petelanger
Forum Replies Created
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Relax! Just tackle things little by little:
“I can’t read the thing and do it at the same time.” – first of all just go slower so that you can read and play. If you must look at your hands, that means it’s a good time to begin learning how to play without looking at both the fretboard and the strumming hand. Today’s challenge is a good one to start on, only 2 strings and they are adjacent.
Also try to remember what you are supposed to do so looking at the TAB closely is no longer necessary. This might not all happen for you the first time through, don’t worry we’ll be practicing these kind of things a lot and you’ll improve.
“The other questions is are we supposed to be recording each day of this challenge for the next time or just the completed song?” – the recordings are for you, I for one have never recorded myself for this particular challenge but you can if you want to. There aren’t rules for this. On the Wagon Wheel benchmark I’ve only recorded the Thurs and Friday sessions. That was my choice but by all means, record whenever you like!
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Previous challenges are not listed per se, but on the homepage you can click the back arrow to go back one week at a time up to 6 weeks.
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The yellow question mark, bottom right on the homepage or just email support@tonypolecastro.com.
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@niblickmac-com just don’t worry about perfection or completion in any way. The things taught in this program are taught over and over again.
Also, even when you’re apparently stuck, you’ve hit a wall and just don’t seem to be improving, your brain continues to work in the background. You have an astonishing machine on your shoulders and it can do absolutely magical things. The most learning occurs in your struggles so celebrate the times when you do stuff over and over and it’s not getting better!
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I have found that I have to go to the home page every day, this is where you see all your stats. https://tonypolecastro.com/home/
I go there first thing when I start my TAC routine and make sure the counter increments. Since doing this, I’ve had no more unexpected streak breaks. Early on I had multiple streaks ended for no reason. I feel your pain
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This is a great song to learn because you play one chord for 2 measures in the verses so the changes are less frequent and you get enough time to make them.
The Lynyrd Skynyrd song Simple Man is kind of the opposite. Only 3 chords but them changes come at you fast! They happen on the AND of the 4-beat going into the next measure – tricky! But it’s only 3 easy chords.
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@steveprocterrocketmail-com
It seems there has to be something on your end. I checked the entire week of 13 videos for Ain’t No Sunshine and all come up perfectly on my computer.
I have 4 browsers on my laptop. When I run into a problem with the site I always check it on all browsers. Then I’ll go to my phone, my tablet and finally to other laptops that I own or have access to. If I get the same issue on all of them I conclude it’s a server-side issue.
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Yes @jorgemac backwards and forwards is great! The other good thing about this song is that you play one chord per measure. So when your ready to start playing and maybe sing along, it’s easier to do than a lot of other songs, even though there are a few more than 3 chords (6 actually)
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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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You can go six weeks back on the TAC homepage. Beyond that you can also access anything you have favorited.
As a last resort @Moose408 has prepared a document that links to all challenges, so thank him for this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10CGaT6CrZ783_tw-burdSd7W_KWiliiei03_h0T5dgA/edit?usp=drivesdk
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@mdc I’m not sure which song page you are referring to. Do you mean our daily challenges? There is also the song vault https://hub-lkx8655w8n.membership.io/
I like to use Ultimate Guitar. Sometimes I stumble on some good YT videos.
One progression I practice a lot is Hotel California Am => E7 => G => D => F mini => C => Dm => E7 If you can’t play the F mini yet you can forget about fretting the high E string and only fret the B. It’s still sounds like an F chord.
The other one I already mentioned C => G => Am is actually Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd). Easy chords but the rhythm and speed of the chord changes make it hard to play. I’m just rehearsing the chord changes until I can get fast enough to play it.
Or just google easy 3 chord songs and you’ll get some ideas.
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Just one video that you play back at 1x, 0.5x or 2x
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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).
