Originally Posted by: boaber22Hi All,
Fairly new to Guitar Tricks and have to say I'm loving the site. However I must admit, I feel like my enthusiam and engagement is weaning a bit as I go through the Rock Levels and wondered if anyone thats "Completed" the site if you will has any reccomendations or best practsie advice for structuring your practise and what to focus on to get that sense of achievement and progression?
I guess I'm just maybe hitting that first wall and feel like I'm not progresing a fast I as I could or that there is enough varierty in the levels to keep me as focused as I should be.
A short background on myself:
I first started playing guitar in my teens (I'm 36 Now), and unfortunately put it down and hardly looked at it again when I went to university at 18, until I joined the site a couple years back. I was comfortable with open chords, power chords and the odd basic/simple solo. I was into just rocking out alongisde my favourite pop punk bands like Green day, Blink, Sum 41.
While I still love rocking out to these bands, my music taste has somewhat expanded since then and I would love my guitar skills to follow suit and mature.
I started the site on Guitar Fundamentals 2 and I am now in the midst of Rock Level 2. Anders is fantastic!
What I was wondering is, is it probably best to stay with Rock Level 2 for now or if anyone has any advice on chopping and changing between modules/exercises to keep focused, engaged and to add variety such as:
Monday - Guitar Fundamentals 2
Tuesday - Scales Excercises
Wednesday - Theory
Thursday - Blues level 1
Friday - Guitar Fundamentals 2
Saturday - Acoustic
Sunday - Learn a Song
Revisitng specific exercises to keep your knowlerge up to date would be good too or to keep introducing these throughout the modules. So for example, we learned the Am Pentatonic in Rock level 1. But now as Ive moved into Rock Level 2 I probably couldnt show you how to do a minor scale in any position , which if I'm right was in Guitar Fundamentals 2 :-/
If anyone has any suggestions on the above with pointers to content/modules in the Guitar Tricks system to go with it, I would love to hear from you.
I hope everyone is safe and well during these strange and testing times :)
Best Regards
Robert
What I'm reading sounds very academic. Do you learn songs? You do note that Sunday is 'song' day. One of the most important skills you cn learn is to see how the skills and knowledge you've learned applies to songs. Learning songs gives you a lot of 'a-ha' moments. The best thing you can do is learn songs from all kinds of genres. It helps you contextualize how and where an A minor pentatonic versus an A Major pentatonic apply and are used. My suggestion is to spend a little more time learning songs too and from multiple genres.
With that said, I did a (really long) post on the pentatonic scale regarding major versus minor some months back. Granted, the instructors here are the pros but I've been playing for a good long time so the info is worth noting. Give it a read.
If you know the key of the song or the song section, you can apply the concept in my post to any song key by knowing first the key/root.
Once you've got this down, the majority of modern music falls in to knowing how to handle major/minor pentatonic. To me, all other scales across the fretboard expand outward from knowing the pentatonic.
Bringing this back to songs; songs teach you to apply theory. It also teaches you common licks and riffs. That and learning songs is pretty fun and in the end, we all do this to play music so...play music! Learn lots of different styles and you'll realize how much fun guitar is. Even if you hate country (and maybe your don't), learn a country songs. You'll realize how much you dig learning a new style.
Learning new skill is self-affirming. It gets you excited. Don't be so stuck in the 'academics' of playing that you skip the reason you're playing, to enjoy it.
Good luck, keep at it and most of all; enjoy!!!!