Hi, my name is Josh and I've tried to learn the guitar on two previous occasions and gave up for decades at a time. Back when I was about 19 I picked up an electric guitar at Toys R Us that had a built-in amplifier. A toy one would say, but it was fun to try to learn and I just tried to make musical sounds. I got a beginner book and got stumped both by the pain of beginning to fret and the fact that I couldn't figure out how to make my fingers do the things in the book. So, I gave up. Probably only put a couple weeks into seriously trying.

Skip to my thirties and I tried again. I stayed with it for about 9 months and I could play the basic scale. Again, got stumped by chords so I went to a couple lessons where the kid who was my teacher said to just keep practicing, which I'd been doing for a month. With no real help I just gave up since I was making no progress.

With the proliferation of youtube I was inspired again and I really dived in. Knowing that the books really don't help me much I've ignored them in favor of joining this website (after comparing reviews on dozens of recommendations). I've added strength training for my hand, flexibility exercises I've found online, and try to vary things up with music theory and ear training.

I've never been very musical. I've failed at drums, piano, and harmonica in addition to guitar. So, I'm trying to create a structured training regimen that will keep my interest. I practice for 15 minutes 3 times per day and work on learning theory and trying to train my ear in relative pitch. This post is my attempt to keep actively involved in working on it. I'm happy to say that after 1 week I seem to be developing a little more control using the spider exercise to fret with 4 fingers on the neck from 1st to 6th string. I'm fat so trying to work around my belly with a dreadnaught guitar is challenging. I'm still looking for that proper posture that works with my body and guitar.

My only criticism of all programs, including this one, is there's no method for assessing progress that seems sufficient to me. I've seen all the hand angles, thumb positioning, and arched finger videos I could take in, but I still don't have a good sense of what is "good enough" to move on to the next video. I guess it's in the mind of the player, but that's a little too subjective for me. As well, I need to figure out how much variation will keep my interest above my frustration level. Do I wait to try to do some riffs until my finger placement is better or do I try some riffs while I'm working on that so I can say, "Oh, that's fun. I'll stick with this."? I sort of wish there was a personal thumbs up/down method to track how interested one is so the site can determine, "we don't want to lose this player so suggest this topic to keep engagement up and they'll stick with the exercises long enough that they should see some improvement" or "they've been stuck on this topic for a long time, maybe we need to suggest some alternate ways of trying to improve".

Anyway, this is my semi-diary note to commit myself to staying with this. I've done it for 9 months previously so I feel confident in my ability to stick with it for at least that long since I have more stuff that I know and can explore. I'm dreading chords, though. I really hope involvement in this site will help me get past that historic hurdle.