petelanger
Forum Replies Created
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Victoria is the reason I’m a lifetime member. She was instrumental helping me when I got started in TAC.
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I just wanted to add that I don’t find this chord exercise very useful. It’s OK in the beginning when you are learning the shapes, but you are better served to switch over into chord transitions: instead of practicing forming the chord from hand on your lap, you practice a chord progression. Pick a song you would like to learn and practice that. Start out simple with a 2 or 3 chord progression: C => G => Am … repeat 20 times or 100 times.
Note: I am not saying to practice the actual song (although you may want to do this eventually) the emphasis here is chord transitions. You don’t even have to strum all the time, you can go for a long time just fingering the chords. You do want to strum them at times to make sure you are improving clarity, so I mix silent and musical transitions.
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@Bayvu2 that’s an astounding streak! Congratulations on your impeccable consistency!
We must have started around the same time because I’m at 554 sessions officially. Some were wiped out by glitches. I started on July 3rd 2024, and I’ve missed less than 14 days, 9 of those were when I went on vacation to Vienna.
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@mdrichman62gmail-comthe
We did that on Jan 21st, just over a week ago so it’s still accessible. You can go back up to 6 weeks.
On the Home Page there’s a section that reads “View Previous Challenges”. Next to those words you’ll find a left arrow and a right arrow to move backwards and forwards 1 week at a time. I used an old screenshot to show you, it looks the same with different dates.
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Thanks @Guitargeezer, that was fun! Love your story (Bio), inspirational!
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I think it’s important to keep trying. Your reach will expand, everyone’s does given time and effort.
Not sure what guitar size you’re playing on, my goto is a travel size that is shorter and has a slender neck and body.
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Responding to:
“There are several comments from other TAC members regarding the day’s lesson. Whenever I try to reply to any of them my posts don’t go through…even when I just want to cheer them on.”
Please take this up with support@tonypolecastro.com. This is a festering problem that they claim is only affecting a few people. I believe it’s affecting everyone who tries to post beneath the challenges more than one time per day. Many are not reporting it and maybe some are not noticing it. I tested it on different computers tablets and phones and it’s the same on every device, browser and operating system. Ergo it’s a server-side issue.
I explained this to support and was told:
Hi again Pete,
It may help to understand that we do not have an in house IT Team. We employ a Company. As such, we are not able to bring issues to them that are not affecting – if not the entire TAC Community – at least multiple users. Otherwise, we are advised of troubleshooting options, as they do monitor all aspects of the site for us constantly. I hope this helps. I understand that it is frustrating not to have your posts go through consistently.
At this point I know it’s multiple users, I’ve probably interacted with at least 10 members who have complained about this. I wish they would all contact support because this is truly a broken system.
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I am currently learning from an excellent instructor and have seen it demonstrated you can literally “solo” over the backing track while playing the pentatonic scale note for note in sequence! It’s not about fancy riffs and note sequences, the secret lies in the rhythm you use while playing the scale and giving the notes your personal feel. The rhythm should match the song’s rhythm.
This is before you add any fancy embellishments (pull offs, hammer ons or bends), it will sound amazing. You might add a bit of vibrato. This is why Tony has us playing the scale with the backing track. If done correctly it makes a beautiful solo by itself.
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If you just started guitar or not very long ago, this is a common issue. If you don’t have callouses on the tips of your fingers yet, developing those will help. Make sure the nails are clipped!. Good technique is the key, coming at the strings perpendicular, get your palm far under the neck so your fingers can have a better approach. As you play more you will also develop more bend in the the first knuckle (metacarpophalangeal joint at the base of the finger), it’s underdeveloped for non guitar players as it’s not utilized very much other than to play stringed instruments.
You want to get into a good playing position too, sometimes raising the neck higher while tucking the elbow close to your body can lead to better positioning of the hands.
Other than that it’s simply repetition. I had thuds in my C, G, D, E chords for months. Slowly this gets better. I felt I would never play a clear 4 finger G! Now it’s a piece of cake. Just takes time. When you are trying to improve your chords specifically, you want to make transitions from one to another since this is how you play guitar.
Choose a 2 or 3 chord song and just play the transitions over and over. I do this while I’m watching TV.
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Do you see the barre on the left? When you click the top icon the menu expands and reveals what’s in the menu. Fretboard Wizard is the second item with a star icon.
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When I started in the daily challenges, I was also very overwhelmed. But think about it like eating an elephant. How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You know what, as they come around again and again you keep taking a few more bites, now that I’m 18 months in, none of the challenges overwhelm me!
With each daily challenge, just take a bite or two. As many as you are comfortable doing in the 10-20 minutes. Try not to go longer. Mark it complete! This doesn’t mean you did it all, it just means you showed up and did your time that you committed. The same skills that are in today’s challenge, will be needed within the next few weeks. You’ll do better on the next go.
It’s very common to prefer fingerstyle, you’re not alone. But it’s helpful to get along with a pick as well. I’m much more comfortable with picks now than I was 2 years ago. But finger style absolutely can blow away picks! You have 5 times the power (4 fingers and a thumb versus a single pick). And yet the pick produces it’s own unique sound. Also I find it’s helpful for strumming. I haven’t really figured out good strumming technique with my fingers yet, the pick works a lot better most of the time, but I’m playing around with finger strums. Pick strums also sound different, and there’s times you want that sound.
What Bayvu said is fine. You don’t have to emphasize things that are less interesting. I just wouldn’t advise completely setting challenges that you don’t like or approve of aside, do give them the promised 10 minutes at least. They are there for a reason and you will learn something even if you don’t get very far or you think your playing sounds awful. The rewards come from struggling, not from nailing the challenge on the first go! Just give that some thought! I’ve had some breakthroughs playing through songs I more or less didn’t approve of (for whatever reason).
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Completing a challenge doesn’t seem to affect the session count. Accessing the home page while logged in is what advances the counter. I make sure I see it rollover each day, usually the Current Day streak increments and then it takes a second refresh for the Longest Day streak to increment.
I think one streak got broken while I was still on the site and playing through a challenge but was logged out by the system (logins expire after a set number of days).
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Very nice!
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@mdc if you’re at 6 weeks into your guitar journey, be thankful where you are! You are learning some chord shapes and on your way. Six weeks in I had thuds all over the place, it will come as long as you keep at it.
I started a barre chord masterclass this week and I’m just like a beginner again trying to make all five CAGED shapes between the first and twelfth frets! I’m muting strings all up and down the neck!
You know what? I’m praising God because I know that in my struggle is where the most learning happens!
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Honestly I’m not sure what the 25 number means. Most challenges repeat once annually, the 4 benchmarks (Ain’t No Sunshine, Wagon Wheel, Hotel Calif, and Old Man) repeat 3 times per year. That’s 37 weeks worth, 15 are unaccounted for. Perhaps there’s another series of 15?