Kim-Fitz
Forum Replies Created
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I understand how this can feel overwhelming when starting out. Please understand you are not expected to “learn” the day’s challenge. Tony is exposing you to different skill sets each day. You are not mastering these skill sets. It takes time to develop these skills over months and years. You work on the challenge at your level for 10 minutes and then leave it. The challenge will come around again. Tony is teaching to a variety of guitar players at different skill levels. He does not expect someone that just picked up the guitar to play through the challenge. He has members that started TAC having experience playing guitar before joining and also people that never played the guitar before joining TAC but are are now on their 2nd or 3rd year etc…
So what do you do? Pick one small section of the daily challenge to work on for 10 minutes. For example, take this past Monday’s challenge “Cash It In”. If you can barely make an E chord or pick the correct strings, you are not going to worry about palm muting. Just practice picking the strings for 10 minutes. You can just do the E chord and not worry about the A and B7 chord. If you want to try palm muting, try without picking the single notes. If you feel comfortable do more. Just work at the level you are at. You are not trying to master any part of the challenge in one 10 minute sitting. If you are feeling overwhelmed then you are trying to do too much. It’s a process you are supposed to enjoy! Some days and challenges will be easier than others. As the weeks and months go by you will begin to notice that your skills are improving. The next time the challenge comes around you will be able to play more of the challenge and try some other aspect of the challenge like adding the A and or B7 chord. Maybe you will just work on the palm muting part with picking but only on the E string. Hope this helps.
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You will need to look online for reading tabs as I don’t believe TAC has anything on it. Not to confuse you but TAB notation can vary somewhat. It’s pretty clear most of the time but just be aware when looking at different sites for help on reading Tab.
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The G above the 1st measure is telling you that you will be basically play a G shape chord. So you can place your fingers to a G chord. You are not strumming a G chord you are playing individual and multiple notes (strings) along the measure. If you look at the first note on the music line you will see it’s a single G note. This is written in TAB line for guitar with the 3 (3rd fret) on the bottom line which represents the Low E string. You will strike the single note with your pick. The next group of notes are OPEN D, OPEN G, D, and G. They are lined up under each other and so are strummed together. The TABs correspond to the strings and frets played. This continues along the measure. As you look at the measure you can see the that if your hand is in the G chord shape you a can easily play each note or group of notes without having to change hand position. As you can see when you get to the last two notes of the measure you will be doing a pull off on the B note. Your finger will already be there because you initially placed your hand in a G chord position. The idea is your hand will be in the best position as to play the notes easily without having to move your fingers around all the time to play the notes. When you look at the 2nd measure there is a D chord written above that TAB measure. You can see that the second group of notes make a D chord. Even though the you will not be strumming a D through the whole measure the D chord shape sets you up for the best hand position for playing all the notes in that measure. Sometimes playing a chord just helps you anchor your hand to play the note. For example at the end of the second measure you will be doing a pull off on 2nd fret of the 3rd string. Having you hand in the D position helps stabilize your finger for the pull off. Same for the Em in the 3rd measure.
As for pick direction, you will need to look at the music line. When playing a whole 1/2 or 1/4 note you generally strum down. So if you have two 1/4 notes in a row, you would strum down for each count 1 (down) 2 ( down). If you have a 1/8 note you would count 1 & 2 &. The down stroke on the numbers and up stroke on the & beat. I know Tony explains this somewhere. He normally goes over counting and pick direction on most of the daily challenges.
I don’t know why Tony doesn’t have course on TABs but you can google or look on YouTube and find lots of help for reading TABs. Hope this helps.
Kim
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It didn’t used to be like this. I’ve been doing TAC for 3 years now and the distortion started this year. I have a Mac and normally use Safari. When I switch to Google Chrome, I don’t usually get the distortion.
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Very nice! You have a pretty voice too.
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BWild, I don’t have any problem printing on my mac if I’m in Safari. But I have to change the size of the print percentage. Sometimes I use google Chrome and to print I have to click print and then click on the destination box and pick pdf. The size will then be correct for printing but I can’t change anything else if I wanted to. Kim
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Just move on to the next week. You don’t need to master any lesson. Just try to enjoy the process and not worry about how well you did. Your skills will develop as you continue to play.
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If you look at the bottom right corner under the video you can click on the TABs for the lesson. I find it easier to print them out as I can make notes on them.
The tiny pieces are any section you want to work on. You could just practice the Dm with the strumming mute section or the part with the individual note. You can take it in chunks or just one small line and that’s a win. Tony doesn’t want you to get overwhelmed so you don’t need to do the whole challenge.
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Hi Brandon,
On the left sidebar you will see S<font face=”inherit”>kills Course -Getting started. When you click on that it brings up different lessons. It will show 30 days to play, 5 day guitar routine and some other lessons. As a beginner the other lessons are worth going through after completing 30 days to play. Another Skills Course worth going through is under techniques called </font>flat picking<font face=”inherit”> jumpstart. Tony </font>will<font face=”inherit”> show you how to hold a pick and how to use it correctly. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the </font>courses. Just explore them when you have time and pick one to try when you feel ready. I just suggested a couple good for beginners starting out.
As others already said start with 30 days to play and then 5 day routine before jumping into daily challenges. Go at your own pace. You don’t need to master any lesson before moving to the next one. Good luck and have fun! Kim
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Go to the skills course under techniques and pick the flat picking course. Tony will explain how to hold the pick and give picking technique instructions. It’s very helpful. Remember to let the pick do the work and relax your hand, wrist ,elbow and shoulder. Like everything else in takes time to develop. Good luck, Kim
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I agree with everyone’s suggestions. The only thing I would add is to start learning songs if you haven’t yet. Lots of songs out there with the chords you mentioned. Your muscle memory will start to kick in pretty fast. You will also be practicing rhythm, and strumming patterns at the same time. It’s a lot more fun than just practicing drills alone.
Good luck, Kim
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Hi Steve,
Go to the 5 Day Routine. Tony will explain the Daily Challenge and prep you for it. To help you learn the chords and practice them, pick a couple of song you want to learn to play. There are many songs that only use 3 simple chords. Look online for beginner guitar songs or if you have a song in mind look on YouTube for a beginner version. Lots of free teaching out there. Also ditto Albert! Don’t stress about it and have fun! Kim
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There are 4 rows of staves with tabs on the page. I hope I’m saying that correctly. Tony doesn’t play the 1st row. He starts on the 2nd row or bar 4. He plays bar 4-15 for this challenge.
Hope that helps.
Kim
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That’s so weird Jeff. I never had a problem with distortion until this year. I used to practice at varying speeds all the time. I wonder why it’s like that.
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Hi shypan,
Tony has members at all different guitar levels . TAC is set up so it can work for a varied level of guitar players. I can see how it would feel intimidating and frustrating for someone starting out.
If I had started TAC as a complete beginner I would have struggled immensely and probably have quite if I had tried to complete the Daily Challenges. You have to lower expectations and work where you are at in your journey. For example, this week’s Thursday guitar challenge “Painted Tape” is rhythm guitar day. You are working on rhythm skills by practicing 2 different strumming patterns, one with muting and one without muting. <font face=”inherit”> If you are unable to play and change the chords required in the challenge, then I would pick one chord I could play and work on the first bar of the strumming pattern. Maybe you spend 10 minutes trying to work on the mute strum pattern with the A chord or the other strum pattern with one chord and that’s it. Maybe you struggle and don’t master either one of the patterns you tried . That is perfectly fine because that’s where you are at. Also mastering the day’s challenge is not what it’s about. Thursday is about rhythm. So what if you master the challenge. Does mastering that day’s challenge make you a master at rhythm? No it doesn’t. But being exposed to and working on different types of rhythms each week will improve your rhythm skills over time. This will show up down the road in your guitar playing. So working on a portion of the challenge at your skill level is still working on rhythm. Just do </font>what<font face=”inherit”> you can each day. </font><font face=”inherit”>Pick out a small section and work on the point of that day’s challenge. </font> <font face=”inherit” style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”> Make the daily effort and</font> move on. If you have time, work on something else like a song you want to learn, another strumming pattern, or go through 30 days to play again or some of the other skills courses.
<font face=”inherit”>Don’t sweat it! Have fun! Over time you will see </font>improvement<font face=”inherit”> in your playing and the </font>challenges will<font face=”inherit”> feel more </font>doable.
Kim