Hey all,
My name’s Jonathan, took up trying to learn guitar on my own (via Rocksmith) at about 30 years old. Queue up marriage, kids and so on and so forth, I got back to it seriously with my Dad 3 years ago or so. Since his passing, I decided enough screwing around, and started taking lessons with Lenny Breau (son of Chet Breau, I’m sure many of you know that name!) who wouldn’t you know it, lives in Winnipeg MB Canada. My official lessons started almost exactly 1 year ago. Unfortunately due to the GLOBAL PLAGUE, I’ve stopped lessons for the time being and figured now was as good a time as any to take some video and throw it onto the web for some further critique.
I love almost all varieties of music, classic rock, metal, blues, bluegrass, country even Jazz! although I still don’t feel I can do much justice to anything other than campfire strumming.
I’d not spent a lot of time on specific technique based playing until I started with my lessons. Most of Chet’s instruction is based around improving my hand position, posture and general tips to help alleviate trouble spots etc. I got introduced to Cracking the Code through Ben Eller’s youtube page because it’s 2020 and everyone knows everyone else on the internet now apparently.
I poked through the forums and registered so I’d have an idea of what’s going on before I jumped in and started whinging about my own playing! ; ) so I’m working my way through Intro to Picking Motion. I’ve watched the full Cracking the Code web series (amazing) which is what gave me the bug to try and push for speed in the first place.
I can comfortably play 5 Major and Minor scale shapes as well as 5 major and minor blues pentatonic shapes all over the guitar neck starting from the low E and A strings in the 5 positions I was taught by Chet at anywhere between 100bpm and 120bpm 16th notes.
I find myself getting hung up with either my fretting hand not fretting in the correct order, or skipping notes because I think I’m rushing on some days, or my picking is just not consistent enough and either misses required notes or hits multiple strings… or or or… it’s just not good enough beyond 100bpm 1/16ths. Wildly inconsistent.
Anyway, going to throw some video out there once it finishes Youtube-ing so looking forward to hearing some feedback. Cheers.
Jonathan
