Hi everyone, I'm Greg. I'm based in South London and am four Zoom lessons in with Paul. Very much a beginner who wasn't getting anywhere convincing with self/Youtube directed learning.
Most of my (long gone) teens and early twenties were spent listening to grunge (Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Soundgarden), Britpop (Ash, Blur, Radiohead, Oasis), American indie rock (Weezer, Pavement, Arcade Fire, Pixies). I gravitated a bit more towards classic and conventional rock sounds as I got older (Neil Young, Dylan, Bowie, Springsteen, Talking Heads, Black Crowes).
Anyway, lesson 4 with Paul started introducing singing while playing. Here's my midweek update on the Heart of Gold exercise I was struggling with on Saturday:
Some bank holiday noodling on a Jim Campilongo lesson.
Been working on this through the week just so it's semi-recognisable. Not benchmarked yet but there's a lot going on (for me) technically in this including bends and going in and out of triplets. The bend-release-pull-pick bit in the second half is by far the hardest bit.
A little bit of practice homework, still striving for GCSE level...
Better late than never. Officially playing the acoustic track on the tab, along with the Ultimate guitar backing track. A few flubs but it's coming on.
Not had a lot of time this week, so sneaking this one in under the wire.
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!
Bit of a hiatus from the forum but we’ve been working on some bends. Still challenging me a bit on timing and physicality but here’s some progress.
A little loop adapted from Gary Moore’s Still Got The Blues. At Saturday’s lesson I topped out at 50bpm, and the economy picking was all over the place, but it’s been creeping up through the week. I’ve got the picking pattern pretty locked in now, and can stretch to 100-120bpm bluffing speed. Above 90bpm the foot tap breaks down. At that speed also sometimes the post-bend note starts coming in a half beat too early, and hand synchronisation falters for the 15th fret note sometimes muting it.
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!
So, after last week's deep dive into new-style A chord fingering that was topping out at an unreliable 60bpm here are some new benchmark attempts. First with the metronome, then with a drum track after some failed metronome attempts. Definitely more confident with the finger placement and they're sticking together more as a unit, although the first finger still has a tendency to drift back up the neck.
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 ...
As promised some chord change benchmarks for the new G fingering to C and D
It's starting to creep up from the plateau of 60 bpm to 70 but I wonder if I have better luck playing to a GarageBand drum track than a metronome. Certainly it feels tighter in the 3rd video but maybe there's more leeway with the drums?
After a few weeks away from the guitar, it's been a struggle to recapture previous progress on Smells Like Teen Spirit.
F5/B5 section is still at 40bpm
But the first F5 line crept up to 70bpm from 50bpm
First line 1st half is up to 80 bpm from 70bpm
First line 2nd half is up to 70bpm from 60bpm
Still struggling with drift in my timekeeping at higher bpm but those are real rather than bluffing speeds.
Looking forward to giving that Pearl Jam riff an even slower go than you Paul, thanks for the video and Taplature!
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!
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!
My last two lessons focused on power chords along the lines of Paul's recent blog. I'm getting a bit more comfortable moving them around the fretboard and chipping away at fret buzz and errant high E's. Mentally hammering in progressions to a benchmark metronome tempo continues to be a challenge, especially for anything more variable than a Ramones-ish three-chord cycle.
Posting more as proof-of-life than proof of progress after two weeks of holiday 😂 but here you go:
Sounding good ... a rare Ramones rendition without distortion cranked to the max!😁
And finally for today, a little approximation of The Ramones...
Sorted! There shouldn't be much that's out of reach to get through in this fashion and speed generally rises consistently from this point. Things hopefully feel like they're opening up quite fast now?
Last week's lesson focused on building up from root notes to power chords to barre chords. I've been playing around with some Ramones (53rd & 3rd) and Pearl Jam (Mankind), and Pixies (In Heaven) through the week. Here's my very slow approximation of In Heaven by Pixies:
And here's what it should have sounded like (guitar kicks in at 0:27):