[dr_dave]

When I saw the title of this post, for a minute I thought it was about “hamboning.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbUgyhFsgtw

[dr_dave]

Suggestion: First try to hammer onto the second fret of the high string, but don’t fret the rest of the D chord shape. Do this without even strumming. Notice what happens when you hammer on top of the fret or too far away from the fret. Find the “sweet spot.”

Next, still using only the high e string, hammer onto it and then pull off (pulling down towards the edge of the fret board until the string releases, sort of “flicking” it), then hammer back onto the string and repeat. Loop this, trying to get maximum volume.

Next, and still without fretting the G and B strings, strum the four stings D through high e and hammer onto the second fret of the high e. Only when you are able to make that e string ring out without fretting the other strings will you have a chance to make it ring when fretting the rest of the D chord.

When you are able to make that e string is ring clearly, fret the G and B strings with the index and ring fingers, respectively. Pay very careful attention to arch your ring finger so that it is not muting the e string. Strum only the e string and hammer onto it. If you can’t make it ring as well as you did when you were not fretting the other strings, it’s time to figure out why that’s happening. Is it because your ring finger is muting the e string? If so, is it because your other fingers move when you’re trying to hammer?

Is it because your middle finger can no longer access the “sweet spot?” Maybe you need to adjust your other fingers. I find that it is a little easier to hit the “sweet spot” (very close to the fret, but not directly on top of it) if my other two fingers are a little bit further away from their frets.

Sometimes breaking things down into building blocks will help you troubleshoot things. Check in with your results. You can do this!

[dr_dave]

Some years ago, TAC used to make it easy to go back to the prior month’s routine. I fail to understand why they don’t still make it easy via the website for situations just as you describe, because they actually do give you the “key to the cookie jar” via the emails that come out in Tony’s name. I got an “Monday Momentum” email yesterday entitled “Navigating Open Tunings” that included an inconspicuous link to last month’s lessons (one of the last things in the email, bottom right corner right above the footer banner), and probably you did too. That’s the only method I have found for accessing a prior month’s lessons, and although I have never tried, if you have the links from old emails, you can probably go back several months if you need to do that. Here’s the address from the link in yesterday’s email. Let me know if it works for you. https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/june-guitar-routine-2-2-2/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Navigating%20Open%20Tunings

tonypolecastro.com

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

[dr_dave]

Clicking on “My Favorites” will pull up another flyout menu that lists five categories. Clicking on any of them will produce a list of all the lessons in that category that you have marked as “favorite,” but notice that page will include those same five categories plus another heading, “All.” Clicking on “All” will return all the lessons you have marked as “favorite” regardless of category.

[dr_dave]

On most pages within TAC, near the upper right corner, you should see your name (TAC ID). Clicking on your name should produce a dropdown list. One of the items on that list should be “My Favorites.” It should be smooth sailing from there.

[dr_dave]

@Kim-Fitz has it right. You are perhaps feeling overwhelmed because you are expecting to play a significant portion of the lesson the first time you see it. It would be an unrealistic expectation to think you would be able to loop through the daily lesson even at half speed after 10 minutes. What is realistic is to hope you learn one little nugget and feel like you could do just a little something slightly better after 10 minutes than you could at the beginning of the lesson. How much you achieve and retain with each lesson will vary from lesson to lesson, but it’s important to realize that skills are built over time.

When I started TAC seven years ago, I already had a daily practice habit and had been playing for about 4-1/2 years. For roughly the first half of that time, I had taken private lessons. Another interesting aspect was that there was no 5-day program or 30 days to play program. The daily lessons (and the Song Vault, plus a few other lesson things no longer available) were it. At that time, beginners launched into the daily lessons from Day 1 after a few short tutorials explaining how the lessons were structured, etc. They also described the “small wins” concept and emphasized it was important to end each playing session with a positive note and a feeling of accomplishment.

Don’t expect to feel you have mastered the content of any given daily challenge even the third or fourth time through. Understand that you will get a little better at these each time you see them. Over time, you will be surprised by how much you achieve if you truly commit to completing 10 minutes minimum on each daily challenge.

I’d love to hear you weigh in after you have a couple months of daily challenges under your belt.

[dr_dave]

That’s Hank Williams’ guitar that I’m playing.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by  dr_dave.

[dr_dave]

Deleted. – Reply posted at wrong level.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by  dr_dave. Reason: Reply posted at wrong level

[dr_dave]

I just got a real surprise today. For the first time in a while, I opened an email from TAC and skimmed through most of it. Toward the bottom, there was a link that said, “Last Month’s Routine.” The link address was https://t.dripemail2.com/c/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhdWQiOiJkZXRvdXIiLCJpc3MiOiJtb25vbGl0aCIsInN1YiI6ImRldG91cl9saW5rIiwiaWF0IjoxNjk5Nzk0NjU1LCJuYmYiOjE2OTk3OTQ2NTUsImFjY291bnRfaWQiOiI5NTEwNTYxIiwiZGVsaXZlcnlfaWQiOiJ6dG03enl0d2hobGVqa3l4MGNldiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vdG9ueXBvbGVjYXN0cm8uY29tL2NvdXJzZXMvb2N0b2Jlci1ndWl0YXItcm91dGluZS0yLTIvP19fcz11endwcHB0a3pxcWpwb2prd3MycyZ1dG1fc291cmNlPWRyaXAmdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249VGhpcyt3ZWVrJTNBK3R1cm4raGVhZHMrd2l0aCt0aGlzK2NhbXBmaXJlK2NsYXNzaWMifQ.soQQAa6k33nkY9TET-t3VO0X5IIwC9GIS1VscDiin8c.

Sure enough, after logging into TAC, clicking that link took me to the completion page listing the October lessons all marked “complete.” I went into the TAC site to see if there was a way I could do that from within the TAC framework, and I could not find one.

When I joined TAC in 2017, it used to be a simple matter to navigate to last months lessons from within the site. Why would they put a link like this in an email but not make an easy path from within the site? Or am I missing something??

dr dave

t.dripemail2.com

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

Tony's Acoustic Challenge

[dr_dave]

“Based on the book ‘Outliers’ from Malcolm Gladwell, to excel in anything in life, any human being will need at least 10K hours of practicing such target. Bottom line, keep moving and paying attention on your progress that you learn from it and get better…and better. This is what happens in life. You don’t master in something to live; you just live each day doing your best and learning from it.”

This is “spot-on.” Think about it this way. If you practiced one daily challenge for 10K hours, you might get pretty good at playing that challenge and perhaps not. But it is almost certain that you would not become a very good guitar player by doing that.

While it is true that repetition is important to learning, especially as we grow older it seems, it is also important to have variety. For physical fitness, it is important to vary your training routine. Otherwise the adaptations that take place make it easier to do one thing and there is a tapering off of growth. TAC is designed to cycle you through different aspects and skills, keeping it from becoming a set “routine.”

One relatively new aspect of TAC is the “benchmark” weeks that were introduced a while back. These are a way of showing you that you are making progress. Certain series of lessons come along every three months or so. If you take notes, it should be obvious that it is easier to play them the second time versus the first, and that you continue to get better each time you see that set of lessons.

I don’t personally enjoy the goal setting and note taking, so I don’t do that myself. I just trust the process and continue to play through all the daily lessons each month.

The goal-setting, 90-day check-ups, benchmark weeks etc. were introduced long after I started TAC. When I first joined, I was logging into TAC every day and completing the daily lessons. That was where we started, because it’s all there was, except there was a “points” system that “rewarded” you completing a month of lessons, for posting “Hi – I’m the new kid on the block” message in the forum, for watching a video that explained what you need to do to mark a lesson complete, for learning and posting one of the songs from the vault, etc. Somehow it was made clear to me from the beginning that the commitment was to just do my best to play the lesson for a minimum of 10 minutes, then mark it complete with no expectation of reaching a level of competence.

I continue to be amazed how frequently people express that they are frustrated or feeling lost early in the program. One thing we can bet on is that there will continue to be threads like this one. It’s over seven years now since I joined TAC, but I can remember introductory material that I watched that made me understand not to expect to be able to play the dailies well after 10 minutes or even a half hour – just to give it an honest effort, mark it complete and move on. Have we lost that with all these newer introductory materials – 30 days to play, etc.?

I no longer visit TAC every day and I typically batch the lessons into one or two sessions a week. (I guess I’m a bit of a renegade, but I paid for the lessons so I use them the way it best suits me.). I still play my guitar every day, typically for an hour or more. A lot of that is song practice rather than skill building. So I’m not always doing things exactly as designed these days, but I still believe there is enough value in practicing every one of the dailies for at least 10 minutes, even if it’s not on the day they are assigned and I end up doing four or five dailies in a single day. Now that I’m in the program for over seven years, I can usually play the dailies pretty well after 10 minutes, but not always. I would not continue doing these same lessons over and over if I did not believe I was deriving a benefit.

I believe the benefits of TAC reveal themselves over time. I think expectation to master the lessons day by day is one of the most detrimental things to progress. One other thing I learned on my first day of TAC was to end each session with a positive feeling – to try to identify a small win each time I play. That would have been hard to do if I started out expecting to master the dailies. Maybe that is no longer being explained to new members.

[dr_dave]

Glad it worked.

[dr_dave]

Thanks Albert. It’s great to be among friends here! I draw inspiration from so many TACers, and although I don’t get around the fora and VOMs as much these days, it’s always special for me when I do.

[dr_dave]

I first saw Al.E at Sellersville a while back and have seen him a few times when he was volunteering, but I have not seen him lately. I still see my friend Bert Coffman (another volunteer) there pretty often, at least when there are folk or bluegrass shows. I saw Bert just on May 30, when Mark & Maggie O’Connor played there. I know Bert because we used to both attend monthly jams of the Lehigh Valley Folk Music Society. Unfortunately that whole scene dried up when COVID shut us down, but Bert turned me on to a group in Bucks County that jams monthly at the Haycock Township community center. I don’t know if Al.E ever went to it – it has been a few months since I have gone – but I remember discussing that jam with Al one night at Sellersville.

Sellersville Theater is a great place to see a show. Last band I saw there was Nektar (prog) about 2 weeks ago, and I did not see either of them (Al or Bert).

Good luck with your plan to get a free guitar from Martin. Let me know how you make out!

Hope to see you at a show or jam sometime soon.

[dr_dave]

Here’s the link to the Song Vault: https://app.searchie.io/hub/254V7grV3m/

If you then choose the finger picking library, you should see a screen very similar to the one Beatrice posted.

I feel your pain, Rob503. I just spent about 10 or 15 minutes looking for that link myself. I found it in another forum post – probably the same one where I found it on prior occasions.

It is very inconvenient to have to search through a bunch of old posts to find a way to the Song Vault. When I joined TAC in 2017, I signed up as a Lifetime Member and also bought into Fretboard Wizard. Lifetime Membership might not be an option anymore. Song Vault was an add-on that was included as a bonus with Lifetime Membership. I love playing those songs, especially the flat-picking ones. I play a few of those bluegrass tunes nearly every day. Periodically, I like to go back and refresh my memory on some I have forgotten. But each time I try to get to the Song Vault, it gets more difficult.

When TAC underwent one of it’s overhauls a few years ago, they “dropped” the Song Vault as an add-on. They made it free to everyone (and perhaps they comped or refunded something to the people who had paid for it?), but they don’t provide any sort of a link or even mention it as far as I have found. I’m not sure I understand the philosophy. It seems as if they have continued to make it available but actually want it to remain hidden. They certainly don’t seem to want to encourage it’s use.

I found some earlier incarnations of TAC much more to my liking. There used to be something called “Tony’s 76 Quick Lessons” that I found very helpful, but that got discarded in the makeover. The chief concern YAC’s management expressed was that too many people were overwhelmed by the amount of content, so they wanted to streamline the process. They did so at the expense of removing a lot of what I liked about TAC.

I play the guitar every day except on those really rare occasions when it is impractical to take my travel guitar on a trip. I still complete all the TAC daily lessons by the end of every month, although I tend to batch them – one or two sessions a week. Maybe racking up the numbers is what drives me to do that. But I have to confess I spend much less time here than I did, and I really don’t enjoy it as much as I did say in the first few years. But the changes were probably necessary to support TAC’s business model.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  dr_dave. Reason: Add info on how to get the screen Bea posted

app.searchie.io

TAC Song Vault

All your favorite song lessons in one place!

[dr_dave]

“From that perspective, easy access to all previous challenges would break the concept and could render TAC to be yet another guitar tutorial page.”

When I joined TAC, they had a library that had all the lessons available at any time. It never confused me or tempted me to do anything that I thought hindered my learning. It only enhanced the experience and made things more organized (versus “favoriting” every lesson.) I guess the problem is strictly one from a sales and profitability point of view. If they make the whole library of lessons available when you first join, someone could theoretically join for a month and access all the lessons, perhaps finding a way to archive them to use even after they quit paying. I can’t see any other reason for taking away a capability that very much enhanced my learning experience.

I would take the old-old TAC (2017 vintage, before it got reorganized in 2018 into a very forum-rich experience that subsequently got abandoned) in a heartbeat.