Practise Diary - Grade 1 & 3

Great stuff! There's enough there to pass if you had to take the exam tomorrow but of course we're aiming for a distinction! Hats off for posting and I've issued you your Founder Member's badge as one of the first 10 to do so here! I've watched each through a few times and spotted a few things that are easy targets:

1) In Sunshine of Your Love the note on beat 3 of the second line here is getting chopped short ... practising with the foot tap (and count) and making sure it rings until you tap beat 4 should cure that quickly.

2) In ICAUFO (from 44s) when the change from melody to chords hits looks like a bottleneck. Getting better at forming the C chord mid-air (on the off-beat/up-foot) is the cure and the easiest way to do that is to improve changing your C chord to itself!

Shout out your current top speed here to put a marker down to work against!

3) There are a few timing issues in Dakota which will be transformed once we've tied it down to a foot tap. On the physical side finger preparation (same idea as for chords) should help ... eg. you can have the first fingered note AIMED and ready to FIRE to the fretboard while playing the initial open strings (which eliminates the need to change hand position there). HOWEVER ... All the notes in the intro are from an E chord. Try it with a full open E chord held down throughout (even though you won't be playing all the fingered strings; there's no need to move the left hand at all now. Pick-wise the intro should also smooth out quickly by practising following a strict alternating pattern (down-up) tied to the foot. Will look forward to seeing what you make of that lot on Saturday (when power chords will be on the menu)!

Hi Paul,

I hope you're well.

As promised please see below for the updated performances almost 2 weeks on.

Sunshine of your love

ICAUFO

Dakota

Best,

Doug

All taking shape nicely and each is definitely a jump ahead of the previous recordings to my ear. Next level for each I'd propose: 1) Sunshine of Your Love The next big difference will come from hitting the power chords like a kid does with a tennis racket. We looked at the muting and I'll bet you're not far off with it now. Ditch the open A in that section for a beefy 3 string power chord too! It's also not to late to think about moving up to the 10th fret:

Not too much changes but doing so would open the door for some probable brownie points. 2) ICAUFO All sounding good and smooth with the C chord no longer standing out as being awkward. How do your measurements on that look? We could make the picking a bit easier; one likely useful addition being the use of "rest strokes" (click here for an example) when picking patterns that move across the strings one at a time. Will elaborate on those on Saturday. Elsewhere I'll bet a few "woodpeckers" would fit the bill well to replace (or assist) your palm-mutes. Experiment with using the right hand fingers (as well as the pick) to kill the sound when "pecking". 3) Dakota

Holding the chord down on the intro is a plus to me and allows as a possibility hitting more than one string for added sound. There's nothing there that stands out as being problematic but as ever we can always find ways to add a little something! Here's some possible icing for the cake in a small loop with a twist or two!

A fair bit of food for thought Anything I haven't mentioned you'd like to zoom in on?

Hi Paul,

I hope you are well.

I thought i'd post on here again as I had my grade 1 exam on Monday. Everything went well so we will just wait and see what the results are.

The examiners aren't allowed to tell you how you did on the day, but he did say that I shouldn't be worried about passing so i'm taking that as a good sign that it's either a distinction or high merit.

So now it's onto grade 2, which i'll start a new thread for when i'm ready to record some video.

Best,

Doug

Nice one Doug. Will look forward to the official verdict!

Would keeping your next (and future) grade's progress on this thread make for a better catalogue of progress? I think you can change the title of the thread easily enough.

Let's see the goods or it didn't happen! 😉

There we go!

Nailed it!!!

Hi Paul, as promised please see below for the latest video of Never Too Late by 3 Days Grace.

Still a ways to go, but it's definitely getting there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn6mLIEmUs&feature=youtu.be

Best,

Doug

Superb stuff with a very pleasantly ear-bleeding sound! Next level is getting it with a metronome (which may slow you down slightly to get a perfect run-through). Recording beyond the "perfect" speed will introduce more mistakes the higher you push it and can be very useful for highlighting weak spots. A montage showing deterioration as the tempo increases makes a great addition to the collection. I've done a few in the past; here's one of them falling apart ...

Watching 3 Days Grace live shows the open D on the end of the opening lick that we ditched due to your tab saying fret 6. I've lined up a close-up here:

Might be worth re-investigating as the way he does it requires a bit less hand movement. The pick pattern he's using is eye=catching, including two ups on the same string in quick succession at the end of the lick. That I wouldn't recommend changing to!

Hey Paul, following on from last lesson here is the part that we were going through from Fast Car done at different speeds until it starts to fall over.

I think the speeds are 40bpb, 60bpm, 70bpm and then it starts to fall over at 80bpm.

Fingers crossed by out next lesson it will be up to the target speed of 100bpm for this part.

Best,

Doug

Excellent .. your marker is down! It looks to me like the biggest bottleneck is getting between the C & G chords. Pulling that out as a small loop should yield some quick improvement. Applying the LIFT, AIM, FIRE! approach gives:

Try the above with the different ways of fingering your G chord. Though we began looking at it as you're fingering above, the original is played using finger 2 rather than 3 on the bottom string which allows that slightly smoother transition up to the Em shape at fret 7 (both fingers 1&3 then stay on their respective strings and keep the same shape albeit slightly compressed!).

Practising the loop I've drawn up above at micro-speeds will allow you to make sure the fingers are aimed perfectly for the next chord before continuing and firing it to the fretboard. It's often worth stopping dead and holding in any awkward positions to get a feel for which muscles are involved and to get them to stretch out a little further than they want to go. Measuring as ever should allow you to see progress (or otherwise) and there's probably merit in examining "changing" the G to itself. Record speed is 103bpm so we'll be aiming to get this to 120+bpm (as well as this next level 16th note section of course!)

Getting that C to G change worked up to target speed should make a good bite-sized first challenge and may even warrant another video itself!

Hey Paul, time for a progress update. I think the first time is 90 bpm, then 104 bpm, then 115 bpm and finally 130bpm.

Nice going Doug ... quite a jump there from the previous video and I imagine your thought process now with this one feels very different to a few weeks ago! Although it might seem like a backwards step ... how does the same section work if you instead use fingers 1, 2 & 3 for the G chord? As the semiquaver section is on your to-do list we could tie in practising the alternate G fingering to that since you'll likely be slowed down somewhat (to begin) by the 16th notes anyway.

Hi Paul,

Thought it was about time that i recorded a version of lonely boy all the way through. This is at 83bpm so 50% speed.

Hi Paul,

I hope you are well and had a great Christmas. I thought i'd take the opportunity to post a video using the new acoustic. This is the progress so far for zombie which we started looking at last week.

Festive greetings Doug. All sounds in good order and the new guitar looks just the job! I'll post the Taplature we drew up (for anyone interested) and you'll note I've added one little tweak to act as a (tiny) point of interest on the final beat of the page. Think of it as a baby drum-roll pushing us back to the top!

Will look forward to a demo of the new egg-slicer on Saturday and to see what you've made of the chorus!

Hi Paul,

Jumping back to lonely boy again, here is the recording of me playing the guitar to the backing track at 90% (150 bpm) of the speed needed! Definitely getting there now.

Wow ... possibly as good an advert as could be for the power of nailing something at a slow speed before building up! Great crunchy tone and the groove is right in the pocket pretty much throughout. A joy to my ears!!!