You may have noticed I stopped making posts (and therefore learning guitar) a few months ago. Did I do what most people do and start for a few months then give up? Sort of. I vastly underestimated the time it would take to learn the guitar, and an hour of half-hearted practice when I can fit it in is just not enough! Instead you need to live and breathe guitar until you get to that tipping point where you know enough and you have enough muscle memory to play a variety of songs, then you can relax a bit.

So I still have the guitar and the course, I am just waiting for some more free time and then I will get back into it and record my progress as I do!

I know I haven’t been practising much lately, I really need to start the next lesson to give me something to get my teeth into, hopefully I can do that tomorrow or something. This post is about the website though, it was hacked yesterday so I may have lost some content, but I am trying to get everything sorted again now.

Time spent learning/practising: 61hrs
Status: Learning strumming & theory

I did really well with the barre chords today up until 2 minutes to the end when someone was asking me about something, then after that I couldn’t seem to get the hang of them again. But at the start of my practice I hit them all perfectly first time, even the B. I also practised Wonderwall more which is going well, although I’m still not sure if the strumming pattern is all quarter notes or some arrangement of quarter and eighth notes… and the video doesn’t tell me… I might try and slow the Youtube video down and see if I can watch how he does it… but I will definitely need a new lesson soon to give me something else to learn.

Steve

Time spent learning/practising: 60.5hrs
Status: Learning barre chords & theory

I did 45 minutes today including completing lesson 9 which talked about strumming and then diatonic and harmonic intervals. The strumming was disappointing, it was really nothing new to what has already been taught in the course so far, but the intervals were interesting and I did all the exercises for that. One of the strumming exercises had barre chords in which wasn’t happening! Yet when I practiced the barres later then I managed to do them all quite easily, so it is just moving between them that needs lots of work. I think I will dig into the theory more for a few days, then I might move onto lesson 10 as I didn’t learn anything new to practice here (I will practice strumming, but I do that anyway).

Steve

Time spent learning/practising: 59.75hrs
Status: Learning barre chords & theory

Ok today was a much more motivating day. I worked on Wonderwall with the metronome and confirmed I am doing it correctly, then I checked the videos and I am doing it all perfectly, it always sounds better on the video, but I think that is just because it is recorded. I did all the barre chords, including the B barre chord (may have to adjust finger position for that one) and they are getting easier, I didn’t really have any problems with them today. So I think I will lay off the songs for now, I will keep practising Wonderwall, but now I can play one I am happy. Now I will get on with the course, finish that, then I will sign up to some of these sites with video tutorials of songs afterwards and start building up my repertoire of songs.

Steve