[N-lightMike]

Hey @MMMURRAY ;

Zen mumbo jumbo is ok sometimes. But sometimes, we just need to hear the simple truth, the simple answer.

The simple answer to your simple question is “time”. That means you don’t need to do anything different. You don’t have a “real” problem, only a “perceived” problem.

In time, your fingers won’t be sore. In time, you will play your chords more cleanly. How do you “get there”? Distract yourself with FUN. Not even kidding. The most important “solution” is to make sure you have fun each and every day when you pick up your guitar. Then, you don’t notice the finger soreness as much. You don’t worry about your buzzy chords as much. Since you are having fun, you’re already “there”.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

I find it interesting, @seedaveleegmail-com , that both Terry and Albert, immediately went to “goals”.

You’ve fallen into the same trap so very many of us have. A large percent of the TAC membership is people who have played on and off for years. The real problem is between our ears, not our hands or even our ears.

Music is a difficult, complicated, life-long endeavor. Stop thinking that you know how to play guitar. Go back to basics and let Tony show you how to have fun doing exercises. Expand your understanding of music theory. Write your own songs. Whatever works for you.

Oh, wait a minute!!! That’s the rub, right there: “What Works For You?”

I can’t answer that. No one but you can. “Why Are You Playing Guitar?” “What’s Your End Game?”

Let’s start with this: “Love Your Own Sound!” But here’s the thing that becomes obvious when that’s said: I gotta find my own sound before I can love it. So, find your own sound. Somewhere along the way, you need to figure out why you are doing all of this in the first place. Here’s a good place to start:

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

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

So first of all, @campfire , we need to understand what Tony means by “key”. Since almost no one understands what a key is, or at least they ignore what they know and propagate the MIS-use of the term key, it makes this search a little bit of an investigation.

So forget what “key” really means, and recognize that almost everyone means what diatonic scale, or mode the piece is in. And what THAT really means is, what note are we using as our home, our tonic, our tonal center.

So all Tony is really asking for is “D”. That’s the tonal center.

To go beyond that is to open up a discussion of music theory. Tony likes to avoid that as it usually causes more confusion than enlightenment. And part of the reason for that is because of the misuse of the term “key”. Of course, that’s just part of it. Then there is the total misunderstanding of modes. The “key” of C is not the same as C major. C major is a mode. A minor is a mode. And therefore, we can now eliminate the silly argument of whether A minor is a key. Of course it’s not. And neither is C major. They are both in the “key” of C. In the key of C, C is the fundamental, not the tonal center. In C major, C is the tonal center.

This all becomes even more confusing since this Thursday’s chord progression is not diatonic, that is, it doesn’t stay in a single “key”. Best guess since there can be different interpretations, is the key of C. That means I agree with @Bill_Brown that the mode is D Dorian. But another possibility is to call this the key of G and so this is D Mixolydian. Either way, he’s clearly not using the chords of D major (Ionian) and so it has a “modal” feel. Also, he’s using both D major and D minor, which automatically will give a feeling of modulation (changing keys).

So, let’s remember who we’re talking about: Tony. I’m quite sure all he wanted was to identify the note and/or chord that is being used as the tonal center. That’s why “playing by ear” is so superior to music theory most of the time.

Remember that music theory is simply a set of terms and definitions that allow us to analyze and talk about our music. This chord progression was derived by trial and error to find what sounded right for the song. Not by deciding a key and a mode and variations there of.

So when an instructor on YouTube, who’s analyzing a George Harrison song, says George did this or that because… they’re full of dog do do. George was listening to the sounds of different chords as he came up with his song. He wrote his songs like pretty much everyone else, by ear using trial and error. What sounded good. Period.

There are people who write songs using theory, and those songs sound like that. They never make it to pop hits for a reason.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

Yes, it says I made a comment. I took a chance and changed ONE word that made my comment easier to understand. And bang, gone! I love TAC. I love Tony’s help and instruction. I love the design of the new platform. But I hate this problem, whatever causes it.

Anyway, I don’t have experience with the “finger stretchers” sold on Amazon. And I don’t give a hoot.

My “biggest” problem is I didn’t start playing as a kid when my body was developing.

But, it turns out, that’s not really my biggest problem. My biggest problem is thinking I need to keep learning when I already know enough to play the guitar well enough to entertain myself and others.

So lately, I’ve gone back to basics. After all these years, it turns out I can make my chords more precisely more often. I can work on chord transitions a lot more than I ever did. I can work on timing, using a metronome. I can work on rhythm, learning to be intuitive with new rhythms. I can work on adding space, which not only gives interesting variety to my playing, but makes getting to chords easier. I can learn new chord shapes. I can learn to play partial chords. I can learn new picking patterns, whether I finger pick or flat pick. Oh, yeah, I can do both finger picking and flat picking, not just one or the other.

That’s not even an exhaustive list. All of that and more can help me be a better guitar player… without changing my anatomy. 😄

MG 😀 (This time, I’m gonna proof read BEFORE I hit the “post” button.)

[N-lightMike]

Hello @reachcast ;

Lots of good suggestions I’ve read here… for remembering songs.

You see, a song has a chord progression, melody, and lyrics that are fixed. You can “learn” that song. Yeah, but what’s it mean to “learn” it? Turns out, there are at least 3 levels of “learning” a song.

So you can learn to “play” a song, but you haven’t memorized the chord progression, melody or lyrics. This level of learning an accomplished musician no longer has to do. They look at a chord sheet and play the song. Done.

Then, there is playing the song so much that it really starts sounding polished with wonderful nuances. But the “bonus” is, you now can remember the chord progression, melody, and lyrics. This is where it’s easy to “learn” a second time if you don’t play this song for months. In fact, eventually in your guitar journey, you will be able to pull up that song you have “learned” and play it like a pro months later.

And then there is the professional performer, who plays the same songs over and over and over. I’m talking about someone who plays several times a week and plays a whole song list each time. If they have 10 albums of original songs, they still end up feeling like they only have a handful of songs. Yeah, they know those songs like you know the route to your job.

So, obviously, this process is simple to understand and it’s equally simple to figure out what we need to do if we want to “learn” a song, if we want to have that song “polished”, and if we want to “memorize” that song.

But what about the lessons? And what about Howard’s music teacher who said he remembered songs because he’d played them “thousands of times” AND because he “understood the chord structure”?

See, that last little phrase has a world of understanding behind it. You want to remember the lessons? You want to learn and remember songs easier? Learn music theory. Learn the keys, the major scale, and the modes. I mean, learn them till you finally see the patterns that tie all of it together and makes it all so easy to remember because you see those patterns over and over.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

Hey @JanetW ;

Aren’t there sites where you can design your own t-shirt? If you did that, you could probably sell some if you were willing to buy a large amount of them. Or, you could get some of us to commit to buying a t-shirt to meet whatever minimum order there might be. There could be a number of ways to go about this. But it could happen.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

Thank you for responding, Mike @MMMURRAY . I think you are already winning if you are putting in an hour a day while on the road and have sore fingers. That’s great. Keep up that consistency and you will be happy with the results.

Make sure you look for small wins, then you can share them with us. We don’t notice how much we’ve improved if we don’t really look for the incremental imporvment day to day. 😄

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

It’s always a little bit of a leap when I give advice to someone, Dave @seedaveleegmail-com , as I’m not sure if my words are going to help or not. I’m so glad my words resonated with you. Thank you for giving me a reply. I appreciate it. 😄

Let us know how things develop for you. One of the important steps of Tony’s process is to find small wins as often as possible, daily is best. Then you can let us know. Otherwise, we don’t see our progress.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

👍😊

[N-lightMike]

Yeah, I own this particular shirt @That_Guy . I’d own more if it came in different colors. I have way more black shirts than I really want.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

I hope that everyone’s guitar journey is continuing to progress whether they left TAC or not. Unfortunately, that’s not always true.

I am happy that I stayed. I am happy for the new changes. TAC is doing what Tony’s marketing videos says it does. It gives us some thing to play with everyday that steadily hones our guitar skills. And that continues over time. You don’t ever finish. I love that.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

You are welcome, Mark @the-old-coach ;

I have found it very important in my life to recognize my gratitude and then express it. And TAC is a great example of why it’s so important. I was here before TAC shifted to this platform. It’s very different, which means some things we had before are no longer here. That caused a lot of people to get upset. I recognized how much Tony had given me and therefore gave him the respect to “allow” him to make decisions on how best to guide TAC moving forward (not as if I could do anything about it, but by “allowing” him, I was maintaining a positive attitude).

Of course, now it’s easy to see that TAC has improved a lot over the previous platform. And when I say improved, I specifically mean the teaching platform. But that’s what TAC is and that’s why we all joined TAC.

A side effect of TAC was a social forum. That isn’t the same. But if the interest was strong enough in the community, the socializing that took place wouldn’t die, it would continue in another form. And it has. But it was never incumbent on TAC to keep feeding that social media side of TAC. If we want to make friends, we don’t wait for others to approach us and introduce themselves, we take the initiative to approach others. But that’s a side bar.

So many people left TAC and therefore can’t know how much TAC has improved. I have the knowledge and guitar skills that I can do pretty much all the lessons. Yeah, but does that mean there is no longer any benefit for me? Absolutely not.

What I’ve found, is the farther along my guitar journey I am, the more the lessons refine my technique. And that’s across the board of guitar skills. I thought TAC was the best before, and now TAC has improved.

The benefit of TAC in the long run is pretty simple to understand. Tony comes up with lessons and exercises that challenge him. That means, you would have to be better than Tony, a lot better, to think that every single lessons was easy and contained no challenge. For me, TAC will always help me improve because I don’t think I will ever be as good as Tony.

That’s a lot more than I intended to say. I guess there’s some good thoughts there that I could put into my 4th TACiversary post which I’ve never made.

MG 😀

[N-lightMike]

👍😊

[N-lightMike]

👍😊

[N-lightMike]

No, it’s certainly not redundant, @albert_d . I have been moved to say “I love TAC” so many times in the last 4+ years that I could possibly guess.

But the thing that really causes amazement is the amount of improvement I have seen in others and have now experienced myself. If you could convince someone of this one fact, they would have a huge incentive to sign up for TAC. But even myself, I’ve been here a long time and I’m so much better, do I really still need the lessons?

Well, do I still want to improve? Do I know of any other way that I can get as much impressive improvement?

Simple answers: Yes, and No!

So, I sign into TAC everyday 4 years later. I don’t do the lesson every day, but that’s because my guitar journey has a number of facets that rotate and I’m not always in the “growth” phase.

Anyway, thanks for responding, Albert.

MG 😀