Originally Posted by: canaan.morse

Dear community,

What level of mastery over Fundamentals I+II exercises and practice songs should we require of ourselves before progressing? I tend to dig into each exercise until I know how to *practice* it, then move on a lesson or two until I have a session's worth of practice tunes to work on. I'll chip away at those until I feel myself stalling out, then feed myself a new lesson for excitement and inspiration.

Thing is, some lessons and songs are (way) more difficult or more/less engaging than others. I practice scales regularly, but even after several months I still can't do A and E (box/open) at 145 tempo. My D string whines like a sitar on the sus4 exercise, I keep missing bass notes on the final 7th-chord song, et cetera.

I know that fundamentals are built slowly, so I shouldn't rush. But what kind of mastery should we require before we let ourselves go on? Full tempo, problem-free?

Like you I have been taking my time going through the fundamental lessons, trying to master each practice song. But once I got to the sus4 and 7th chords, I had to simplify my open G (sus4 and 7th) to just strings 1 through 4. And even then I had to slow the speed way down on that "7th Time Around" song. They have that song listed at a difficulty level of 3, but it's much harder than previous stuff that was also 3.

Maybe it looks like I'm taking the easy way out. I know how to make all the full open chords including suspended and 7ths. I know how they sound, and the mechanics of shifting these chords. And through most of the Fundamentals I've been able to keep up at her speed. It's just these suspended and 7th chords have slowed me up. I can't play them at her speed.

The thing is, I don't care for these songs much anyway. Actually I don't like acoustic that much, but especially that open chord strumming stuff. It all sounds like this to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFJ2jxIe4CQ&list=PLs-bO32gmOCngCnczDKINR-fSVd-MUWMw

But I'm finally starting the barre chord chapter tonight, and soon, the Rock Lessons.

Good luck,

Matt