petelanger
Forum Replies Created
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Navigation is a bit of an enigma, I understand that you are confused. TAC doesn’t really focus on teaching songs, but there is a song vault associated with the old website. It is no longer linked to the current site so you will need to bookmark it.
https://hub-lkx8655w8n.membership.io/
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I grew up and lived in Montreal until age 25, I can totally relate to your song. So glad I was able to leave that all the shoveling (and muck on the windshield!) behind. I’ve been in Florida since ’88 and only had to drive in snow a few times since, usually when on vacation but it did snow in Jacksonville in ’89 which was interesting, because there are no plows or salt trucks here.
Good job writing the song! What a milestone, congratulations!
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@cocuotogmail-com , @kwvalentine1961gmail-com , @jorgemac
Early on I printed out my TABs and even put them in sheet protectors in a nice TAC binder. I soon found this impractical though without a music stand and I don’t have room to keep a stand setup in my office where I TAC so I started to just save the them as graphics into MS OneNote, which has been working well for me. Now I’m experimenting with putting them on my tablet.
I also just ordered a foot pedal to turn the pages. It’s arriving tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. I went for the one that is endorsed by dozens of professional musicians, the “PageFlip” so I’ve got my hopes up it’s going to work well. The pedals are programmable so there’s a chance I might be able to use it to at least stop and start our TAC videos, which would be a home run for me.
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Absolutely correct, posture is very important. You many want to have a look at the stretching exercises in the skill courses, one of many great series in there.
Here’s a link: https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/guitar-players-daily-stretch-guide/ -
Steve, it looks like you may me going through 30 Days to Play. In that series I think you can move forward any time you like.
I wouldn’t worry about “mastering” any challenge in TAC. Just give it your best for at least 10 minutes and then mark it complete. It doesn’t matter if you actually go through the entire challenge or not. The skills involved are taught repeatedly and will come back around.
If you want to go back to an old lesson, feel free to do so! I have several favorites that I go through regularly. As long as it’s fun, keep doing it. You can set up your schedule the way @Moose408 has done, but just beware of it turning into work! He uses words like “practice” and “work on” which are very much in the realm of work. We actually frown on work around here, we play guitar! But it is ok to struggle a little bit, because when we struggle is where we are actually being pushed and learning the most.
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Get a string winder, you’ll be clad you did! I have a bit that goes into a cordless drill but you can buy a crank kind as well.
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It really depends on the use and if you wiped them down regularly to remove oils and sweat from them they could last for about a year with light use. I have 3 guitars so I do have one with a year old strings on it that I don’t play as much as the other 2. But many people will change them after a few months. Performers probably only do a single gig on a set of strings.
If they show visible signs of wear or have lost their ring and sound dull, change them! After you have some experience with your instrument you will just know it’s time because the guitar just doesn’t sound right.
There is a lot more that could be said about string changes, but there’s a starter. I just learned that a specific set of strings can make your instrument really come to life (as if those strings were manufactured specifically for your guitar).
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Seems like we have a few people here dipping their toes in the TAC waters. I replied to another 60 day candidate earlier today. Everyone has their unique expectations when they join a program and mine were definitely very different from yours.
Here is what I think are the reasons why TAC is an excellent system for learning to play and improving your playing skills.
1. focus on playing daily. The challenges are designed for 10-15 min sessions and structured to cover all areas of guitar playing. Most courses are structured thematically and invariably you will get hung up on some topic that is overwhelming and end up quitting. Ask me how I know!
2. it teaches you how to add your own style (or flavor) to songs, how to make them sound more interesting, rather than giving you the recipe to play a popular song from beginning to end.
3. there are many players that are here every day, from beginners to very accomplished guitarists and even recording artists. Tony is actually a quite notorious recording artist.
4. the daily lessons are simple but layered is such a way that novice and expert will not only get something out of them but also easily understand what is expected of them
5. the community is very helpful and knowledgeable
6. TAC gives you excellent value if you look at the yearly or lifetime costs. For me it was a no-brainer. Even if I have to add other lessons to supplement my learning, I will get something out of the daily challenges, the skill courses and song archives for many years to come.
In my opinion the reasons for being here are not
-to learn how to play songs so you can sound like the recording
-because of the site’s excellent navigation features
-for it’s flawless interface full of flashy dashboards. Heck no! Even commenting below the challenges requires a work around
TAC isn’t perfect, it’s full of quirks and flaws. You can’t search here worth a darn. The site isn’t flashy and its Namesake is essentially absent, only rarely making appearances.
But it’s very good at getting novice players to return regularly to improve their playing. The progress actually sneaks up you when you aren’t expecting it.
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I am sorry about your hearing issues. That can be a very difficult hurdle to navigate. I will say though, that it’s often not necessary to stay on the learn video to get what you need for playing. I find that I can switch to the play video and go on a slow speed to pick up a lot of things I might have missed in the learn video.
TAC gives you the best value of any the programs I have seen and I’ve tried quite a few of them. I knew within 60 days that I would become a lifetime member and I did convert my membership to life time later in the first year. If you were to switch to lifetime, then there would be no time pressure for you. You can do that any time during the first year and get full credit for your initial investment.
I can’t speak to issue of: do I want to learn to play guitar? I know that it was something I wanted very much. But I do believe that the small hands are not an insurmountable issue. Many players have small hands and managed to overcome that.
Do you have a smaller guitar or full-size?
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Here’s an exercise that helped me a lot in the beginning: https://youtu.be/2onjflSqHNo
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Every beginner goes through this. When I started learning chords about 20 months ago, I couldn’t do any of these chords without muting strings: C, G, D, E, B7. About 6 months later most of these were resolved but by then I was learning barre chords and the struggle started over again. It took me about 15 months to finally play an mini barre F chord with fair consistency.
Some things that might help:
Remember to fret with the tips of your fingers, right under the finger nails, and not the pads. Keep your finger nails on the left hand as short as possible! By playing as much as you are now, you should develop callouses soon and this will help!You wan to place your fingers close to the fret wires whenever possible. Certain fretting shapes will go counter to this, but this is a principle.
Hand positioning is very important, raise the neck closer to your eyes, this might produce a more comfortable position. Be sure to push your hand under the neck and curl the knuckles so that the last segment of the fingers are coming at the strings perpendicularly (or as much as possible). The more angled they are, the more likely they are to touch and adjacent string.
Is your guitar set up well? When the action is too high, it makes playing way more difficult so that’s something to consider.
New players will tend to play with the wrong amount of pressure(too much). Practice doing each note one at a time and feel how much pressure you need to play it clean; you may find that you don’t have to press nearly as hard as you thought you had to!
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@jeffswan51gmail-com that’s perfectly normal in the beginning. Your control will improve over time as your fingers eventually catch up to your brain. These movements are very new and you actually have to develop a repertoire of these specialized muscle movements, that are unlike anything you have done for all the years before picking up a guitar.
What you are doing is good, keep your sessions short (10-20 minutes) and repeat as often as it’s still fun. I was a lot like you, semi retired and then almost completely retired so with a lot of time. Now, after nearly 17 months in the TAC program, I am able to do much more than i could in the beginning but there is still a long journey ahead.
Don’t let your struggles discourage you! In those moments is where most of the magic (learning) occurs. When it’s easy, you aren’t really learning much. At some point, possibly sooner than you think, you suddenly will be blown away by what you are able to do! Keep on rockin’, Jeff! Happy Thanksgiving!
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Less Is More:
It’s normal! Not necessarily nailing it perfectly after a break but multiple shorter sessions are more beneficial than one long session. This is why the ten minutes is emphasized so much.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3351401/
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The time course and outcome of perceptual learning can be affected by the length and distribution of practice, but the training regimen parameters that govern these effects have received little systematic study in the auditory domain. We asked ...
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Thanks for noticing my efforts, @Skyman911
I try to do what I can. I think TAC could be really fun with a little more participation. If we could just get some of contributors from the Daily Challenges to find their way over to the forums. I’m pretty sure a lot of them don’t even realize what’s available over here.
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Nice! Would like to get something regular with a group set up too.