jumpinjeff
Forum Replies Created
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Indeed! no expectations, just progress beyond anywhere I thought I would ever be able to go. I showed up with nothing but expectations when I joined. It was my expectation that was killing my enjoyment and as directly curtailing my progress. Expectation was where my fun went to die. When my expectation was replaced with a “trust the process” mentality, my progress ramped and allowed me to do something I had not been able to do before. It is kinda cool when you try to do something all life long unsuccessfully and then find a way that works. I also had to deal with 2 additional things to get on board the crazy progress train and both were related to the nature of music. Music is both repetitive/motif heavy and formatted. Took me a while to figure that out. Those formats get repeated over and over with variation…..I came assuming the variations were what I needed to learn…I was wrong….I needed to to learn the formats before I could learn the variations.
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I keep waiting for the new notes to be introduced to the music scale….at that point I WILL need new content from TAC.
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I am with you Bayvu2! TAC is my training center….my guitar gymnasium if you will. I come here to learn, to recuperate, stretch, get stronger. It is why I blew through 3000 sessions a while ago and did not notice. After the gym, I go out and hit the world outside the gym……This is one of the fantastic benefits of TAC that I have not yet found in other programs. TAC makes players. TAC does not train performers. Once you learn “how” to play guitar you can sit and play with anyone anytime anywhere. TAC does not teach you how to play songs, it rather uses songs to teach the student how to play guitar. A perfect example of this is coming up, we have Hotel California on tap in the next week or two. This is a song form……By decoding this song “form” you actually unlock the knowledge of how to play about 3000 more songs. TAC has freed me from having to “know” a song to play and sing it….99% of songs are all the same in varying but oddly not too many varying ways. If you learn how the guitar works learning songs becomes unnecessary. Hit the gym and go out and play until it all sounds the same. : ) If you haven’t heard me say it before, this acquired skill is dreamlike, as in,… I almost can’t believe it happened, to Me! If feel like I am staring at a winning lotto ticket. How about that for a small win! The winning combination: …well guided consistent effort over time.
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Sup shawb, a set up is making sure the geometry of angles the guitar presents to the string when depressed at any given spot on the fretboard is optimized for both sound and feeling on your fingers. This is done using several methods depending of what is going on with your guitars life cycle. If you have good sound now, no buzzing frets, and it feels managable (fairly regular feeling of pressure to make desired sounds depending on where you are on the fretboard) you don’t need a set up….if you think you need a set up and are not sure go to a guitar store and play some (5 or more at least) to get a feel for setup differences, play them keeping that in mind. If they are all like yours in feel you are good. If you switch and play yours and you are straining more to make sound…might be time for set up.
Strings: all personal preference. I know dudes who play dead strings because they don’t jingle jangle as much. Me, I like to change em the minute they lose that bright shine, I play D’addario EJ 16s because they are cheap and easy and sound like I want them to sound for about 100 hours. I love how the Santa Cruz stings feel. They nailed the coating by coating the string strands individually and not just the string….I just can’t do the cost thing. Otherwize coated strings repulse me as a player. You should try them though as many many players love them and the longevity the coating offers. -
I have learned here that when I think it is one thing, it may actually be another. The pinky problem as described…(great photo btw to see what is going on)….assuming there is not trauma that caused this….the problem is not the pinky it is the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand alignment. Few years ago I learned how to turn my arms inside out (seemingly). Two bouts of frozen shoulder and a surgery later and I figured it out….stretch not just your fingers but your whole side including neck and back…..you will be amazed if you carry this practice forward for a good solid period of time. At least I was amazed and I am the biggest jaded skeptic on the planet. And don’t get me started on how to stretch for guitar. : ) You have a good chance of bringing that pinky into the fold but you do have to make a practice of aligning.
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@albert_d is correct! it is in the skills section, in the Subsection “The Basics”.
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Yes indeed. Move on….there is a dimished return effect that we as students learn to balance. Hit it a lick and go is a way that these challenges have served me well. I will run into the “OMG that looks impossible I will never be able to do that” part of a challenge and I extract that little part of the challenge out and play with it until it becomes me. You are working a specific form of a skill with the hammer ones and pulloffs. You will continue to encounter these and have ample opportunity to play with it more down the road… play with it, if you are into it keep playing it and if not, a new challenge awaits.
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Hi Baz, think of this TAC thing as an around the world trip….the starting point is your ending point. Each trip round the world you see 10 things you missed the first time you were there. This mindset helped me get over “I should be here by now” syndrome.
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@rdools116gmail-com : Hopefully your stitches came out yesterday without complications. I wanted to call your attention to todays challenge. It is called Wind And Rain. It is one of the perfect exercises to play using the open strings exclusively. Give it a go an see what you think. If it doesn’t track in you minds ear at first, think using pairs of open strings in conjunction with each other. Have fun, get to stretching the adhessions. go slow, focus on smooth and you will be fast again in no time.
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@rdools116gmail-com sorry about your hand! There is hope for your guitar playing though. Wishing you godspeed recovery!
I made fantastic progress recovering from Rotator cuff surgery. I worked on playing the open strings only, playing my favorite songs karaoke style (playing along with artist recordings.) Most songs can be played using only open strings. It takes some playing…your ears get used to distingishing and listening for tonality and intuitive wiring gets connected in the gray matter. Hotel California is a great example of a well know song that can be played this way. The amount of confidence this little trick provides is way greater than the effort I needed to exert to get this into the intuitive side of my skill bag. Even better,… I could do it using only my picking hand.
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yes it is great for me…now how do we get you to the same place!? TAC may not be your vector. It could be. One thing I do know is that wherever you find yourself, training your mind to embrace repetition will serve to make you a better player….what is music if it is not expressive repetition of theme and motif? Repetition and Form with variation for flavor….I tried to learn the variations without learning the forms and that is when I was most frustrated. Every session I play now ends in a small win. Not because every session is better than the previous, but because it is how I was trained to play…trained to play here. This is a golden key. This is the key to me becoming the player I always dreamed of being.
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@Rocktopus : you now have in your hands one of the keys to fast progress, don’t let go….this is a magnificent small win. Celebrate the sound that wood box vibrates out. Even one string one note is a celebration. If you ever run out of the joyful play part, come back and we can all find it together. It seems to be ridiculously contagious.
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@the-old-coach : had to respond here, no room left in the layout. : ) ..The brick wall is real….now I look for it…I dance in front of it in joyful reverie…..this is the place where I used to find myself working a skill and it seemed like I was watching paint dry…..with encouragement from those who had faced the wall before me and learned how conquer it, watch paint dry? I did it and to be fair I whinned alot. But even though I wanted to stop, i did not stop and then… it happened: a brick fell…..and then they all fell and off I went. I was suffering in the repetition but it was that very thing that I was resisting that ultimately proved the solution. Now I revel in repetition….I realized that most music is repetitive. I used to need a map for success, now I need a map to the next wall. (it is the same map, shhhhhh.)
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Once you surrender don’t forget you have joined the winning team! Here we play, come what may. It’s not profound but the idea is sound. Simple and yet not easy until the habit forms and then you begin to see progress uninhibited by ego mi amigo….amiga didn’t sound as good. Expectations and “shoulds” are jettisoned and replaced with small win after small win in a sea of fun. Creativity abounds. But none of this happens until frustration is moved from an inhibitor to a motivator. Good direction combinded with methodic intervals aimed at progress is the secret sauce to accomplish this and throw in a chat board to explore, query and solve and I say…Team TAC for the win.