[petelanger]

<div>@PeterBStevenson it is up to you. Most will start the Daily Challenges but some will spend some time in the skill courses or revisit parts (even all) of the intro courses. It is your journey and you can take what ever path suits you. </div>

The Dailies are just that: a new challenge every week day and I would recommend following the schedule that everyone else is on so you can interact with other TACers about today’s challenge.

Here’s a link to the Quick Start Guide which is just a click (or tap) away on the homepage:

https://tonypolecastro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/TAC_User_Guide-v5.pdf

[petelanger]

@mdrichman62gmail-com I have subscription to Ultimate-guitar.com. It costs about $25 per year, so far I’ve found everything I wanted to.

[petelanger]

Great story about finding that Martin! I’ve been playing on budget guitars and for a while I thought it could be a mistake. Would I learn more quickly on a better instrument?

Still debating, I’m constantly reading up and shopping for gear, mostly low end stuff, a little bit of mid level. I will treat myself to a nice unit in a few years time. I have taught myself how to set up my own guitars so even though my Donner is inexpensive, it plays with a soft touch, I don’t think it’s holding me back.

Sadly years before I started playing myself, fate brought me close to hauling in a dream axe myself. My mom was dating a man in his mid 80s who had suffered an aneurism and no longer could continue his guitar hobby. She even asked me if I could help her get rid of his guitars. He had close to a dozen electrics in his guitar room along with amps and pedals. I didn’t know the first thing about guitars at the time and wavered on helping them out. Not long after their relationship ended before I could even take a quick inventory.

I often think about what I missed out on.

[petelanger]

What @Skyman911said!

Feeling frustrated means your expectations are beyond your capabilities and that is totally controllable. It’s okay to want to be better, but it’s not healthy to think you should be, deserve to be, must be better. Ratchet down expectations, I had to do this a lot during my first several months of playing.

Playing guitar is a lifelong journey, everyone would like to improve even the very best in the world. The key is being pleased with what you can do right now and excited about what tomorrow will bring. Take that approach and then you will find yourself suddenly surprised when out of nowhere (it seems) you can do it. Yesterday I actually rejoiced because I struggled with the lesson so much; knowing that being challenged mightily fosters mighty growth down the road.

[petelanger]

In general, TAC never requires you to be perfect at any of the shown skills before moving on. It’s cyclical and things come back again giving you ample opportunity to get better at them!

[petelanger]

@MrKimm
So I don’t recall the exercise specifically but you mention going to 1.5 and 2x speed. This isn’t necessary anywhere in the program. It’s a commendable effort to try to get there as it will help you with your transitions to go fast but you always want to learn slow.

Try to get it right slowly and then gradually increase speed. If you can get close to doing a challenge at .75 speed you are fine to move on.

Hope this gives you encouragement Matt!

[petelanger]

@jon-lidzgmail-com

Welcome back Jon! I would suggest going through the skill courses and see if you want to brush up on anything: https://tonypolecastro.com/skills/

But I would jump right back into the daily challenges as soon as possible. Based on your experience you should be able to pick up from there. There is not need to repeat anything, TAC is already cyclical and has repeated elements.

tonypolecastro.com

Getting Started – Tony's Acoustic Challenge

Getting Started – Tony's Acoustic Challenge

[petelanger]

I use the bend technique mostly, moving the string up and down slightly. It doesn’t take a lot of movement to produce a bit of vibrato. The other methods don’t seem to work for me at this point in my journey.

[petelanger]

I’ve been in TAC for close to 2 years and this is the first time I ever heard of the “Acoustic Tuesdays Show”. I discovered there are a bunch of shows on YouTube but the newest is Season 2 Episode 12 which was done 8 months ago. I don’t know if Tony intends to continue the series. It looks entertaining!

[petelanger]

@gmhendersonme-com

I haven’t hit the doldrums, Gary but I have run into some patches of less excitement. I was so raw when I started here that the level of teaching has been quite challenging through my first 2 years, and it looks like that will continue for a while. I wasn’t skilled or gifted and it’s still going slow. I have supplemented TAC with some books on music theory, another music program that had the word academy in it’s name and I’m learning luthier skills on the side, doing my own setups.

I gravitate back to TAC though, this thing has way more magnetism than the other shiny objects out there. If you’re not being drawn to it then I’m not sure what that means.

When I first started I had a long list of songs I wanted to learn and it was my goal to be able to play them as soon as possible. But I soon realized that my skills were totally inadequate to play most of them and I began rearrange my short term goals to learning the basics for as long as necessary, so that down the road I could learn songs at 10 times the pace I was able to do in the early going.

I do rehearse a few songs and I’m keeping a list of the ones I want to play eventually but my desire to learn songs and develop a playlist has waned greatly. I would say I devote less than 20% of my time to learning, rehearsing songs. I’m much more focused on overall command of the instrument. But each person’s journey is unique and your path may look completely different from mine.

Music is a language and as students of guitar we are learning one of music’s dialects. Songs are how we get exposed to music, and they reflect an individual’s (or small group of people’s) expression of ideas using the language of music. When we enjoy a particular song we want to mimic it and that by itself is absolutely a desirable goal, as long as it continues to reveal the (musical!) vocabulary and grammar to us as players. I don’t want to let the pursuit of learning a particular song become a detriment to learning the language that the instrument speaks.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by  petelanger.

[petelanger]

My disappointment lies more with the instructional end of things but I agree it would be nice to have the same drilldown capabilities in the members area as well, @Loraine

[petelanger]

Hope you got it while they were offering the special rate. Then it renews at that low rate every year.

[petelanger]

I love the “mirage” reference Coach! It brought back a memory for me when I was in my twenties and addicted to smoking. I had realized that my brain was tricking me into thinking I needed to smoke: light up and things will change, you will feel better! Every time that I lit up it was evident that the promise was fake! That smoke wasn’t making me feel any better. It’s kinda disgusting; it stinks up the room, my clothes, hands and breath and just like the 60,000 cigarettes before it, it was no better than the one before it! And on top of everything it’s also making me poorer every day!

Once I fully grasped all that, I quit and haven’t had one to this day! That was 41 years ago!

[petelanger]

I get you bro! I grew up in Montreal, know all about Canadian summers that last about a week and freezing nights in late August foreshadowing about 7 months of winter around the corner. That’s why I moved to Florida!

[petelanger]

You can always navigate back to the previous benchmark: Old Man right from the home screen.