[petelanger]

I upgraded to TAC for life recently but still haven’t pulled the handle for Fretboard Wizard. Earlier on I didn’t want the “distraction” of another course. Tony puts FW on sale twice per year. Maybe I’ll pull the trigger eventually.

It does come with a money back guarantee!

[petelanger]

Any technique that works for you, should be fine! Tony is just sharing a variety of different ways but he wants us to use the methods that we get the best results from. He will let you know when there is a good reason not to something, other than that you are not bound by his instruction.

[petelanger]

Lastly, @Moose408 has a file with links to a good many challenges. Maybe he’ll post it for you. I took a copy a while ago but I haven’t kept it up to date.

[petelanger]

Say I want to go to “Run Around The Same Old Town” from the Neil Young Benchmark week:

I need to insert “run-around-the-same-old-town”
into the URL:

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by  petelanger.

[petelanger]

like this:
https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/run-around-the-same-old-town-2/

[petelanger]

The furthest you can go back through links on the site is 6 weeks, so that is the “Pull Over, Pull Over” week.

Just click on the carrot on the challenge home page and spin backwards

[petelanger]

If you try to go one week further back you will see that nothing happens as you hover over the date, and the challenge cannot be selected.
All is not lost those challenges are also still viewable:
1. if you saved them in your favorites

2. if you know the name you can build a link to any challenge:

Take convenience store; your browser window should have the link showing as:
https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/convenience-store-2/

to go to a different lesson, just substitute “convenience store” with your desired challenge name.

tonypolecastro.com

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

[petelanger]

I’m adding this discussion to my favorites.

Strumming is definitely an acquired skill, doesn’t come naturally. About a year into my journey I’m definitely more comfortable strumming than in the beginning and have learned that when I perceive I don’t sound good, I need to back off and not dig into the strings as much.

There’s a fine line though, during the Old Man benchmark recently I wasn’t getting the hammer-on to make any sound at all and this had been happening for the past 10 months. I discovered that my strum wasn’t even touching the high E string so the hammer was [OF COURSE!] doing nothing!

It takes a while for a player to have an awareness of which strings are being hit and controlling the intensity accordingly. But this is just one reason why all guitarists have a unique sound. The strum is one of many signatures or finger-prints if you like.

[petelanger]

Hmmn, not sure that I have had either of those things (exactly) happen.

1. A while back (2 weeks or so) we had a glitch where are the tracking got very discombobulated and this condition was for everyone or at least a lot of members. They did correct all that and my stats returned to what they should have been.

2. I have had my daily streak get broken after day in which I was on the site playing through challenges. I attribute this to not clicking onto the challenges home page.

3. I don’t believe I have ever been able to click into tomorrow’s challenge. There is a way access that but not by clicking on it as you would a current day or recent day challenge

[petelanger]

Thanks Moose! I see you’ve upgraded it – nice job!

[petelanger]

Thanks @jumpinjeff . I wasn’t quite sure of the frequency.

[petelanger]

I see! Well I do believe I may have attempted to do that before, but it didn’t reset my counter. It would have been a while ago, possibly months ago or more and something could have changed in the counter behavior since then.

[petelanger]

Tony says, we don’t practice but play! Think of it as playing, to play is fun! Practice is work, we don’t work in TAC!

[petelanger]

Been playing for a year, I too still hear thuds sometimes.

[petelanger]

You need to REFRAME!

So you have recognized that you are dissatisfied because your expectations about your progress are not being met.

There are a few things wrong with that:
How would you know how long it should take to progress according to your own standard? You have never learned guitar before so you can only compare it to other skills. Most of those, like touch typing, surfing, driving, sewing, knitting are not nearly as complex as playing guitar. They can be learned in a shorter time because there are only a few components to learning them. Guitar is different, hundreds of little movements in the hands required to get it right. This overloads your brain quickly. Progress will be slow in the beginning, but it picks up and surprisingly it will happen without you realizing it. You struggle and struggle and then suddenly at some point when you aren’t expecting it, you can play that chord, mimic that rhythm, hit the right string without looking, or remember those notes!

The next is not everybody learns how to play guitar at the same pace. I am sure that my progress is at the low end of the spectrum. I’ve been playing for a year but still would not perform for anyone but myself. I have moments where I sound pretty good, those last about 3 seconds, lol! Maybe 10 -15 seconds if it’s an easy lick. But I am so much better than I was a year ago

Change your perspective, you have to reframe what a successful session is. Take something away from each time you are involved with a daily challenge or a skill course! Any small thing will do. Maybe you understood clearly what Tony was doing and mentally you had it, but your fingers can’t quite do it yet. Maybe you did a section a bit better than yesterday or last time. Maybe you showed up and gave it your best.

I find it isn’t hard to pick a win every time I play guitar. You have heard the old saying: “How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time. Becoming a proficient guitar player is a good sized elephant! Take small a enough bite so your brain isn’t overloaded. Tony sets this up for you. He doesn’t ask you to sit down and play Alice’s Restaurant. He has you do challenges that take 5 – 15 seconds. Then at times he’ll ask you to try to piece 2 or more of those together, but it’s still a win if you can do them individually.

Try very hard to not focus on what you can’t do yet. Reframe your thinking, uncover what you have been blind to, and notice what you can do now!