. Once upgraded it will do beat subdivisions so you can get the and, e and a, and triplet counts for example, and it also acquires a number of voices including a drum kit and a person speaking the beat. I really like that last one because it leaves no ambiguity about what beat I should be on for those times I run completely off the rails, and when the computer is saying “one and two and three and four and” in perfect time, I have more brain CPU cycles free for playing. 😁

[tailsawaggin]

Hi Mark,

Tuning by ear is great for people who can do it, but for people like me, there is technology. I have a couple of preferred solutions — the first is a simple clip-on chromatic tuner like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner. You really can’t go wrong with these — when you pluck the string, it shows you what note you’re playing and its degree of sharpness or flatness, so to tune to open D for example, it’s just a matter of tuning each of your strings down until the display says it’s right.

My other favorite is this tuner app for iDevices: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guitar-tuner-easy-tune-chords/id838981369. It defaults to standard EADGBe, but under the settings menu there is a HUGE list of alternate tunings available, and there’s almost certainly an Android equivalent if that’s your preferred platform.

Cheers,

tails

[tailsawaggin]

I play 11-52s on my guitars — even the little one — so I second the vote for light strings. Guitar is hard enough without the strings biting your fingers all the time. 😁

Along with that, it might be worth spending a few $$ on getting a setup done. If your guitar has too much neck relief, or the action is too high, it’s a lot harder to fret the strings and a lot more tiring to play.

[tailsawaggin]

You’re off to a good start. One thing I wish I’d done sooner is prioritized rhythm over chord correctness, especially since once I started doing that, chord correctness started to come along in its own time. It took me a long time to let go of starting over, or trying to get the chord right again before the two beat, or some other correction. It’s better just to hit that beat, no matter what you hit it with . . . after all, when you’re playing with someone else or they’re singing along with you or whatever, they’ll forgive you for missing notes if you keep the beat, but if you lose the beat, you lose your singer too. 😁

Just keep at it, slow and steady, and the rest will come.

[tailsawaggin]

Maybe a shorter scale guitar with a thinner neck, like a Taylor GS Mini would help, or even take the idea to the extreme with a 3/4 scale classical? Of course the classical neck won’t be thin, proportionally speaking, but it will be small. 😊

[tailsawaggin]

Bang the Drum.

[tailsawaggin]

@Loraine read my mind. 😂 How about “Sixteen Tons,” “Working in the Coal Mine,” or “King of the Road?”

[tailsawaggin]

I have a Yamaha e363, which is a 61 key with lots of voices and features built in. It’s touch-sensitive so you get dynamics when you play, and it has USB for the computer and 1/4” line in and line out connectors for whatever external connections you might need. One of my favorite features is that it can run on battery power; I forget how many it takes, but it wants AAs and it runs for a good long time between charges.

[tailsawaggin]

I use one of these in the master bedroom — https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B092V1FN3Q — along with two larger ones in the main areas of the house. The larger ones are unfortunately not sold any longer, but the small one is great within its space limitation. Of the three, it also has the most accurate built-in hygrometer and is the most responsive when the humidity drops below target.

My only two gripes about it are that one, it doesn’t remember its settings when it shuts off, which it will do automatically when it runs out of water, and two, the front panel lighting can’t be defeated, so like it or not, it’s on all the time.

Otherwise, the only thing to be wary of is that, like any cool mist unit, it’s going to atomize any dissolved solids in the water, and they’ll rain down over the surrounding area. Some people buy distilled water to get around this, and I have a reverse osmosis unit in the house that I use to feed mine. After several months of RO water, there’s no detectable scale or other issues with it.

It’s also probably worth getting a cheap digital hygrometer for the room and calibrating it with the damp table salt method. While my humidifier’s built in sensor is good, it’s the only good built in sensor I’ve ever encountered, so I wouldn’t trust it without having something else on hand for sanity checks.

Good luck in your search!

[tailsawaggin]

Like many things in life, it isn’t obvious until you already know the answer. 😉

[tailsawaggin]

Hi Mark,

Yes, it shows the note name including the sharp, so as you’re tuning down from G it will show you getting flatter and flatter until it’s no longer a flat G but a sharp F#, then it will pass through F# to F, and so on. I think it’s just what you’re looking for. 🙂

[tailsawaggin]

I had this same difficulty and finally figured out I was doing two things that both contribute to it. One, my thumb was badly placed, and I needed to get it in between the frets I was trying to play . . . so if I was trying to get from 1 to 3, my thumb needed to be right about behind the second fret. (Still does. 😉) The other thing I was doing is keeping my index finger planted, forcing my wrist to do all the compensating.

To retrain myself, I’d just press fret one with the index, then fret three with the ring, and repeat, while finding the best thumb placement for my particular hand and instrument. After a while I found my whole hand/wrist/arm/shoulder complex got more relaxed and stable, and hopefully your case is as simple to fix. 🙂

[tailsawaggin]

@jumpinjeff , I agree with this. If your guitar has a setup that’s unfriendly to you, it’s going to be a lot harder to play. Light strings help, but being light they also move a lot more, so if you’re a heavy-handed picker and strummer like so many beginners (looks at self), then you’re likely to get a lot of noise. It can work to your favor if you recognize it and it teaches you to lighten up, or it can work against you if you get frustrated and feel like you’re never going to be able to play, or it can go either way depending on the day (again, looks at self.)

It can be worth taking the guitar to a good tech and having a setup done. Where I live there aren’t a lot of luthiers to be found, but there are some music schools and teachers who can do some basic setup and repair functions, and I can tell you a good setup makes a world of difference. I play my biggest guitar — the full scale-length dreadnought that I can really only play seated in a good solid chair with no arms on it, or standing with a strap — more than I play the little 12 fret short scale parlor guitar that I can cuddle up with anywhere, because the dread has much better action and it’s more comfortable for my fingers. My butt complains that the chair is hard, but the fretting hand keeps winning the argument.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  tailsawaggin.