dan0725

New Gear Day arrived this past Sunday. I pulled the trigger on a new Martin Road Series cutaway dreadnaught. Sounds great! Happy New Year’s to everyone.

Will there be a pdf?

This is going to be awesome!

This is my take on the The Minstrel Boy. I used my new Telecaster to play the melody and strum the chords. I recorded using GarageBand on my iPad so I could add some drums. the minstrel boy.m4a

Neil, thank you so much! This will make things a lot easier.

My days are pretty flexible for the most part so in-between work stuff and long walks to stretch my legs, I am getting some playing in. I'm currently working on L&M sessions 5 & 6 since they both cover open chords. I'll do the same with sessions 7 & 8 (barre chords). I went back to the beginning of book and played all the songs just for something different. My nephew has a birthday in a few days and I've been learning "Happy Birthday" as part of my side project of learning the fret board. I've done that and the melody for "Nowhere Man" in fifth position. I'm sad that I was won't be play it for him in person, but hey, that's why we have Skype. Edit -- The Ditto X2 Looper I ordered arrived today. Now the project is trying to figure out how to use it. I'll take a look at Steve's looper video but I've got to get an instruction book of some sort. Stay safe. Dan

Check out Fender’s website ASAP. My wife discovered that they are offering three months of guitar lessons to the first 100,000 people to sign up. Already got myself signed up. Take care and stay safe, Dan

I was actually looking for blue or maybe orange, but I saw this one decided to go for it. Something about basic black. Thanks to everyone for the looper suggestions, so far. Looks like everyone is in agreement on the Ditto pedal. I will look into that this week. Lots of guitar playing ahead. I just purchased Steve's major scale workouts and started practicing with part one last night.

That I hope will be happening fairly soon. I’ll have a lot of time to work on something while work is shut down. I’m also looking at a looper pedal in the near future. Anybody have any suggestions?

Pulled the trigger on a new guitar yesterday. Fender Telecaster Player Series (MIM). Very nice tone. Not as heavy as I thought it would be.

A recording of Au Claire de la Lune duet from the Hal Leonard Complete Guitar Course. I used Logic Pro to combine all the guitar parts (chords and notes) as well as adding drums and percussion. The first guitar part notes were played in the open position and the second part in fifth position. Au Claire de la Lune.mp3

I got locking tuners for my Strat at Christmas. I think they work great. On a rare occasion I have to tweak the tuning but not often. Plus it makes changing the strings a snap.

I had a breakthrough of sorts last night... I was practicing Session 5 and as I was finishing up I started messing around in the Am Pentatonic scale. At some point, in effort to move up the neck, I wanted to learn this area. I was pleased to find that I was able to name the notes without looking and play a couple of songs (Ode to Joy and Yankee Doodle). I think it goes back to a YouTube video (who says you can't learn stuff on YouTube) I saw explaining how the guitar is tuned in 4ths (except the B string) and if you knew the notes at the 5th fret, the other notes are easier to figure out. I guess it just finally clicked in. I'm going to put this into my practice routine just so I really remember it. Psych! Learning Everything I Can Dan

I’ve decided after two months or so of Session 4 I’m going to move on. I can play all the songs and exercises in the main book. The bonus resource exercises are more challenging and I can play most of them in time. The few I’m have trouble with I’ll use as warm ups. Sessions 5 and 6 should be easier since I’ve been strumming chords for a long time. I feel like it will be a good refresher on technique. Ready, set, go! DMF

Will there be a pdf for this lesson as well?

I used my printer at work to print out the pdf. I tossed it into a folder to bring home without looking at it and when I got home I found that none of the figures printed! I had to scramble while the lesson started to reprint on my home printer. Dan

Enjoy! Cruising is great.

Coming back from a beautiful week vacationing in Mexico. Eager to return to guitar practice well rested.

Thanks for the reassurance. I really needed it.

I’ve run into a real snag. Lots of misfires. I’m either fretting wrong notes, especially where second string D is involved. I’m also completely whiffing strings. It’s very frustrating. I’m slowing everything back down for awhile to try to straighten things out. I feel like a baseball player whose in a slump. I don’t know if trying to play to metronome has me messed up or maybe I need to take a break for a couple of days and try it again (I do play pretty much every night). Or maybe I get back on the horse. I was hoping to be done with session four before I leave for Mexico on the 1st. Not looking so good now.

Session 4 Update: I've been able to play the session songs at 76 BPM. I can play the 5th and 6th string exercises at 60 BPM (working on consistency). That's the good news. I've started working on the Bonus exercises and as I expected I'm running into some snags. Right now I'm on the 5th string bonus exercises and a few of them I can do at the correct BPM. The others, not so much. I've been using my metronome to try to get the timing down but I find playing the exercises really slow (40-50 BPM) is not any easier. What I thought of doing is trying to do the exercises one measure at a time. Get it where I can do it correctly and then add in the next measure and so on. Is this a valid way to do this, or should I try playing all the way through real slow until it clicks and then speed up? Thought? All advice is welcome. If you have something that worked for you, I'd like to hear about it. Dan

Yes, Cindy it does. Thank you for the responses. More importantly, it makes sense .

Thank you, Maria. I hope so, too and for you as well. Dan

I hope someone can help me with this... I’m starting to work on the Bonus exercises for the 5th and 6th strings. On page 33, exercise 4, the last measure has me confused. The way I read it is 1+ (2 is silent) + (3 is silent) 4 (+ is silent). Somehow this doesn’t seem to add up. I could just be interpreting it wrong but it seems that beat 3 should be quarter rest. Could someone give me the correct count? Disregard the numbers on the image. This was my first attempt. Thanks.

Continuing to work on Session 4... Christmas music has been put away. Adding to the mix along with the main songs and exercises, Auld Lang Syne (key of G) and The Minstrel Boy (key of D). The Minstrel Boy is a very nice tune from Ireland. I first heard it as part of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode (“The Wounded”). You hear it sometimes played at funerals on bagpipes. I do have a question about it I’m hoping someone can help me with. It looks like in several measures there are ties but I thought ties connected notes of the same pitch. It is possible they are slurs but are not hammer-ons or pull-offs since the second notes are on adjacent strings. So what is it (picture enclosed)? Sorry for being so long winded.