My First Year

Many congrats Bokonon! :D

Congrats, indeed. It's always nice to see tangible results for your endeavours, isn't it! It's great when that hard work starts paying off - and the harder you work at it, the easier it'll seem to get.

It'll be nice to look back at this post next Christmas and see how much further you've come!

:D :D :D

Vic

Way to go Bokonon. It's certainly nice to see progress. Have you recorded your playing? Doing so will allow you track where you are now and look back a year from now. Hopefully you'll be able to hear a big difference too!

Bokonon-

My hat is off to you for setting yearly goals as regards your playing. Goals are truly powerful things, as evidenced by your own personal results. I have talked to a number of musicians about goals who didn't see their usefulness. In my mind, nothing is further from the truth. Goals keep you focused; they tell you what you need to work on; they can be used to tell you how you are progressing. And even if you at times fall short of a goal, chance are you'd probably be farther along than if you hadn't set a goal to begin with.

A new year is fixing to start. Maybe it's a good time for all of us to write down what we'd like to accomplish musically in 2009. I'll volunteer to start a thread on this. We can each post our personal 2009 goals. For me I have so much I want to accomplish that I've got to prioritize. Maybe I'll set a goal to have my goals bythe end of this week.

my goal would probably be to pick up the guitar less and exercise more! :-P It's funny what happens to your metabolism when you hit 23-24 and you're not as skinny as a board anymore

Way to go Bokonon. It's certainly nice to see progress. Have you recorded your playing? Doing so will allow you track where you are now and look back a year from now. Hopefully you'll be able to hear a big difference too!

I have recorded some of my playing, but I usually delete the file after a few weeks and replace it with a newer version. It is embarrassing to hear yourself making mistakes, but this is all part of the learning process. Certain songs are ingrained in me from playing over and over. My seven year old daughter can actually play parts Margaritaville by ear on the piano from hearing me play it so many times!

I feel like learning to play has been like climbing up a series of ledges. Sometimes I get stuck, but once I make the jump it is fun to look back and see where I came from.

I feel like learning to play has been like climbing up a series of ledges. Sometimes I get stuck, but once I make the jump it is fun to look back and see where I came from.
You have described the learning process perfectly.

And don't delete the recordings if you have enough space in tour disks.

And share them with us! I did it and I received very good advices.

Now I can change between almost all of the open chords efficiently and have really worked hard on developing a sense of rhythm.
The best thing I did this past year was to upgrade from my beginner guitar. It made a huge difference. My beginner guitar was very difficult to play now that I look back.
I'm just starting out, been playing about 2 months or so, like 8 years ago or so (when most people got online with AOL, and WAAY before youtube or online lessons) I tried to take up lessons with a teacher and was forced to only play what he gave me to play (didn't know anyone else that played or I could play with) so I sold that guitar and then ended up getting one earlier this year because I wanted to try it but didnt find anyone to take lessons from for a while. I try to play in front of the computer for at least an hour where I have tabs and youtube lessons on the screen, I also play inbetween my games of halo3, sometimes it can take 3-5 minutes to find a game, and if you play 15 games a night that can be a good hour of down time (or practice time as I look at it). My question to you is, How are you developing a sense of rhythm? I'm just starting out so I have to really slow down songs and sometimes I have to play it so slow I cant even feel the rhythm anymore, that and I seem to mess up on my strumming a lot because again, I have to slow it down to learn it and then I slow it down so much I cant even feel the rhythm anymore.

My other question was about your guitar upgrade, what was your "beginner guitar" and what did you upgrade to? All I have right now is a fender squire strat but I noticed my teacher uses a couple other "high end" looking guitars, the pickups are different, the space between the fretboard and the strings looks different, I think even the space between the strings looks different, could just be my noob eyes. Is a fender squire strat a beginner guitar? What did upgrading your guitar do for you exactly?

Thanks.

Way to go Bokonon. Sounds like you're enjoyin the ride to boot. You'll be around for a while.

Hell with the lawn......Go play. :D

Mercury, I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. First of all, in my experience very slow rhythms are the hardest ones for me to follow. Going much below about 60 beats per minute and they are so spread out it's just hard to get a sense of timing, so I am not surprised there. What I would say is, if you are having trouble on say, a specific chord change, work on that first, slowly, without worrying about the rhythm until you have the change down. Then, once you feel comfortable, get a metronome and set it for something like, say 60 bpm and then try doingthe change on each beat or even each measure. So that way you are breaking the task down into manageable steps- finger placement first, then rhythm.

As far as guitars are concerned, you at least want something that is relatively easy to play, for example, with the action not too high. There are many entry level guitars that play well enough for beginners. Once you get above that level of guitar you are looking more at different features and tone quality rather than playability so much. I only have limited exprerience playing a Squier- my nephew had one that I used when i visited him once. However, I don't think the playability of ther Squier is that much diferen that the Fender name-brand strats. Someone who has played fenders more than me might want to confirm this.