Finish what you started!

So  its been a harder week this week.  Family got in the way of daily practice, though after 24 hours I really wanted to pick up my guitar and just strum!


Still working on  my 12 riffs challenge and so far I have -

The Trooper (Intro)
Crazy Train (Intro)

He's a Pirate
Star Wars (Main Theme)
You Give Love a Bad Name
I Walk the Line
Common People
Bad Moon Rising
Seven Nation Army
Three Little Birds

I'm working on these and most sound familiar now which is pleasing.

In doing this challenge I'm very aware that I am only playing fragments, which for a beginner I'm told is normal and good.  I really want to start building my repertoire with some complete pieces so I've been really concentrating on three songs -

Common People and I Walk the line which I'm playing along to the originals at about 80% speed which is fun. 

He's a Pirate this is going to be my first real peice and so far I have about 60% of the tune under my fingers and at a decent speed.

Fun times !!

Another Day Another Tune

ChordPulse is great - I'm finding it really useful to get my rhythm going.

Because it plays to a tempo I find it is stopping me from racing, which in turn lets me focus on the musicality (I use this term loosely !!)

12 Riffs of Christmas is going well as a plus.

The Trooper Intro
Crazy Train
He's a Pirate

You Give Love a Bad Name
I Walk The Line
Common People


I'm working on Justins version of Walk of life but This is Capo'd at 7 and I just cant get my fingers in there yet !!

Feeling really strong today !

Your very own backing band

Well I wasnt expecting that !

As I said in my last post I am running through Justin Guitars online course.

I have his song book from a couple of years ago so It made sense to follow his advice and play his song arrangements.

Unfortunately his revised course now guides you to his play along app which is free to try buy requires a paid subscription to go past the 30 second sample tracks. So trying to learn a song in 30 second bites isnt going to work!!

This is where things started coming together -

• I can use Justins Youtube videos and my foot pedal to loop the playalong bits  and that really works well but still means  playing only segments.
• In the comments to one of the songs I picked one of Justins contributors mentions ChordPulse Lite as a playalong option

ChordPulse   allows you to build a Chord progression and even provides a backing track of sorts at any given tempo. The free version has 20 odd "styles" which seem to be useful enough for now.

Once the sequence is added you can save it and loop it - even add a count in. I have been playing with it for a couple of hours now and I really think this is the missing link between the Yousician song interface and jamming with the real song.

My optimism just leapt another notch !! 

Time to up my game

Progress is going well.

I really want to keep this momentum up.

I'm going to start seriously working through Justin Guitars course and songs. there are two things driving me this way.

I've reached a bit of a plateau in Yousician and although it has re-ignited my drive to play, the last two days have seen me repetitively playing the same short passage just to get the stars - musically the passages are somewhat meaningless thought the technical (and gamer) challenge has driven me on.

Looking at Justins new 'My Practice Assistant' tool on his site has let me set up some more structured routines that I can still log (and track) accomplishments on.

So I lose the direct feedback of the Yousician app telling me I missed a note but with my new monitors I can actually hear that. I gain a more detailed course plan and practice routines.

I spent the evening setting up routines for Scales and Fretboard sessions as well as 1 minute changes for all the "Cowboy" chords. Now all I need to do is stick to them !!

Lets see how we get on.

The more you play the more you want to play.

Its true, after a month of playing at least an hour  almost everyday I now find myself making excuses to go and have another session.

Family ties mean this isnt always possible  (otherwise I'd probably be a guitar hermit by now !!) but even so Youtube inspiration is never far away.

I'm now right back at the stage I was when I left off three years ago but this time I'm still very optimistic.

I've hit the stage on Yousician where I cannot  get gold stars at every exercise without serious practice - I'm just shy of level 7 on both Lead and Rhythm paths so its not too great a surprise.

Musically I'm feeling better - there are far fewer unexpected twanged notes and most times I can get a bit of a groove going.

The 12 riffs of Christmas are coming on - now have recognisable (to me) sections of -

The Trooper Intro (pt 1)

You Give Love a Bad Name

Crazy Train Intro

Still way off speed but I can work on that.

Sounds Great

Sadly not my playing though !

I was lucky on eBay over the weekend and have now replaced my 2.1 PC speakers with a dedicated set of Monitor Speakers.

What a difference ! It sounds even better than my headphones.

I need to fiddle a little wit the levels  - I want to hear my guitar over the Youtube or backing track.

I can now really start to refine my tones.  I have a really nice  clean / acoustic sound already but I want a nice crunchy distortion that is not too overboard for my scale runs etc. Sereral tutors recommend practicing with distortion on as it amplifies your mistakes and encourages good muting which makes good sense to me.

12 Riffs of Christmas update

The Trooper intro pt 1 is coming on nicely.

Still strumming

Three weeks in - I cant feel my fingertips - must be doing something right ?!

Andy guitars 10 day bootcamp was great and gave me lots of hope I could get back into this.

So far I have managed at least an hour every single day and I can feel my hands progressing. Muscle memory is a strange thing - relax and trust your fingers they know what they are doing - try and force them and they rebel horribly !!

I hit the old problem that Yousician teaches accuracy over musicality so I have been working to improve my touch and feel as I work through the exercises.

I'm have stopped using the headphones and set up some old  PC speakers. The sound isn't so good but the playing experience is much better.

I did consider swapping the GT-001 for one of the Katana amps everyone is raving about. In the end for now I'm sticking with the GT-001 but have just acquired some studio monitor speakers, hopefully that will resolve the sound issues.

I've decided to challenge myself as its Christmas. I'm going to try and learn 12 recognisable riffs or pieces for Christmas. The aim is not to get them record perfect but to get them accurate and recognisable. Lets see how that goes.

Resurrection

Well that was a very  quick 3 years !!

Kids left home , moved flats and I got a new job complete with mega commute.

In other words life got very busy very quickly and my trusty guitar got dusty....

Arrgh !!   all that progress and I let it go.

Well I'm back and even more serious than before.

I now have a dedicated room with my guitar setup in.

In the last 2 weeks I have rerun Yousician level 5 and followed AndyGuitar's 10 day Quickstart course.

My fingers are starting to remember and I'm ready to start looking at song / tunes again.

I have also invested in a Boss GT-001 which sounds awesome in my headphones.

I have 4 weeks to learn some Christmas songs !!