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Old March 9th, 2008
johnnydoxx johnnydoxx is offline
Full Member

Playing guitar for what seems like forever.
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Last Online: 5 Hours Ago 05:47 PM
Location: Missouri Ozarks
Posts: 919


I have several goals:
Short-term I want to play chords and strum well enough to participate in local jam sessions (mainly country music), play for our family reunions, and play in the park for fun. I'm pretty well there now.
Long-term I want to play some lead and get cleaner and faster chord changes, plus play some tougher songs (some of the old standards like Stardust, Misty, etc.)

Right now I'm concentrating on short-term. I vary my practices.
In one, I play and sing from my selected set of songs, which I have in a three-ring notebook, so I can get those songs good enough for the venues I mentioned above.
In another, I set up my drum machine and play along, paying a lot of attention to keeping the tempo and strum patterns, not worrying about the singing.
In another, I only play the songs (no singing) no drum machine. The goal is to really hear the gronks and clunks and get them better. In this mode I stop at a gronk and repeat until it sounds OK.
In another, I play from a book of songs that I don't usually play. I try to play all the chords listed. (When I play for the venues above, I leave out dim and other 'too many in a measure' chords, because I can't switch to them fast enough yet.)
Another - I put on one earphone (so I can hear myself in the other ear) and crank up Sirius country music from our satellite TV, then try to play along. Getting the key, chord changes, and strumming technique emulation is what I concentrate on.

And I begin each practice with 5 - 10 minutes of finger exercises. Someone posted a set here a while back. Basically runs up and down the neck with different fingering patterns.

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