[dr_dave]

Nice job, David. It’s a cool version you did. My favorite version is by Sam Bush, backed up by Jerry Douglas, on the “Peaks of Telluride” album. But your version is excellent as well!

[dr_dave]

Bravo TJ. This is great.

[dr_dave]

Hi Steve. Many of the courses in the Skills section first appeared as 5 day challenges for a week of daily lessons, then later showed up as courses. Sadly, from my point of view at least, a few of the 5-day challenges have not been added to the Skill section.

It seems we have a special 5-day challenge for one of our weeks during most all 5-week months. I thought that might be because there are typically just four variations of Friday Key Chord lessons: KC major, KC minor, KC accidental and KC mixed.

Just as Tony is not making up new lessons for each day, he’s not continuously developing new 5-day challenges. He uses one from what is now called the Skills Course section. Occasionally he’s inserted a song challenge, using one of the songs from the song vault. I don’t know if he’ll reprise that, now that the Song Vault has figuratively been cast out into the darkness, no longer welcome in TAC space.

Your comment about “double dipping” suggests you think you’re not getting full value. I don’t feel cheated when they use an “existing” Skills Course as a week of lessons. It is good content. I had just gone through the banjo course again about a month ago, but I am game to do it again.

Until the recent “re-decorating” project, all the daily lessons were in libraries. All the lessons were available all the time, neatly organized by daily category. I liked that availability and I miss it a lot. Perhaps you would have also considered that “double dipping,” since the daily lessons for each month were being pulled from a pool. They still are being pulled from a fixed pool. We just no longer have a pool pass.

The lesson content has been fairly static for quite some time. Only a handful of challenges have been added since I joined nearly 4 years ago. Maybe we will still see a new challenge introduced occasionally, but at best I expect that to be a really rare thing. The program is what it is. Either you like it or you don’t. I’m a life member, so I’m still using the dailies.

[dr_dave]

Wow. Very impressive, Joe. Tough changes.

[dr_dave]

Excellent sound and flow.

[dr_dave]

Great smile! Looks and sounds like you’re approaching things in a healthy way.

The six-string barred f at the first fret is called an E-shaped barre. Some other thoughts on this chord:

It’s easier to play an E-shaped G at the third fret and even easier to play an E-shaped A at the fifth fret. One of the reasons is that the strings don’t have to make as sharp a bend at the nut (the little piece of bone, plastic or other synthetic material that the strings cross where the neck meets the peghead), hence it does not require as much strength to barre. (You can make it even easier by using a capo one fret closer to the headstock than the position you’re trying to barre, pulling the strings closer to the frets and requiring less strength to make your barre.) A second reason is that the frets are closer together.

Fretting minor E-shaped chord is slightly easier than fretting a major E-shaped chord because you don’t need to use the middle finger to fret the third string (G string). Other E-shaped chord you might want to experiment with that are slightly simpler than the major chord is the dominant 7th. Again, this is because ot requires you to fret only two strings beyond the barre versus 3. And the minor 7 requires only one additional finger to fret the A-string two frets up from the barre.

You might want to enjoy some quicker successes with these ideas and gradually work your way back toward the nut to play them as F chords after you’ve built strength playing As, Abs, Gs, Gbs etc. because you might not tire as quickly, this may actually be a faster route to playing the F chord.

But regardless how you approach it, I’m happy to see you’re doing it with good spirits.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  dr_dave.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  dr_dave.

[dr_dave]

Glad to meet you and hear a little bit of your story. You must have some awesome stories from you long keyboard career. Looking forward to seeing more of your posts and sharing your guitar journey.

[dr_dave]

I think that you might eventually want to have several different “G arrows” in your quiver. The “four-fingered” open G is not necessary, but it is nice to have as an option. Having the ring finger as an anchor when transitioning between open G and open D is nice, so it’s really handy for those G-C-D (I-IV-V) songs.

But there are other times when I need to grab a 3-finger open G with the middle, pinkie and ring. This is very hard for me to do, but it’s important for me to develop more skill with that grip because there are a few things I play where I need to keep the index finger free to fret a C in the first fret of the B string, making a Gadd4 chord. The songs in which I need that Gadd4 sound do not sound nearly as good if I substitute a G chord. Also you’ll want an E-shaped barred G and probably some other barred shapes, but you might not need them anytime soon.

I don’t say any of this to intimidate you. Learn what you need when you need it, and accept that the johrney is long, with many stepping stones and choices.

[dr_dave]

That’s so great. I hope you have a lot more successes.

[dr_dave]

I am interested in what new users are thinking, how they’re enjoying their experience and how the new business model is working out for TAC. It was very interesting to watch the growth of the TAC staff and the way TAC developed over the time I have been here. There were four members when I joined, but Maggie left TAC staff very soon after I joined, leaving Tony, Levi and Noah to operate as a trio for quite a while before staff numbers started ramping up.

The changes launched recently were significant and perhaps very necessary from a business perspective. That’s something we members are not entitled to know, but I do hope for the sake of Tony and Levi that their new business model is sustainable.

[dr_dave]

Thanks. I got a laugh out of that. I am trying to remember to favorite every lesson so I’ll at least have access theoretically. It would seem to be a simple matter to restore the libraries, but it is apparent there is some reason they do not want to do that. Maybe another couple pages would make their website too large for their contract with their host? I don’t see a downside to making the content accessible to the members to use as it best firs their needs, but maybe they had a bunch of people paying for only a short time and downloading all the tabs or lesson videos and consequently they believe there was lost revenue. I guess I’m just trying to rationalize why we had our pool passes yanked.

[dr_dave]

I know what you mean. The 90-day goal-setting progress parties were my least favorite of the monthly parties. I don’t like goal-setting exercises – it always seems too contrived when I try to do that. Even though I’ve had many opportunities to practice formal goal-setting, I have never enjoyed the process nor felt like it really led to significant personal or professional growth for me. That’s just me. I recognize other people love these exercises and probably those quarterly progress meetings were their favorite part. But for me personally, it’s sad to lose the parts I liked best and keep only the part I liked the least.

For many reasons, TAC’s recent “paradigm shift” really caused a fall-off in my level of participation. Although I still tend to open up in some posts, I spend a lot less time reading or commenting in the forums. I think that may have been an intended outcome of the changes, not directed at any particular person or group but just a general philosophy. Do the daily lesson and get on with your life – don’t loiter here.

I wonder if the shift caused many other members to start using the site more? As @jumpinjeff often points out, the people who actively participated in the forums a few months ago represent only a small slice of the TAC membership. If everyone cut back on site use as much as I have, it has to really leave you scratching your head about the continued “click and wait and wait and wait …” nature of the new site. At my age, I often forget why I clicked something by the time the page refreshes. Since I’m in the “lightning round” of life, it hurts even more to have my time sucked away by cyber lag.

[dr_dave]

There are roughly a year’s worth of daily lessons in the pool. The rotation is not fixed, and occasionally lesson weeks have repeated within two months or less (at least it seems that way), but this is quite rare. On average, you’ll hit the same lesson week about once a year. I think @Michael-K73 keeps a journal of which lessons occur day-by-day, so I suppose he might have even better data on when given lessons occurred than TAC HQ keeps for themselves.

Occasionally people comment about the daily lessons not seeming to follow a progression. They don’t. You’re always in the middle. Although the Tuesday through Thursday lessons relate to each other, they might not have a strong relation to the Monday lesson and they generally don’t have a relation to the Friday Key Chords. Throughout a month, however, the Key Chord lessons are related to each other, all tied to the same key.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  dr_dave.

[dr_dave]

Just doing an internet search for “musical scales,” “major scale,” “minor scale” or “chromatic scale” will produce many results that will get you started. Although Tony occasionally gives some explanation about one or more scale types in the daily lessons, it will take a long time to answer your question via TAC daily lesson references, especially since we no longer have access to the “Libraries” of daily lessons. You’re going to need to look outside of TAC to get much information if your needs are current, and I think they are.

If you do a little internet research, you’re likely to find some discussion of “modes” of the major scale. Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of that at once. Let it sink in over time. You will see in time that the natural minor scale (there are actually several scales that have a “minor” or “sad” sound) is noting more than the sixth mode of the major scale. The major scale is defined by the intervals or distances between adjacent notes. I will not fall into the trap of writing a book here again as I did in many posts on the old forum. I will leave it to you to find what you need because it is very easy to find.

[dr_dave]

On the D chord, experiment with hand position and arch of the fingers to get to a point where you’re pressing the strings straight down to the fretswith the finertips closer to perpendicular to the fretboard. This will reduce any tendency to mute adjacent strings. Take some time picking each string individually to make sur they are all ringing clearly, then strum the chord. After a while it really does get easier. Every part of guitar playing is challending for a while. That’s part of the attraction. It’s “hard fun” that you’ll never outgrow!