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This 12 weeks has been an amazing process and it has also proven to me that when I put my mind to things I can do them. My goal for the 12 week project was to learn the basics of playing guitar and I believe I have accomplished that. I am now going to work on completing my final presentation for this project. It will most likely include audio samples from which I have recorded of my progress. I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog for the past 12 weeks, and I hope that you believe I have accomplished my goal as well.
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So we are very close to the end of the project. This week I got a little more practice in and I got more confident with my playing. Guitar is a very fun hobby to have because you can create a sound yourself and mimick the sound of other people's playing. My dad gave me some strumming tips this week to help my sound be more crisp and clean. I am grateful for my dad for helping me throughout this process. YouTube has also been a great asset because it is very easy to look up a quick video and get the basics of a new technique down. I am having a lot of fun with this project and I am planning on continuing playing after the project.We are getting closer to the end of the twelve weeks. I am still trying to progress my skill in playing songs on guitar. I have been listening to to Darius Rucker quite a bit lately. I have always liked his music and his voice. I really enjoy the way that he plays guitar as well. Artists like Darius Rucker are a great example to look at for people who are trying to learn how to play. His music is not very complex, but it sounds good. I like to listen to music like his and picture myself being able to play as well as these artists. I have found that to be an easy motivator for me. I hope to keep on progressing these last weeks, and work on my final presentation.
This week has been an interesting one because my schedule has been pretty strange. I am trying to get used to not having football after school. I did get some practice in this week despite the confusion. My sister is beginning to try to learn guitar as well, which I think is pretty cool. If my sister learns how to play that would make four in the family that can "play " guitar. I am currently using my moms guitar to play, even though she does not play. I want to get my own guitar but I do not know when I would get it. I may ask for it for Christmas.This week I did not get to practice as much as I would like to have because it was our first week of playoffs for football. During my free time after practice I was having to watch a lot more film than usual because of the big game. We ended up losing 49-27 to Porter Ridge. This was a painful loss because of the fact that it was in the playoffs, which means we are now done with this year's season. The seniors of this year are done with their Davie High football careers as well. It also was a tough loss because Porter Ridge High School is close to two hours away, and we did not get back home till one o'clock. Now that football is over though that should provide me with more time to practice and get better at guitar, because we are not having practice every day after school; however, I am also starting at Torque probably next week which means that I am going to have to try again to balance school work with athletics. I think it will be easier to do that though because it is not as time consuming as football is. I am hoping that these new schedules will be easy to transfer between so I can still get some adequate work in for this project and projects for other classes.So last week as a class we hit the half way point in our Genius Hour twelve week project. I feel like my progression in playing the guitar has reflected the amount of time on the project. I have watched many videos on youtube of people learning the guitar and they all seem to be around the level that I am at after a month and a half of practice. I learned some new chords and practiced some old ones this week. My favorite song to play is Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, because it is a very easy song to learn and my grandma taught me how to play it on the first day of my project. That is one of the handfull of songs that I have been practicing since the beginning and they are all beginning to sound somewhat decent. I am happy with my progress thus far and I am hoping to keep it going and finish out the second half strong.This week I feel that I made pretty decent progress. I found it easier to play and practice when I am by myself so I have started to play the guitar outside because I find it extremely easy to practice there. It is nice to not have someone listening to you and to be able to critique yourself. Lately though the weather has been getting colder so I do not know how long this outdoor practicing is going to last. Again this week I am able to play some more songs. Guitar is a complicated instrument and it is proving more difficult than I assumed it would but I am going to keep working to try my best to continue getting better each week. Although I am able to play some more songs I kind of feel like I am at a standstill in skill progression. I do not think it is a fault on my part, but I think its just how learning guitar works. It is an extremely tedious process and as frustrating as it is I am going to keep the motivation at the same level and hopefully it will eventually turn around.
A lot of the same stuff this week. I personally am getting kind of irritated at the fact that progression has slowed down, but I am pretty sure that that is normal for anyone who is learning to play guitar for the first time. I am still picking up new songs which is always fun. I have learned that I play much better with a pick to strum the strings. I think this is because of the fact that I am not very experienced and I am still having some slight struggle with having to look at the guitar while I play. Like I said the amount of songs that I am able to play is increasing each week. I still feel like I am also able to transition more smoothly each week as well. This blog is titled Re-Run because of the fact that learning guitar is not always a steady progression and sometimes you hit a road block that takes a while to get past. It is a very fun but tedious process, and I am hoping good results come from this.
I am becoming more and more with my progress each week. I am able to play more songs now and I am becoming more fluid in my finger placement and my chord transitions. I am beginning to create a couple pieces of my own (just instrumentals) and I am finding this a very fun and relaxing thing to do. Guitar is a very cool instrument and I have so much respect for the way some people can play. I am hoping to continue to progress at this rate and get better as time goes on. A couple constraints have been time, and frustration. This is because I have football practice every day after school and also guitar is an extremely frustrating instrument to learn.This week there wasn't a whole lot of anything new. I basically just started to try and learn a few more simple songs with a couple new chords as well. Repetition has been a key point in my progress. Creating muscle memory in my hands is very important so I can play and transition the chords more smoothly. This is a lot easier said then done. I still am catching myself misplaying the chords that I learned at the very beginning. Switching gears a little bit here, I found some new ways to play a few chords. Instead of the normal ways of playing them this way allows me to have one finger (my ring finger) as a pivot finger, meaning it does not lift up very much. I am able to play the G, C, E add 7, D, and C add 7 using this technique. I learned it off of you tube and I like it better because it makes it easier to learn how to play chords for a beginner like me while using minimal movement. |
AuthorMy name is Hunter Meacham. I am a sophomore at DCHS. I play varsity football and JV baseball. |