Hello Community!
I'm really happy with the course and with Steve's instruction. After trying a few other methods (online and in-person) I believe this course will work for me. I've had to swallow a lot of pride by "starting over" and being willing to look stupid. I've followed Steve's direction and done every exercise and played every song - course book and bonus book. So far, so very good.
I've been in session 4 for about 2 weeks now. I've made pretty good progress, but I'm now stuck.
I'm playing Minuet in G with the Jam Track at the fastest speed. I have worked up to the fast version after a considerable amount of time with my metronome and on the slower jam tracks, and considerable time before that practicing smaller pieces of the song. I have yet to play through the song at the faster speed like I want to. I'm trying to record myself, and I just can't seem to get a clean playing of the song. Even when I get every note right (pretty rare) I'm not happy with the sound. I want it to be smoother. It just doesn't sound right.
BTW - I have a whole new respect for recording artists. Man, that microphone (or direct box) doesn't miss a thing - every flubbed note, every string buzz or muffle, rushing, lagging, you name it - it just sticks out like a sore thumb.
I'm pondering a question that I hope is worthy of the group. Steve says to play slowly until you get it right then speed up - sometimes very slowly. He also says to break the song / exercise / whatever into pieces, then reassemble them. All this is in keeping with the concepts in The Talent Code (thanks @DianeB) by Daniel Coyle. In the book, Coyle talks about "the sweet spot." In talking about it he says, "Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways - operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes - makes you smarter."
Here's the question - when you're struggling a bit on the faster speed, do you go back to the slower speed until you have it perfect, even if you've been there before? Or do you stay with the faster speed, break it up, practice it until you can play the pieces perfectly 100 times, then reassemble the pieces? Or do you just "power through" it until it's good? Or something else? What do y'all think is best practice?
For Minuet in G I'm going to go back to about 75bps try to record that until it sounds like I want it to, then speed it up incrementally until I get to 88bps, which is where the fast jam track is. I'll break it up again if I need to. I'll do this even if it takes another week or two.
This song is not the only thing I'm working on. I'm playing the bonus exercises in session 4, and starting to pick through Fur Elise, as well as a couple of tunes from my Beatles easy guitar book. I'm spending a lot of time on Minuet in G because I want to record it and post it. Like Steve says - the completion of session 4 is a milestone and I want to make it special. I have a pretty bad case of performance anxiety and I'm trying to overcome it by playing for people - online and in person. I don't want to post or play in front of anybody until I get the confidence that I can play it like I want it to sound.
Sorry for the long post. I appreciate your patience, and thanks!!