Back in the collection!

It's all there and your strumming is looking and sounding comfortable and automatic ... just needs the chord changes tidying up! I'd bet if we can get them polished then remembering the chords takes care of itself. A dusting-off of your benchmarks may be in order (anything involving D which looks the toughest in there). I'll challenge you to bring me some bpm on Tuesday and I'll aim to get the chords I deleted typed back into Band in a Box!

A world of difference! Strays a little after a few reps but starts off right on the money! It's worth thinking about aiming finger 1 back to the first note of the pattern while the bend is still held, to eliminate the need to jump hand position. Keep 'em coming! 😊

Coming soon? 😁

Came across this today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK7T7FTaWr8 A bit of foot tapping inspiration in a style you may appreciate!

That will do nicely for a first marker! Tightening the timing looks to be top of the list but won't take long and the catalyst will of course be the foot tap in tandem with an out-loud count! Listening back at 50% or even 25% speed while tapping along ought to highlight the problem. We can take a look tomorrow and it should be ready for a rock-solid retake very soon!

Nice one Seb! For the reader's benefit that's up from 100bpm on Wednesday evening. My prescription for the fastest run to 200bpm would be to limit all movement in the body to the foot or maybe even just the toes! That should allow you to keep everything more robotic which will etch the pattern clearer and deeper. Will look forward to the next update!

Notes are all there for sure! What can you spot if you listen back and tap your foot throughout in rock-solid time with the metronome click?

Yo Seb! One way is to use the default setting on the excellent free web metronome Drummer's Pulse ... This gives 4 clicks and the first one has a higher pitch than the other 3. Using one click for each part of the beat means we're using four beats to represent one. In this case, although the metronome reads 60bpm we'd only actually be running the pattern at 15bpm (60/4 = 15). To set up Drummer's Pulse to count the 16th notes for us we can pull up the sliders at the bottom for 8th and 16th notes ... I've also clicked on the "Sounds" option until the setting changes to "Voice". Now the metronome will count for us; "One click AND click ... TWO click AND click etc.". The clicks are the "uh" and the "a" of our 16th note count. If it's tough to get going at the lowest setting (30bpm) then you can use the first method above to access slower speeds. Once you've reached 120bpm with the first method, that's the same as playing at 30bpm using the second method. How much sense does all that make?

Looking good! Wouldn't expect it to be long before that tops the magic target of 150bpm and consequently we see likewise using it in combination with other chords. All the time it's strengthening the down/up syncing of arm, foot and chord too which should have knock-on benefits for other chords and changes too! You should be able to ease off with the whip of the benchmarks slightly and start chasing a few tasty carrots (songs using that A chord) instead!

Getting there ... I reckon you could still use a bit of extra stretch - looks like there's a more of a battle to get the C down than would be ideal. Probably enough hard work gone into that though to get you to 100bpm before long and 150bpm shortly thereafter! Definitely one to zoom in on in the morning! 😎

G to D looking good and timing's certainly tighter with the band; my guess as to the reason for that is that you're getting the "ands" played for you. It's usually easy enough to set most metronomes to play the "ands"; if not you could set the metronome to double the speed and use one click for the down and one for the up. The metronome would read 140bpm in this case but of course you'd still really be running the pattern at 70bpm. It sounds like the top string may be being deadened on your C in the first video. Although it probably means losing a few bpm off your top speed the way forward is always to strip it back to the speed you know it's perfect at. Picking just the top string while executing the full G to C chord change will let you hear the issue clearly and should lead you to what works to cure it (a lower thumb may help for now). Congrats on getting your markers down on video! 🙂 Now ...

@John Bray A "bit" more work to get that (more like classical) version running nicely 😎 but our simplified (folk style) version should make a good stepping stone.

@John Bray Just needs programming so it comes up with the foot at the end of line 1 ready to fire down at the start of line 2. Same idea as a basic chord change but maybe a little trickier in some ways since other fingers have to stay put. Should be some fast progress on offer!

Here are those suggested breakdowns, replete with measuring boxes! Could use finger 4 for the only note we need to play for the G chord but if you can time the lift and aim of finger 3 as written in red that works fine too for a seamless change! How do you measure up?

At a leisurely pace:

As requested, the first ever Taplature commission in lieu of today's lesson! Pretty sure it's not far off at all. May see if I can get a video breakdown together to add to the YT collection. Will look forward to hearing what you make of it!

"Part of the problem was my lack of gaining headway so it was easy to pass on playing" We'll make that a thing of the past. Practise right and it's impossible *not* to improve. Without a video I can only guess as to where you ran out of steam but I'd expect chord changes to be a barrier. Here's a good question to get us started: What's your top speed on this test of changing a D chord "to itself" (demonstrated below)?

All in good order! I'll wager that's ready to start coming up to speed (235bpm viewed in 8th notes). Looks like the pattern's all there so a few days should be enough to yield plenty of those bpms!

Sounding good ... a rare Ramones rendition without distortion cranked to the max!😁