N-lightMike
Forum Replies Created
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Hello @Noncenx and welcome to TAC. It sounds like you haven’t taken the course “TAC Quick Start“. Tony explains how the site and the program work. After you have completed the “30 Days to Play Challenge”, you will want to take the “5 Day Guitar Routine Challenge” course. In that course, Tony will explain how to use the videos and the daily challenges to continue having fun and seeing steady improvement in your guitar skills.
Ok, regarding you chords, the first thing is to recognize it will take time. You can have fun anyway if you approach this like a child would. They are full of wonder and don’t have expectations. Rejoice at what you can do. Use what you can’t do to direct your practice. You will spend a few minutes each day working on the things that are challenging to you. But then move on.
Two of the “Skill Courses” that can help you with your chords are the “Fretting Hand Toolbox” and the “Daily Stretch for Guitar” courses.
What I can tell you is that it takes time. Start with one chord at a time. Experiment with the position of your fingers, wrist, elbow and even the position of your guitar until you can get one chord to sound clean. You can also use partial chord shapes at first. If holding all 3 fingers for the C chord is just too difficult, start with the ring and middle fingers holding the A string and the D string and play a C major 7 chord. As time goes on, you will eventually be able to play a regular, 3 finger, C chord.
I hope this helps.
MG 😀
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Ok, first thing I need to say @Ping , is to directly answer your question: NO, do not stay stuck on these chords. That’s exactly why so many other methods create so much frustration that people quit trying to play guitar.
Tony’s method works for so many people because he takes a completely different approach. Try the chords. Do the best you can then go to the next lesson. This way, you are moving forward and you can have fun.
How can you have fun when you can’t play these chords cleanly? Simple, don’t judge yourself by how well you do or don’t “master” the lesson. It’s totally unimportant. In fact, it’s actually harmful to attempt to “master” anything. So what DO you do?
Ok, first, watch Tony’s explanation in the course “TAC Quick Start” under the “Skills Courses”. He will tell you all about how his method works. The way I like to understand it is that we are trying to be like children. We have fun trying but we don’t care how well we do. Since we are “just a child”, we don’t expect to do well. That opens the door to recognizing the “small win”, that is, the things we did well and/or the things we learned. What do we do with the things we couldn’t do?
That’s another part of Tony’s method. We DO NOT beat ourselves up over what we can’t do well. Either by berating ourselves OR by wearing ourselves out trying to “master” something in one day that’s realistically going to take days, weeks, or even months to get down. Instead, you make your “challenge” a regular part of your guitar routine. Every day when you play/practice your guitar, you are going to spend a few minutes working on your chords.
Ah, finally, we are at the point to help you know exactly how to work on those chords. Take one chord at a time and spend a little while just trying different positions with your fingers, wrist, elbow, even the way you are holding the guitar. Experiment till you can get that one chord to sound clean. Then stop an move on. Leave some for the next day. This is going to take too much time to do in one session or even one day. Maybe at the end of one week you will get one chord down cleanly.
Once you get one chord, work on another. When you get 2 chords down, you can practice going very slowly from one position to another position.
In the meantime, play a song with horrible sounding chords. Who cares? Have fun and enjoy what your can do.
I hope this helps.
MG 😀
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Wow, what a gift @Dirk_R . Yes, this is a win, win, win. But also, this gives your guitar playing a true purpose. This is a higher purpose, or “calling” if you will, than those who make money recording albums and playing concerts. I hope this continues for you for a long time.
MG 😀
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Welcome to TAC @homeboy .
Tony’s method is very different than other methods. Many teach songs and others teach specific skills. But Tony has us do these daily lessons.
The daily lessons cover 5 different areas of guitar skill. They are a “challenge” because most of us can’t do them. That’s the idea. It isn’t necessary to spend hours and hours and days and days trying to master a single lesson. That’s because that single lesson wouldn’t make you a guitar player. And, it would be frustrating and counter productive.
However, if you just spent 10 minutes trying to do what you could on the lesson with the focus of having fun and enjoying your guitar, you would be improving your skill a tiny bit that day. Then the next day you work on something else, and on through the week. You don’t need to remember any specific lesson or continue working on one lesson. But if you do this seemingly random program, after a couple of months you will notice marked improvement.
So here’s what you need to do. Go to the skills courses and start the “5 Day Guitar Routine Challenge“. That will help you get your routine set up and going and Tony will explain everything you need to understand so that you can see this remarkable and steady improvement that the rest of us enjoy.
MG 😀
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That was a truly delightful song, Darren ( @Moonhare ), I am so glad I was there to hear it. It would be great if you recorded it and shared it on the forum. It was so clever and well played. What a great example of song writing. Thanks for sharing that with us.
MG 😀
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I am not sure I understand your question, @UrsAngel , but I assume it has to do with the 30 Days to Play Course?
A typical 12 bar blues is 4 bars of A, 2 bars of D, @ bars of A, a bar of E, a bar of D, and finally 2 bars of A then it goes around again. Is that what you are asking about?
This is in the key of A, so it is the most important chord, the “home” chord. The D is the “4” chord and the E is the “5” chord. You will learn more about these chords and their significance as time goes on. Yes, there are many more “sections” that are possible in different songs and different genres. But you will learn that the 1, 4 and 5 chords are the most “important” chords in Western Music.
I hope I have helped. Please let us know if you have more questions.
MG 😀
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I will respect this new information @Real-Vic-G .
MG 😀
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Hi Dawn ( @Lyricqueen70@gmail.com ),
First you aren’t hijacking anyone’s thread. You could, of course, start your own topic. But this thread is about this very thing.
Anyway, many newcomers buy a dreadnought right out of the gate because that’s the most common acoustic guitar. The body is very large and can be so uncomfortable to play that the player can get stress injuries to their shoulders or back. It is totally possible to learn to hold a large guitar without having any problems. But I found, as an older adult, I simply wasn’t willing to work with it and I sold it. I stick with smaller bodied guitars now.
I hope this helps.
MG 😀
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Ya like that @Cadgirl ? I can’t help myself sometimes. Ok, all the time. 🤣
But hey, you know who I heard about both Marty and Justin from? None other than Tony himself. He mentioned them as 2 great sites to learn popular songs, if that’s what you want. But Tony teaches guitar skills by using them in a fun way. When others teach skills, they are focused on one skill that you are somehow supposed to miraculously learn in 3 weeks or 2 months or however long their course is. “At the end of this course, you will be able to solo like Eric Clapton, or B.B. King, or fill in the blank.”
Anyway, I’ve said it many times. None of us signed up for a forum. We signed up to learn guitar. I think Tony does that better than anyone. My opinion. The community we found on the forum was a killer bonus. And we still have it, though it is true it isn’t the same. Nonetheless, it’s a bonus. Not the raison d’etre. In my estimation the guitar training has improved. And he was already the best. I love that.
MG 😀
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Hey @Marty69 ;
There were almost no recordings. When I first came on someone recorded. We now record ourselves. So you would know if you had hit the record button. I’m sorry if no one prompted you to record if you wanted. But that’s how it’s being done now.
MG 😀
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That’s a good point, @Timbothirroul . That makes this a safe haven from the storm of competitive commercialism. 😁
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Hey @Loraine , we were specifically told by Levi through Vic that we could tell TAC members about our VOMs and even post our VOM performances. We were also told we could tell people here on TAC where the blogs were that had the information to attend a VOM. Now, that information is on a website. We may no longer be able to tell anyone about Justin’s site or Marty’s site where they can learn songs, even though those sites do not compete with TAC, but we are allowed to share with others where they can get the information to attend a VOM. That hasn’t changed, or at least, they never updated those of us running the VOMs if it has.
MG 😀
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Hey @Maydog ;
I totally respect your decision and I agree with everything you said. I’m sorry you have to go, but as you say, at this point you aren’t giving up that much. I guess that’s what’s sad.
Anyway, I hope you have joined the new forum of TAC members over at JustMusicGeeks.com. There are many people there that you know from TAC. It’s free, though you have to apply for membership. Hope to see you there.
MG 😀
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Hey @Marty69 , I’m surprised by this question. There was nothing like the old TAC on the entire world wide web. Now, you just gotta ask yourself: “why?”
The answer is simple. Because it isn’t a good business model. In fact, it’s dangerous. It could open you up to liability big time. But, Tony and Levi were young and wanted to do something “cool” and “nice”, even “personal”. Well, they were very successful, perhaps more successful than they originally intended. Or maybe not. But as both they and the business grew and matured, they needed to conform to conventional business practices. Those practices have been forged in the fire of courtroom law suits. We live in a litigious society where people want “justice”, which is really a lame cover for “revenge”; and they want something for nothing because that’s what selfishness is all about.
If you read some of the vehement complaining and blaming by a number of mentors in the Mentor Zone of the old forum prior to the change, you would see just how selfish and shortsighted “normal” people can be nowadays. You could also understand why Tony and Levi needed to break the ties that associated their business with the unregulated forum, and worse, potentially far worse, the VOMs.
The truth is that Tony and Levi, TAC the business, TAC members, and all those who enjoyed the forum and all those who enjoy the VOMs are better off this way. We have more freedom without the concern of being in conflict with the interests of TAC. And TAC is better because it can be more focused on it’s “mission statement”, and that is to help people grow as guitarists (guitar geeks).
Now, we have a forum like the old TAC without any worries about conflict of interest. And it runs on the same, simple “rules”: be polite! And we have this new TAC which is more focused on teaching us guitar skills.
By the way, you missed the question: “why did they break off the “Song Vault”. I won’t answer that question here, but it is similar: focus. And I’m not speculating. Tony and Levi explained all of this to us more than once. No, they never used the word liability or anything related. But that’s why they are successful, because they are tactful to the point of skirting issues. That’s why I have so few friends, because I dive headlong into issues.
MG 😀
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I guess that’s how we get to be mentors, @jumpinjeff , we pass on the words of wisdom that were freely given to us.
MG 😊😎