Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
In this lesson, we're gonna talk about what things I'd recommend
that you practice for Lesson 3.
It's a 20 minute routine again, so it's not too bad.
Not much of this is really difficult. It should be kind of fun,
hopefully the finger pain is starting to lessen a bit by this point.
You wanna really start enjoying it.
Some of the strumming stuff, you may find a bit challenging,
but we'll talk a bit more about that as we go.
So, first thing that you've got is 2 minutes on your Chord Perfect Practice.
1 minute on the A minor chord and 1 minute on the E minor chord.
Now I know in previous sessions, we've done a bit more practice on new chords,
but both those chords are fairly simple.
A minor, very simple to E minor, but a bit further down.
In some ways that makes it a little easier.
And the E minor chord's like an E, with a finger lifted off.
So I'm not anticipating you having too many problems with those,
but still, do a little bit of work on the Chord Perfect Practice,
to make sure the chords are sounding really nice,
and none of the strings are getting muted that shouldn't be.
Then we've got 3 sets of 1 minute changes.
The first one, A minor to E...
is all about shifting that whole chord shape up.
So getting your A minor chord, and then lifting the whole hand up
and plumping it down onto the E chord,
then lifting it up and moving it all back down to the A minor,
and getting used to trying to move your fingers as a group.
I found when I was practicing, that my 2nd and 3rd fingers
were happy to travel together,
but my 1st finger was always, didn't wanna kind of join them.
That's one of the things that you'll find yourself working on a bit.
Then we've got E minor to D,
which is our first all-change where there's no anchors or anything,
so all the fingers got to come up and go down
at different parts of the guitar neck.
That might feel a little bit tricky,
but, again, really good thing to be working on for your chord changes.
And then last, we've got A minor to E minor,
which are both of our new chords,
and there's a bunch of songs I've got there
listed on the side that you can use,
that you can practice, that just use those 2 chords.
So, that's a really good one to have in there, as well.
I've included 1 minute of continued Anchor Finger practice.
So, it's kind of about doing the anchor finger,
but it's also about keeping you A, D and E chords in.
Okay? So just working on those jumps,
like we've been doing previously, just for 1 minute,
to make sure you don't forget about those chords,
particularly if you're doing a lot of practice on your A minor to E minor.
That's the other reason why it's there.
Then we've got strumming practice for 2 minutes.
Now, really you wanna be working on that pattern:
1, 2, 3 and 4. Down, down, down, up, down.
But really, the key things that you're looking for here,
is trying to keep your arm nice and relaxed, while you're doing it,
trying to avoid letting it get very tense.
Working on holding the pick, cos many of you will find,
that the pick's moving around a bit,
particularly if you're using a pick that's too thick.
If you're having that problem
of the pick falling out of your fingers, or getting tangled up,
then you definitely wanna be looking at the thinner pick.
And just really trying to work on a nice even motion there,
with your arm, so it all feels nice and relaxed,
not too tensed in your shoulder or your forearm.
Just really going for a nice, relaxed movement.
We've got 2 minutes of that strumming practice,
cos it really is a pretty big deal
getting your strumming working real well.
Then we've got 2 minutes practice on "Seven Nation Army".
Now, there's no kind of, "you have to be able to play the riff."
Moving up and down the fretboard, playing on the 5th string,
trying to mute the thicker string.
There's quite a lot of stuff going on there.
There's a lot of things that you learn,
that you probably won't even realize you're learning, by having a go.
Okay? So this is just for fun. There's no...
you don't have to be able to play the riff perfectly, before you move on.
It's just have a bit of a go.
It's a fun riff, it's very recognizable, lots of people like playing it on guitar,
so have some fun with that. We got 2 minutes on that.
And then we've got 10 minutes practicing the songs.
Now, it really is different for different people.
I like having a bit of variety of different tunes,
that I'm practicing on within my 10 minutes.
Some people prefer to work on the one song,
over and over again for 10 minutes, for a whole week,
and just really focus on the one tune.
Other people like to do loads of different tunes,
and really keep the variety strong.
Do whatever it is that you feel is best for you.
What do you enjoy the most? That's what you should be doing.
Don't be worrying about necessarily doing what I say.
We have got 3 stellar songs, that you can use for the A minor to E minor chord,
which is "Sing" by Ed Sheeran, "Moves Like Jagger" Maroon 5,
and "I Belong To You" by Lenny Kravitz.
All of those songs are fantastic ones,
for working on your A minor to E minor chord changes.
So, when to move on?
That is the million dollar question, usually for beginners.
So, you need to have memorized your A minor and E minor chords,
as well as, all of the other chords that we've looked at so far.
Be really good if you can get the chord changes between any of those chords,
around 30 changes a minute, in your 1 minute changes.
If you get above that, great, but 30, maybe late 20s.
It's important that you don't get bored.
So, if you're at 25 for a little bit,
and you're struggling, but you wanna move on,
then it's okay to move on.
I always feel like it's better to stay somewhere for a bit,
and get confident, rather than rushing ahead.
So, if you're feeling like, you could do more work on it,
then stay on it for a bit. Work a little bit more on the songs,
cos everyone wants to play songs, anyway.
You should wanna play songs. That's the point.
So, don't feel hurried. Just go,
"Well, I'll spend another week here and learn a couple of new songs."
That would be a kind of a really good approach to do it that way.
You wanna have a go at doing "Seven Nation Army"
but you don't have to have perfected it. That's not the deal.
It would be good to have learned at least one song,
that's using both the new chords: the A minor and E minor chord,
but there's not more...
you don't have to have achieved a particular speed on a song,
but have a go at playing them.
I think it's a really good idea to be using my Beginner Song Course app,
because you're working on playing in time,
and lots of other skills, important skills there.
But do have a go to remember playing it on your own.
cos that's a good revealer.
It might show you some things that get hidden
when you're playing along with the app.
Good luck with your practice. Hope it goes really well,
and you're enjoying using my Practice Assistant.
Let me know in the comments if you've got any problems.
I'll do my best to help you out.
See you soon, bye-bye.