petelanger
Forum Replies Created
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Oh but you are winning! These are not easy challenges @Mave, I would say Fast Car is among the toughest of the year. Getting the first measure is absolutely a win. You must not expect perfection, that will kill your joy of playing guitar faster than anything!
It’s in the struggle where your brain is working behind the scenes, you don’t realize how much you are learning as you think you’re banging your head into a wall!
Some weeks will feel easier than others, that’s where you venture further in and try to to go deeper through the layers of the lesson. When it’s more difficult just focus on getting a small portion down. You will see growth as long as you show up regularly and play the challenge for at least 10 minutes, mark complete regardless of how far you got!
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I’ve learned a great deal from diving into this fretboard work, so I’m glad I used this cheap guitar to get started. When I do my first build I won’t be completely green and at least have a clue on the interplay between the nut, the saddle and each fret in between.
I had some big issues on the 11th, 16th and 17th frets, but also part of the problem was in the treble area of the saddle. The high E string was too low, so even after leveling all the frets I still had buzzing. I’ve corrected it by fabricating a small plastic spacer before ordering a package of new saddles.
I suspect that the rather extreme temperature and humidity fluctuations have played havoc with the neck on this instrument. I keep it under AC at all times, but never in it’s case. It’s either on a stand or hanging on the wall.
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I never use the split screen function. I have a large monitor where I expand the video to full screen. I have the TAB on my laptop screen, sometimes I’ll use my tablet instead.
Not to say there is anything wrong with using PIP, I just find it’s too small and that there are other options.
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@jorgemac said:
“I’ve hand built 20 guitars, 10 electric, 10 acoustic”
WOW!! So awesome and very inspiring! I do want to build at least one.
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You can still access them from the TAC homepage for the next 6 weeks, then they will roll off. Make sure to favorite them, then you can access them year round. Perhaps you haven’t entered the daily challenges yet so you aren’t seeing the section where it says:
View Previous Challenges.
Here is a link to Monday’s lesson, from there you can access all the rest of the days down the left margin.
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If you haven’t completed the 30 Day and 5 Day series, the daily challenges (including benchmarks like Hotel California) might not be accessible from your home screen; it’s been so long I’m not sure how it looks. Please confirm that you can get there from the link I provided above. That should work. But otherwise it is going to return in 4 months or you can access it once you have started the dailies.
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@mark-cronenwettpm-me not sure what is going on here. Is it that the chord changes take that long? If so then you can train yourself to “automatically” make the chord without thought. This isn’t an instantaneous thing though, it will take time. My chord changes were also very slow when I started but now that I’ve been playing daily for nearly 2 years they are coming faster. There is still a lot of room for growth but I have come a long way.
Is there a reason that you suspect the guitar might be handicapping you? I’m not going to advise you to spend money that you might regret later. Maybe your guitar needs to be setup? I don’t have enough information to know what’s best.
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Once I’ve walked all the way to the A/4 with my ring, my pinky wants to come off of B/3. Without the transition, this could work and I’ll experiment with it.
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This was answered in the thread @h24frankeyahoo-com started on this topic: https://tonypolecastro.com/family-forums/topic/hotel-california-9/
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It is prevalent in this benchmark, and it’s in the occasional other TAC song so I’ve seen it plenty and it’s been in my repertoire for over 2 years. Only now it’s sticking out like a sore thumb because I’ve improved transitioning to many other chords but not Dm. Got to give it special attention now!
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Don’t worry about being crappy, almost everyone is when they start the challenges, unless they’ve been playing for a while. Tony shows you the chords in every challenge so you can learn them there. Of course if you don’t know any chords you’re not going to get very far in 10 minutes, but that’s ok. Definitely move on, you don’t need to perfect the 30 Day or the 5 Day things! No perfection anywhere here in TAC!
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I should have picked up on the smiley face emoji! My bad @mark-cronenwettpm-me Like @jumpinjeff says, keep moving. No need to linger in 30 Days. You will find that this program is not structured with a beginning and end, so it’s always ok to say “NEXT”. The Daily Challenges have tougher elements in them than what you’re seeing now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tackle a portion of them. Then do more next time. We don’t pursue mastery here, always just do your best and mark complete!
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It sounds like you are very experienced, have all the tools and would be good at it! I have almost no experience and I’m giving it some thought.
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@jorgemac – I’m ROFL! Warning received! I’ll try to keep my habit in check. So far I’ve done pretty well. Since February of ’24 I have bought only 3 guitars. Actually 2 because I returned 1 of them and bought another. I have a third because my wife already owned an acoustic. I also bought a mandolin.
You started such a long time ago. I have decades of missed opportunity to do the thing that I love. It’s peculiar, because I’ve always loved guitar playing, was drawn to it. For unknown reasons I never started to learn how to play myself. Most songs that I listened to in my youth I typically didn’t remember any of the words to because I didn’t care and wasn’t listening to the lyrics. I was sucked in by the music and the guitar especially.
With all that gear, did you ever do setups for other people? (for money?)
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You’re welcome @Leo7
Please understand that I am not telling you not to watch the LEARN videos! I have watched all of them many times over. What I’m saying is for your first TAC session of the day, you want to be smart with your time. So only watch what you need to get the first measure, pause and then play guitar. Do this again for the next measure, and so on until time is up (~10 min). Mark complete! Now at some point later that day or another day, perhaps on the weekend you should go back and watch more of the LEARN videos. (You can do that immediately after marking complete if you have the time and desire. Some days you won’t have the time though, but don’t feel bad about it!)