Sorry Dave to post such a long winded frustrated concern., i posted not good timing to where i was at, just wanted to know it's ok to still struggle at times even at this time in my journey. in the light of day i, we have lots to be proud of even attempting and taking the 20,000 times to do it. i see rapid progress everywhere, but just wondered from ones longer in their journey if i would ever get to where chords would be smooth and clean and easy which is our goal right? should have simpified and asked one of the teachers and been specific and not emotional. we took this journey for a reason and need to remember that and focus on proper practice, and internally celebrate each win and they will eventually get us where we want to be., i'll be deleting post and hopefully you still get the message. keep up your good work. i pick songs i love, choose ones from your childhood that moved you, and feel the rhythm. i also enjoyed doing Keith Urban's 30 songs in 30 days, he picks fairly easy songs and teaches you something new each song and you can slow down youtube playback and also you eventually play along with a professional and then the band and then you as the guitar player as the ultimate goal of each song. youtube song teachers really go slow teaching each song, i have my fav youtube song teachers, you'll find them., bc when you learn a song, best you can play, you feel on top of the world. but remember to learn only parts of the song, get them right, slowly and that could take awhile, i take 2-3 weeks getting right the first line of Blackbirds, but i'm tenacious that way and that's what we have to do. i have since realized and looked back at this new frustration and see i took TOO much on at once, and overpracticed chord changes to the point of tiredness. i'm going to scale that down and add 'beats loop' or something to make it fun to do those drills. you have to do chord drills daily, i read once the slower you go the faster you'll get there.
As an update, i have made remarkable improvement and realized where i was going wrong with practice and also being hard on myself when in actuality i was doing well, my teacher observed and said i'm in my head and not seeing how good i'm doing, expecting perfection really. but what i did was found a good tutorial on chord transitions, the more challenging ones f chords barre etc and how to improve. i was takng these more difficult ones and doing complex strumming patterns, where i should not have been, bc the brain needs to focus on one thing at a time and working on that. i have no issues with these transitions anymore and have crossed a bridge, so my experience taught me not only to get better in the area i wanted, but also for my long term journey, being hard on myself, frustrated will get me no where, but to breathe, be patient, put the right work in and trust the process, and be happy i spend the time in practice i did, that in itself is an accomplishment and it will all work out as long as i'm staying patient and chill enjoying every single bit of the process, failure included, because failure teaches us. it's funny to say, but guitar has taught me many life lessons, ones i needed in my life. hope your journey is going well too! you look back and where you were last year or even six months. a musician told me you'll see times you just begin to take off bc the hard work is beginning to pay off and i see that. you'll see the brain and muscle memory and your fingers just flying over to a chord across the neck and be wow, look what i can do now and that rocks! and these little things move you in a forward momentum.
