jumpinjeff
Forum Replies Created
-
Why not continue to build your mind/finger, hand, muscle connections with the challenges ten minutes, and then move on to fretwiz for the brain? I found it easy to underestimate the importance of muscle conditioning to play what I wanted to play, which is everything. Fretwiz is informationally dense but can be run through repeatedly for new revelations. Get what is germane to you at the moments you are learning it and move on.
-
Dont worry: Short fingers are where everyone starts……somewhere in the process, fingers grow long and fleixible. : ) You are on your way!!
-
are you sure? I still have it. Did your sceen ratio magnify leaving the icon out of view?
-
Hi @SplashAndrew : welcome. Here is my experiece. The pick itself is only 1% of proper picking and initially it may be 0%. The easiest pick I use is a Jim Dunlop nylon .60mm. It producess the least amount of volume of all my picks. I used it when working new strum patterns with increasing speeds. It was a go to training pick for strumming. For flat picking I figured out how to balance the pick with a Dunlop Ultex 2.0. It remains a go to for volume and control when flat picking. I struggled mightily at first with slipping and spinning until I learned how it balances on the fingers. When stumming I found as I got more comfortable with the new strum patterns, I wanted more control and more volume. That is when I move to the thicker pick some of them are 2.0mm. Control cames after accuracy and precision were developed: time in the saddle. That was what I learned. I am super pumped by the results.
-
Don’t make it hard on yourself. If you see an advantage and a path to success that is shorter….you gotta take it. I say play on that nylon string electric. It will have no bad side effects. What you know you know. You take it with you. You may be the worlds best nylonstring electric player. I say you better find out! : ) +1 is the right amount of guitars for a guitarsenal.
-
I love the pick, picks of different size, shape, material, and thickness. My best advice is balance. Think of the pick as being balanced on your finger. It will have equal feel on the down stroke then a counter balance, and a positional correction on the up stroke. If that was not to your liking then another correction on the following downstroke but always getting back with as little effort as can possibly be exerted to that place of balance. Try to let the pick do the work, your fingers get it to the right place and then the weight of the pick is what provides the enegy for the strike. When I do this correctly my whole arm and wrist and hand works in unison as if there were no joints, more like a big noodle and it all flows. Think of the freedom you had as a kid when you learned how to balance on a two wheeler: balancing the pick was the same.
-
I get your post Title. Clever! Nice set up. I wish I wrote stuff down. I probably would have progressed faster. I just was so busy playing I did not have time to write stuff down. : )
-
very slowly at first! I was very confused at the gitgo. It did sort out but it took some time (longer than I would have thought but that is another topic). One measure at a time can be broken down to one chord change at a time. I learned without tab. I would listen and watch. I would go to tab as a last result when I couldn’t figure it out. It gets better the more you do it.
-
Cool if you just need to vent @KnottyJim , I have been there and done exactly that here. I do have an exercise that may or may not be helpful. I could barely do it at first and that was its own “challenge”. lemme know, ….a good venting can be its own reward.
-
I have a suggestion. Slow down. Slow down if you need as slow as 30 bpm. Next relax: there is no greater thing you can do to boost your pic speed and accuracy than to relax. Relax goes for the physical as well as the mental. One last thing….play as softly as you can, barely graze the string, as you do this, think of economy of movement. Lemme know if any of those works for you.
-
Hang in there @Slatewear . Tony is a bad metric to draw comparisons as he has been playing 30 years. Good to appreciate bad to compare.The problem is it is near impossible to find other players with similar time in the saddle from which to compare. I had to jettisen comparisons all together. That is when the search for fun began and progress began sneaking up on me instead of me always trying to wrangle it. I found success itself was fun. I found a way to make the challenge opportunities successful (mostly, I could still get in my own way) even if I only got the count in correctly.
-
Hi @J.T. , I thought I remembered on monday your suggestion was on display. Rather than Tony listing his songs he upped the interactivity asking for everyone to list the songs for which they were reminded, by the exercise.
There were some very difficult challenges in the lesson structure. Syncopation was one of those things that was so difficult at first I thought I would never get it. I did keep plugging away because it was a big hook in my mind. Fast forward a coupl’a years…I got it. It is one of those things that once I got it I wondered why it took me so long. : ) ….Syncopation was not the only challenge I found like this. It is what keeps me in TAC. There is always another level deeper I can go or I know I am on level one and there are 20ish levels below that 18 of which I cant comprehend until I get there….but it all sounds cool. I spent a good year frustrated most of the time and that is when I learned expectation is where fun goes to die. I kept expecting an unrealistic return on my effort instead of measuring actual progress or I was always expecting to be better than I was (also the result of not measuring actual progress. That is when I almost quit. Buncha people in the forums jumped in and helped me redirect and here we are!
Dislike and challenge. Two words to explain the same thing. Pick the word that leads to progress. It is hard so I dislike it, I can’t do it so I dislike it, I can’t do it like Tony so I dislike it….all those things went through my mind at one point but to get where I am 10years later my dislike became fun through challenge. Same lessons, same time, different results. I agree with you I would hate for challenging lessons to go away. It is why I am here!!!!!
-
Just remember the scale starts with one note. Take the Root and the 2 and the third spend an hour changing your leadtone on the chord change and mess with rhythimic patterns. There are building blocks in improv: they start with the root, then the thirds (pentatonics) then comes the octave scales, after that there is infinitely more but if you get those blocks then the infinite come automatically with…. you guessed it, time in the saddle. If I could do it over I would spend more time in thirds. I was slightly obsessed with the octave scales and in hind sight to my detriment. I will put in a good word for playing the whole improve track useing one note. This is the best way I found to work rhythm (super key in improve). I start banging out 1/4s in time, then 1/8ths then 1/4 triplets, then back, then mixed, then 16ths. I allowed my focus to be laser sharp on time, without worrying about note selection. This was a watershed moment when I was able to do this. Did not happen overnight, you can ask any of the people I play with. : ) I’m pretty sure I struggled harder than the average bear to get it. It was my mistake early on not to explore the importance of root tones and their octaves. This is one of my favorite guitar subjects to yammer on about.
-
we have different views of the page. I do not see a menu bar….that is where that “help” icon lives for what I see. Thats a drag.
-
@SCGobbler , @petelanger ; I wanted to hit something again that Pete nailed beautifully, “You want to consistently show up every day and play, Don’t worry about completion/perfection!” This is key and huge! ……my two cents…engagement is the M.O., don’t sacrifice engagement for the sake of completion or perfection. What ever it takes to keep you coming back with that fire for learning, do that. If you can stop at a high point (this bears repeating) do the same lesson maybe for three days. In the end though this practice will become limiting thus the variations of the Daily challenges. Balanced building as it were. There is a physical reality most people overlook when starting up with guitar: your fingers are incapable, at the get go, of doing that which your brain is sure you should be able to do. You could do the same lesson 1000 times but you would not be able to do it until your body catches up with your mind. It is why enagament in the begining is darn near equialent in importance as the content until you have developed the neural pathways and kinestethic awareness in your back, chest, shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers. I like moving along…I have experienced and seen the benefit over time as well as with others who did it moving on. When I let go and started doing it the way Tony was hammering home I was not sure. Now I know. I got better faster. And now I know why! : )