Okay, it's time to discuss practice for Lesson 8.
Now, at this stage you probably might wanna manipulate
the practice routine at some point.
You don't have to stick with the same thing all the way through.
You need to find what it is that's working for you.
I'm giving you a suggested path but you might need to manipulate it
during your time, during the next week or two of your practice.
You might find that there are things that you're real confident with
or things that you want to skip over.
It doesn't matter. It's up to you now to edit the routine so it fits you best.
This is my suggestion.
Three minutes exploring those new chords.
So just literally playing through that little pattern I told you about going:
G,
C,
D,
A,
and E minor.
Playing through them, trying to get the chords sounding real sweet.
After a few days, you might be like, now I'm cool with this.
I want to work it on them as one minute changes or perfect fast changes
or working on just particular ones that you need for a song.
If you work it on "Wonderwall", are you working on "Wish You Were Here" or...
whatever the songs are that you choose to practice.
Your E minor pentatonic practice is gonna be two minutes
starting without the metronome and without worrying about string muting,
just playing it up and down.
Once you feel kind of comfy with that
you might wanna have a go at getting the metronome out
and trying to do it with the metronome.
Goal tempo is 1 note per click at 80 beats per minute.
That would be the goal.
What I found was that I ended up alternating
between practicing it with a metronome,
and then practicing it while I'm thinking about the muting.
So having a conscious go at doing the string muting,
just to kind of test it out. I was trying to figure out
if it was the kind of thing I could share with you or not
when I was practicing it, but that might be a helpful way of doing it.
I think practicing it with the metronome and thinking about the string muting,
is probably going to be too difficult. That is gonna be hard.
So, I wouldn't go there.
Alternate between playing with a metronome and string muting if you need to.
or ignore those things and just practice the scale,
a little bit depends on you.
I would then have a go at doing one minute changes
between the big G and a regular D chord, okay?
This particular chord change happens a lot.
So, just working on that trying to get that chord change
happening between the big G, the four finger G, and a regular D chord
using that 3rd finger as an anchor. That's a really good thing to practice
You're gonna find that a useful one.
I would then start to work on perfect fast changes
of either the same thing or a different chord,
maybe C to the new G,
or A minor to the new G.
A little bit again, be led by the song choices, okay?
You don't-- not every chord change is something that you need to work on.
You wanna target the ones that you're finding difficult
within the songs that you wanna play.
I really think it's best to be led by the songs that you wanna play
rather than just trying to nail down every chord change,
'cause, especially when we start getting lots of chord changes,
it just becomes impractical.
I would then recommend three minutes of working on
the new 8th note all down strumming pattern
and working on the accents.
So, you could just work with one chord,
and just work on that at the beginning.
One chord, trying to get used to doing the accent passage,
trying to hit mainly the thicker strings,
and then pushing through on the 2 and the 4.
If you want to, you can practice it with a metronome.
Probably the first few times, I don't recommend that you use a metronome.
Just get used to doing it, first of all.
Then work on playing it with the metronome.
If you feel like it later, you could start changing chords
while keeping the rhythm consistent.
And at that point, you might start wanting to consider concentrating on
where the pick is landing on the strings
and being able to play just from the thickest string
for the E and the G,
just on the 5th string for the A and the C type chords,
and then just the thinnest few strings,
the thinnest four strings for your D chord.
So, changing your emphasis within the practice is happening now.
Okay? Again, Grade 1 we just had, here's a set thing, practice this.
Now we're going like, well, here's the thing, you're probably gonna go through
a few stages within it.
So you might find that you need a little bit more practice each lesson now.
Okay? It's not going to be as quick to progress.
There's a bit more stuff going on in each lesson to work on,
things to think about.
Particularly with this kind of stuff like strumming
you're probably gonna be working on it for quite some time but...
yeah, just give it a little bit-- allow yourself to grow with it
and change things within the practice routine as you need to.
Even changing-- keeping it just as strumming practice,
but changing what you're emphasizing within that practice,
what you're thinking about.
You're then gonna have three minutes of riff fun
which is gonna to be "Wish You Were Here".
It's an amazing, fun tune to play, this one.
You're gonna love it, so I definitely recommend you having a go
at "Wish You Were Here". You could substitute for another riff if you want
or if you really don't like Pink Floyd, then you could just leave it out, but...
man, it's an all-time classic guitar song
that you should learn how to play, and it's so much fun.
You're not aiming to get it perfect, you're just aiming to have some fun.
and have a go at playing that song.
So, again, with the riff stuff, it's about it being fun,
not about it happen to be a perfect thing.
I'm then allowing two minutes for your note study, okay?
So you, again, you might be doing that for a little while,
and then after some, you know, 3/4 sessions,
you're like, "I know those notes, I'm cool,"
then you wanna change that couple of minutes to
more practice on something else.
More practice on "Wish You Were Here" more practice on the scales,
more practice on the rhythm.
What it is that you need to be working on.
That's a real key thing here.
We're then gonna have-- song work is gonna break into two sections.
We're going to have 10 minutes on songs using those new chords,
so loads of different songs that you could choose from, from here,
I just have to check my little list here. What do we have?
I have "Every Rose Has Its Thorn",
"Brown Eyed Girl" is a really good one to work on
for using the stuck 3&4 changes.
You got "Wonderwall".
You probably wanna go for a simplified version of "Wonderwall".
Don't be trying to do all of the fancy strumming if you're a beginner.
I think that'll be a little bit too hard.
"Free Fallin" by Tom Petty is a nice one.
It's not strictly the stuck 3/4
but it's using the G chord from it and the Asus4. So that's a nice one.
"Shallow" the Lady Gaga thing. Beautiful song.
Definitely don't dis-- "Oh, Lady Gaga."
It's a beautiful song. She's a super talent, like, so massive respect for her,
that's a beautiful song as well.
"Patience" by Guns N' Roses, another one that you might want to consider there
a load, again I will have talked about this in the song lesson.
So pick some songs from that and have a bit of a go.
but I also recommend that you spend five minutes
working on repertoire revision.
So songs that you've been playing for a little while
that you want to keep a hand in.
You don't want to just jump on these new things,
and then forget all of the stuff that you've been working on before,
so, five minutes practice, just pick either one song
and work on that or maybe two songs,
maybe a little bit of a pick around a few, doesn't really matter,
as long as you're revising the songs that you've been working on before.
Now that's a full 30 minutes practice now, which is quite a lot.
And if you struggle with that,
you might need to break it into two 15 minute sections.
What you don't want to do is always avoid a particular thing.
So don't just leave off the song practice all the time and do the rest,
if you're running out of time. Try and balance it
so you're practicing all of that stuff consistently
but if you need to break it up
over a couple of practice sessions, that's fine.
I think 30 minutes should be achievable for most of you.
I mean, you know, 15 minutes of it is fun song practice
so, I'm hoping you're enjoying it,
'cause it's really important that you enjoy this stuff.
I'm hoping that practicing the other stuff is--
even if it feels a little bit boring
"I'll do this chord changes or scales" that you understand
why it's going to help you enjoy the song so much more.
That should be the thing that is like,
"Oh yeah, this scale's a little bit boring,
but I know it's really gonna help me practice "Wish You Were Here"
so it's kind of worth it."
So try and make sure you understand
why it is that you're practicing different things.
Now, the big question that everyone wants to know:
"How do I know when I'm ready to move on?"
Now...
the stuck 3/4 chords, you just have to have explored them.
Memorized them, of course, and explored them.
You don't, you know, depends on what it is that you wanna play.
you should be able to play them now.
You're not a complete beginner so you should be able to play those chords,
and have memorized them. That would be the thing there.
But there's no specific like
one minute changesey kind of thing going on
with any of the chords at this point, okay?
There's no one minute changes limit, even from the G to the D.
It's all just about songs so...
you wanna be working on things
until you can play the songs reasonably well.
Again, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be reasonable.
So, let that guide you.
I would recommend with the strumming that you can do it consistently along
at 80 beats per minute with the metronome.
That's where I would get you through, without the chord changes.
So just being able to do it on one chord with the metronome at 80 beats a minute
and get the accent happening on beat 2 and 4,
and be confident that you're feeling it okay.
That it doesn't feel like stiff and clunky.
If it's feeling stiff and not like, it's not working
you wanna do a little bit more practice
and really working on trying to keep it nice and relaxed.
That's gonna be the key thing there.
The riff, there's no set thing, just practice the riff, have some fun with it.
It gets to where it gets to.
Open string study.
I want you to know the names of the notes in the open position.
So practice it for as long as you need to
to be able to figure out or learn or know straightaway,
depending on where you're at.
Know the notes in the open position. That's really, really important.
The song work, again, you want to have played some of the songs
and got a couple of them up
to being able to play and play along with the app,
if you're using the app, or just be able to play them
and have some fun with them.
That's, you know, the song part is just about having some fun with it.
Really, that's it.
but I want you to pick at least one song using those new chords,
and have done a little bit of work on it.
There's this underlying thing here of them,
the development of this muscle.
In the next lesson, we're gonna have a go at playing the F chord.
which is a physically difficult, demanding chord.
So, the more work that you can do
and the longer you spend on these exercises practicing these chords
where you have to do a bit of pressing at the back,
the stronger that muscle will be,
and the more chance you've got of battling through your F chord.
'Cause it's, you know, it is a physically challenging chord, that one,
and we're gonna be working on it for quite a few lessons, not just one,
so it's not like I'm going to be expect you to nail your F chord down next lesson,
that's where we're going with this.
So you want to be making sure that that muscle gets a bit strong.
So when you put, you know, when you're practicing your songs,
sometimes you might be like, "Oh man, this is getting really hard."
See if you can push through a little bit longer
when it's starting to hurt a little bit.
Just like you would if you're trying to do strength development
or weights or whatever. you go through that bit where it's,
"Oh man, this is really hard. I'm going to keep trying."
but then stop. Don't, you know, don't hurt yourself.
Pain is bad so if you're hurting, stop.
There's no question. If it hurts stop straightaway.
But you want it to be kind of, you know, pushing it a little bit,
trying to get it so it's a little bit sore
and that you know that you're developing your strength there,
in between the thumb and the 1st finger for your grip,
which you're going to require for later on.
So look, good luck!
I hope you enjoyed this week's or this lessons practice.
it should be probably more than a week.
For most people, this is gonna be a couple of weeks,
maybe even three weeks but at least a couple of weeks practicing this stuff,
and I'll see you for plenty more very soon.
If you're feeling like, "Oh man, this is too difficult,"
go and check out the Nitsuj lessons,
because he really struggled with this stuff too,
and hopefully you'll find that a little bit reassuring.
See you for more very soon.
You take care of yourself. Bye-bye.