[DiscostewLA]

Hi there – I’m no expert nor a doctor, but from what I’ve read/heard/watched what matters most is that you are keeping your wrist at a good angle and position. I have kind of a stubby thumb so I’ve never done the ‘reach over’ for chords and just work hard on my barre chords to make up for my anatomy. My thumb sits basically in the middle of the neck and I try to keep it pointing up towards the sky but sometimes it drifts to pointing towards the headstock. If you have a long thumb and long hand – it probably doesn’t matter much where you have it as long as it’s allowing for your wrist to be in a good position and for you to be comfortable playing!

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  DiscostewLA.

[DiscostewLA]

You are awesome. Rock on! 🤘

[DiscostewLA]

Nice studio and lovely playing. :). Thanks for sharing the details about your rig setup too, super helpful! Do you use a DI box at all or just your 2i2?

[DiscostewLA]

If you really love the guitar keep on working on finger stretches and you’ll get there. You might want to see if your guitar is a long scale (~25.4″) or a short scale (~23.9″). If it’s a long scale, you might go to a guitar store and ask to try out a short scale guitar which will have the frets slightly closer together but will still be a full size guitar.

I would also STRONGLY suggest checking out a Taylor GS Mini (again – check out a guitar store and play as many different models that you can). I just got one and I absolutely love it. I think it would be a great guitar for anyone, and especially folks with smaller hands and frames.

Good luck and rock on!

🤘

[DiscostewLA]

Yeah it’s super annoying, they should at least let you go back a rolling 4 weeks or something instead of just removing access when the month turns over. I do a couple of things. I ‘like’ them – but I now have a bunch of liked lessons and have no idea what they actually are from the names. So what I started doing is downloading the tab and renaming it (like adding ‘Scale-GM’ to the front, or ‘Cool bluesy lick’, or’ john mayer slappy thing’) so I can remember what it was I liked about it. Then I save all those tabs in a folder on my computer and can pop them up. And if I liked it in TAC I can go find it and listen to it also, but most of the time I just use the tab that I saved.

[DiscostewLA]

Rockin! Thanks so much for posting this. You’re inspiring!

🤘

[DiscostewLA]

It’s called a ‘LOOPER’ – you can watch some youtube videos here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGkCO8q6fk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MXPhb6jsa4

Maybe Tony has done a video on Looping but I couldn’t find it. This is what Ed Sheeran uses for a lot of his music:

I’m not a huge fan but it’s impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTlij1dtoPM

I haven’t used one but I’ve been really interested in checking them out – have fun!

[DiscostewLA]

Hi Steve – welcome to the TAC Family! I started with the 30 days to play and then just jumped into the daily challenge. Some of them can be quite challenging and some of them I can catch on to pretty quickly. I try to spend at least 10 minutes doing the lesson, even if it’s easy I’ll still work on it or try to add to it somehow. Then if I have time (most days I try to carve out at least 30m for my routing) I’ll switch to working on scales or memorizing the fretboard for 10m, and then I’ll spend 10m working on songs. Somedays I just go from Tony’s lesson to playing songs and somedays I spend 20m noodling on a scale to a backing track. But I go in with a plan and most days stick to it. I also paid for the Fretboard Wizard but I haven’t gone through it. I did the first couple of lessons, but I’m stalled out for a while I try to memorize the fretboard and a few scales.

I’ve also found the TAC community to be a big part of why I keep coming back – I continue to find lots of positive reinforcement, encouragement and positivity from Tony and the TAC family, which inspires me to pick up my guitar and play even more.

As Tony and others here will repeat, playing for at least 10m a day as many days as you can is at the core. There’s also the Guitar Journal which I suggest you download and read through. I find that it’s really helpful to use the self assessment diagram to help me identify places where I need to grow (like all of them) and to help set some short term goals in the 90-day goals areas. Probably it would be even better to set monthly goals but three months give a good amount of time to make progress that you can see which is nice.

I also really love Tony’s message and demeanor in the way he teachers and the approach to teaching and to playing guitar that he resonates/amplifies (trying to think of a cool guitar word there). Some days practice sessions are going to be awesome and you’ll feel like a guitar god, some days are going to suck and you’ll feel like you’ll never be any good. Tony does a great job at helping keep me focused on the big picture and the ‘why’ which helps me get through the stretches where I don’t feel like I’m progressing or struggling to learn a new thing.

Welcome!

[DiscostewLA]

UPDATE

Hi all, thanks to everyone for the help and advice. I took a friend back to the store and we talked about different things to listen for (volume, bass, intonation, resonance) and then we did a blind listen while the sales guy played through some standard stuff going back and forth between both guitars for a while. I made a decision after the first round and as he kept going back and forth it was clear that one sounded richer deeper and fuller. After a fee rounds we both said which one we though was better at the same time and we both picked the same one and both agreed it sounded significantly better. And thankfully it was the one I had picked before (with the ding).

Brought it home. 🙂

Thanks again everyone!!

[DiscostewLA]

Thanks so much, rock on!🤘

[DiscostewLA]

Thanks! I found some local groups on Meetup that I’m going to see if I can hook up with. Excuse to buy a new travel guitar…hmm time for a GS Mini?

[DiscostewLA]

🤘

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by  DiscostewLA.

[DiscostewLA]

I wasn’t around for jam club but that sounds awesome. Maybe start a TAC family meetup group and schedule a new one? When did they normally happen? Do you want to start a new thread about Jam Club?

[DiscostewLA]

He said he could have their shop try to buff it out but i didn’t ask for a discount. When i go back if i do end up liking the sound of that one more i will def ask for a little bump on the price. Thanks!

[DiscostewLA]

Thanks! 🤘

Someone in another forum suggested that I bring a friend or have someone at the shop play them for me while I’m not looking so I can hear them without seeing or playing them. I’m going to head back to the shop and see what happens if I do a blind listening (and maybe blid playing) test. But in my first go round I felt like they played basically the same.

Thanks again for your response and have a great weekend. Time to practice!