Holiday Specials Coming Up!

Hello, hello, hello, hello. It is three o' clock on the dot here and, you know, I like to. I like to go live right on time. So welcome, welcome. I'm in a slightly different room today because we were doing some construction work upstairs. So they're banging around above my office. So I figured I would pop on in here today. So welcome everyone. Give me a one in the chat to make sure you can hear me. I see my microphone lighting up down there. Let's see if I can maybe pull up the volume just a little bit here. There we go. I think that's a little bit better. So fantastic. Thank you for popping on live with me here today. Hey there. I can hear you just fine. Awesome. Julie plays guitar. And Jeff, thank you guys so much for letting me know that you can hear me. And yes, it is that wonderful time of year. We're getting into November and I wanted to let everyone here on YouTube know because I not know. Not everyone pops on over to my website and not everyone is on my mailing list. Um, and if you're not and you would like to get on the mailing list, go grab the free crash course. Okay. It's Lauren bateman.com forward/crash course. I think I pinned the link over in the chat over there, so. But Lauren bateman.com forward/crash course. This way you get on the mailing list, know when we release new videos here and you can get the emails about the special deals and stuff that we sometimes have going on. And this is kind of the one time a year that I do this stuff. So. Hello, Dublin, Ireland. Hi, Jerry. And be going to Ireland next year. Can't wait. I've never been to Ireland and I'm really excited about it. So we do have some specials going on over on the website. So. Laurenbatement.com forward/sales. I have some sales going on on my secondary courses. We will have a special offer coming out on the seven level, but it's only for the email list, so you got to get on the email list. So like I said, go grab the free crash course. Get on the mailing list. But if you're not an absolute beginner and you're someone who's like, Lauren, I know my open chords and, you know, I'm playing some songs, but I feel like. Feel like my strumming needs some help. My timing needs some help, you might want to go and buy the strumming course while it's on sale. If you're someone that's into blues guitar or league guitar, go Grab those courses. Okay. Because we're, we're doing a little bit of a sale for, for November for Black Friday. So you essentially will have one more week to grab these things. You can hear me? Perfect. North Carolina's in the house. Spain. Hello. Hello. Hi. Missy Brenton. Nice to see you. And I've also got, if you've noticed, I've got their shiny guitar here. This is a parlor size guitar. This is a prs. I was going to do a video with this guitar because, you know, I have most of my guitars that I play with are, you know, the tailor and the crafter, the ones you see in most of my videos. Those are grand auditorium style guitars. So they're bigger guitars, they have a bigger sound, but they're not as big as dreadnoughts. Because for me, you know, I'm just under five five, almost five' five. I tell people I'm five' five. For me, sometimes those dreadnoughts are just really, really big for me. And I have a lot of students who really, really like these parlor size guitars. You can see it's like a little, little tiny guitar. The plus side is that it's a little bit smaller. Okay. In terms of the depth of the guitar and in the body itself because I know for a lot of people sometimes they get like the more of that country style. So you can see how this, the hip on this guitar sticks up well. On a bigger guitar, that hip is really going to stick up and you get some people and they're playing like this. Especially if you're smaller like me and you feel like your shoulders all the way up here, you might want to try a parlor size guitar because they're just a little bit more, a little bit more comfortable. This is a full size guitar. I don't know what this is. This is a tone air. It's a PRS tone air. Nice little sounding guitar. Figured I'd use that one today because you guys haven't seen it yet. But yes, a very, very nice guitar. If you're someone like me who's a little bit smaller, parlor size guitars are great. I see Virginia beach is in the house as well as Georgia, Texas, Dayton, Ohio. Awesome, Donald. Thank you so much. Glad that you can hear. So it's getting to be that crazy time of year where we have the holidays. Christmas is coming up, Hanukkah is coming up, lots of stuff. New Year's is coming up and we tend to get busy and when we get busy, we sometimes don't have as much time as we Used to. To practice. So what I wanna talk about with you today is making sure that even though when things get busy, if you can put five minutes aside, just five minutes, two to practice, it really helps. And when you're practicing, just focus on one thing at a time. Okay? So if you're someone. Let me grab a pick here because I got all my picks and stuff. If you're someone that's working on something like a spider exercise, you know.

Okay. And you're working on trying to get this to sound better. Okay. Maybe your fingers are doing a little bit of this. Okay. I was talking with one of my students live on a Q and A the other day, and his fingers were doing this. And I said, go nice and slow. Try and get those fingers to relax because we don't want them to peel away from the guitar. So you might do this for five minutes and that might be your practice. And I know that's not. You're like, lauren, that's not fun, though. No. But then your next practice, you can spend five minutes playing a song and strumming and having.

You know, and then you can start practicing having fun. So I would alternate between very short periods because if you really sat down with a timer for five minutes, we've already been. Believe it or not, I've been live for six minutes already. Okay. So if you sit down with a timer for five minutes, you can actually get a lot done. And in these busy times a year when everything's coming up and I have a lot of stuff going on right now, so even for me, it's very, very hard for me to find time to sit down and practice and do the things I'm supposed to be doing. So if you can break it up into 5 or 10 minute increments, it makes it more manageable that you can fit something in. So for me, a hard thing is really like exercise and fitness. And sometimes I'll be like, I'm just going to go take the dog for a walk around the block. All right, it might be five or 10 minutes. But, hey, I got up, I got outside, I did something, as opposed to, oh, I don't have time to do that. You know, you make time for the things that are important. So even for me, I have to say, oh, yeah. I mean, I got so much work to do. I could do all that work, or I could just get up for 5, 10 minutes, take the dog for a walk, and then come back and get back to work. Like, the work's gonna be there for me when I get Back. It always is if you own your own business. You know that.

Lex says that the F chord is killing me. And Oscar says beginner. Been playing a couple weeks. Welcome. Love my UK students. So let's talk about that F chord. Okay. Ooh, my lighting just got like really light there for a second. So if you are a beginner, let me talk about bar chords in general. Okay. Lauren's the coolest. Thank you, Robin. Love that F chord. Okay. There are a couple easier versions. If you are an absolute beginner, I do not recommend getting right into bar chords because there's one, a comfort thing to it. Two, there's a strength component. All right. And three, they're just hard and frustrating. Okay. Because if you don't have the strength and you don't quite have the callus on your first finger, you will get a callus on your first finger. If you play enough bar chords, it's just going to be frustrating and it's going to make you want to throw the guitar on the ground, put it back in the closet. Okay. It's not fun. So I show students an easier version of the F chord to start with. And then I will talk about bar chords since people always ask about that. And it. That's one of the courses that's on sale. So if you're someone who is interested in building your power and your bar chords, the bar chord mastery course is one of the courses that's on sale. Laurenbatement.com forward/sales. Okay. Laurenbatement.com forward slash sales. Go pick that up if you want to learn more about bar chords. But this is the F major seven. Okay. Now there's a three fingered version that looks like this. So it looks like a C chord. And then you move the top two fingers down. Okay. It sounds like this. Or you can add the pinky. There's a four finger version. Okay. So that is F major seven. Okay. It works. It works for a lot of songs. It's a great substitute because the hard thing about the F bar chord is right here is this nut. This is where the tension on the string is the highest. So it's the hardest place to press down. And barring for a lot of students, usually what happens is they can kind of get the top strings. Okay. It's usually these bottom two strings that are doing this.

Okay. You get that on the bottom. And one of the biggest and most common mistakes if you are trying to learn bar chords is a lot of people see how my knuckle bends. This knuckle ends up over The B and E string. So right here, my pick is. That's where the strings are. And, you know, when you have. Oh, thank you so much, William. Awesome. Yes. I will talk about an amp. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Let me finish this, and then we'll talk about acoustic amps. You can see that knuckle, how it's indented. That's not a good way to press a string. You need a flat line. So I tend to play on the side of my finger where it's a little bit bonier, but also it's a. I mean, I don't have the best knuckles. I've jammed all my fingers from basketball, so I do kind of have blocky knuckles, but I have a little bit. It's bonier, for sure, so it's definitely has a lot more stability to it. But also, notice my first finger. I play with it much higher up, particularly for the F chord, because it gets that. That knuckle more in the middle instead of being. Because a lot of people do this around the bottom, and you just can't. You can't press hard enough with that knuckle there. So that's usually what I find. I would probably say 80% of the time that's an issue for students with bar chords. So something to think about there. Good evening from Switzerland. Another place that I would love to go do. Not on my travel plans just yet. Like Ireland. Ireland is 100% happening, but I would love to go to Switzerland. William. So you asked about acoustic amps that I recommend. My favorite, and I wish I were in my official teaching room, is the. The loud box. The Fishman loud box. That's what I've always used, even when I was performing in small venues. And the reason I like them is they have an input for a guitar. They also have an input for a microphone. So if you wanted to sing and play guitar, I think they sound wonderful with acoustic guitars. The main thing on an acoustic amp that you want to look for is does it have a little bit of chorus and reverb? Okay, sometimes they won't have reverb, but chorus is a very, very common effect that you will find on an acoustic guitar amp. So even if you don't get the Fishman Loud boxes, I have the Mini, so. So I have the smaller version, but they do have bigger ones. And trust me, the Mini is. Is quite loud enough. Trust me. But you want to. That chorus adds a little bit of a shimmer. It just makes the guitar sound so much better. And then if you can add a little bit of reverb too. It, it just makes the guitar have a fuller sound. So those are what I prefer to use the Fishman loud box. I don't have an affiliation with them. They're not paying me to say that. That's just what I use.

And then, you know, there's the offender. Acoustic sonics as well. I have one of those which also work really well. But I do, I feel you get a better sound out of the LOD box than the acoustasonic. And again, you know, for acoustic amps, you keep it simple. A lot of acoustics you will play through a PA system. So when I was playing live, I'd always play through a PA system. I never played through an amp. But at home here or if I was playing in like a small gig, like a bar or a tavern, I would use the Fishman loud box because it was great, it sounded amazing, had a good punch to it. And I was able to plug in a guitar and a vocal. So definitely go check those out. Really, really, really great amps. That's my number one recommendation. Going to purchase an amp, guitar and whatever else I need. So many different recommendations. Yes, Ed, there are. You know, I was talking about this guitar here earlier. This is a PRS tonair and it's a parlor size guitar which for people who are shorter in stature. Myself, I'm only five' five. These, these smaller size guitars sometimes are more comfortable to hold. And you know, acoustic versus electric. I think my camera keeps adjusting for the light in this room because I keep going from light to dark, light to dark. I don't know how to turn that off, but I guess we're stuck with it for now. It'll brighten up again.

There's so many. Do I go acoustic? Do I go electric? The acoustic is going to be harder to play just because the strings are a little bit thicker, so they're harder to press. But you don't need an amp for an acoustic. So that's the plus side. Now on the electric side, it's going to be easier to play because the strings are a little bit thinner. Okay. But you also, there's other trade offs because you have to work, especially if you're plugged into an amp, you're going to amplify your mistakes too. So the acoustic guitar is a little more forgiving in terms of hiding some of those minor mistakes, but it's slightly harder to play. And on the flip side, you have an electric guitar which is much easier to play, but it will also Amplify some of those, some of those mistakes and imperfections in your playing. Which is why I always recommend having one electric have one acoustic. Because a lot of times you can play something on an acoustic guitar and then take it over to the electric and then it's easier. So going back to bar chords real quick, if you practiced an F bar chord and it was maybe not sounding the greatest on an acoustic, if you practice on the acoustic first, then you go pick up your electric, it will probably sound a lot better. I have students, when they're learning barre chords, I'll tend to sometimes start them on an electric if they have one, just because it's easier to play. And then as you build up the strength, then you go and you, then you go and you put it on the acoustic guitar. You could also put lighter strings on the guitar too. But also understand if you do that, you're going to get a smaller sound, just like with this guitar. So this is a smaller bodied guitar. It's going to have a smaller sound. Okay. If you get a big dreadnot, you're going to get a big booming, beautiful sound. The thick, thicker the strings, the better sound you will get out of your guitar. But they're harder to play. And that's life. Life is about trade offs. So you have to determine which trade offs you're willing to accept. Okay. Good evening from South Africa and Norway. Good evening. Hello. The seven level is great for all these things. Fred, thank you so much. I appreciate you saying that. And if you haven't picked up the seven level yet, definitely go grab my free Crash course because we're doing, we are going to be doing a special Black Friday deal for you on that. So go to Lauren bateman.com forward/crash course. Go sign up for the free Crash Course if you haven't yet. It's absolutely free and kind of gives you a good foundation to get started with playing songs. The goal is to teach you to play songs in 14 days. That's the Crash Course. So there you go. Hello from Iowa. Bought my new guitar two weeks ago and enjoying the lessons. Amazing. I love that. Yeah. If you haven't signed up for the Crash course, go get that right now. Laurenbittman.com Crash course. Turn the lamp behind you to see if that helps. I think it's going to be what's in front of me, but I'll do it. I won't say no.

I won't say no to it. Oh, look at that. That really. There's something on my laptop camera that I Think is adjusting for the light. I'll have to look at my settings at some point. Some point. But we'll try it. We'll see. Hopefully that helps. My electric G string is forever going out of tune. Yes. That it. It's all. Even on acoustics. It's. It. That G string is just not. It's a jerk. I love the meme. It's like it's. It's a Leonardo DiCaprio and it's like him smiling and then. And then it gets to the G string and it's him, like doing some weird face like that. So that's always funny. Yes, it's always. I think it's because of the diameter of that string, it's easier to slip. Interesting things you learn about guitar. I cut my middle finger on my fretting hand. I just started playing and it was sore and just now getting healed. Yes, definitely let it heal. Especially if it's your fretting hand. It's going to hurt. I had to play a gig one time. I cut. I still have a scar. So back in the day, if you don't know my history, I used to work for pharmaceutical company and I did something called histology. Now, for those of you who don't know what that is, because I didn't know what it was until I took the job. I used to make slides for pathologists, for doctors to read and, you know, I worked in cancer research. And to cut these slides, there's a. There's a machine and has a very, very sharp razor blade. Okay. Because we're cutting wax blocks. And I forget what it was. Like one thousandth of a millimeter thick. Like you're cutting one cell thickness. Okay. That's how thin we're cutting these things. And you know, to get it to work, you're supposed to. You have to feather the wax. Well, I stuck my finger in too much and. And when you get in a rhythm, you're just going with the machine. And I cut the tip of my finger off.

It was in a. You know, it's so sharp, it cuts right through. And I had a gig in like two or three days from there. So I threw a band aid on. It was my middle finger. I think it. I'd have to look at the scar. Yeah, it's my middle finger. And I had to play with the band aid on. I took a lot of ibuprofen and I made it work. It was not fun. Fortunately, it was the side of the finger, not the top of the finger. I think that would have Been almost impossible for me to play a gig, but I did. So, yes, those injuries happen. Please heal yourself as much as possible and then get back to it. I'm a cytotechnologist. Worked with Hypnotex. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. It's so funny because most people don't know what histology was. And like I said when they offered me the job, this is me fresh out of college. I was working construction at the time. I was working as a union laborer at Harvard University out in the freezing cold of Boston. And I was just ready to take what. Whoever would give me a job. And I got a call back from a company, and they said, we have this job. This is what you do. I'm like, that sounds great. I'll take it. So I went in for the interview, and I got the job, and that's how I learned about histology. So, William. Yeah. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in my office. So we are doing a little construction upstairs. So they were banging around in my office, and I figured it'd be much quieter to do the session here. And you can see we have our coat of arms in the back. So this one. Let's see. So that's. That's my mother's maiden name. So that's the Italian coat of arms, and that's Megan's maiden name over there. So the English side over there. But yeah. So that's not the Bateman coat of arms. That's the. The Mazzio or Matseo, because my family's from Italy. That's the coat of arms that we have here. We got those in England, actually. I believe so. Yeah. Good time. So you're getting to see a little bit of a different room. This is the dining room of the house. This is the older section of the house. If you tip up my. So you can see. If you look at the doorway, those of you who live in the UK this is nothing new, but you can see above the doorway there how little space there is. I think these ceilings are just under 8ft. But this house, very, very old house. Well, old for the United States. For those of you in the uk I know it's not old for you, but in the United States, this house was built in the 1830s, which is old for the United States, but no Ninja Turtles in. In this room. So there you go. Tommy Lamy lost some fingertips on his fret hand. Didn't seem to stop him. Yeah, and I have lots of students, especially, you know, I work with a lot of older students. You know, I See, Jackie's here. I'm over 50, just picking it up. Loving the guitar. Thank you. Thank you for watching Jackie. You know, I get a lot of students who, you know, have injuries. I mean, I dislocated my finger. You can see it's kind of wide, wonky, fortunate. It's my finger picking hand. But I have students who are missing fingers or, you know, and I'll recommend depending because some people are like, they don't mind switching if they're a righty. And I'm like. And you have all your fingers on your right hand, like, just switch and play as a lefty because then you'll have all your fretting fingers. And some students, they really don't want to. And I'm like, that's totally fine, you know. And if you're missing a middle finger, you can't play your C chord like this. You might have to play your C chord like this, you know, because you don't have a middle finger. But I can still, I can still play a C chord. It's just you're going to have to train your muscle memory to use your pinky more. So there's options. That's the great thing about guitar. Everyone talks about Django Reinhardt because he had, he had a fused from a fire. His third and fourth fingers were fused. So he came up with these kind. What we. What a lot of people call the cowboy cords.

So you can do a lot with two fused fingers. And he did a lot. And he had, like I said, his third and fourth fingers were fused and he did wonderful things. C. Add nine whenever possible. Yes. So these, these, these fun chords here that you see, I. Those are my stuck like glue cords. So if you ever looking for a lesson on those, just search Lauren Bateman. Stuck Like Glue. Glue I called them. And it's funny because there was a song that came out eventually that was called Stuck Like Glue. And I can't remember who sings that song. Some country group and I did it in a band with women all in their 50s. It was fun. So we had so much fun with that. But I can't remember who sings that. How has Olive adapted to the new house? She hasn't yet. She's only been up there a couple times. But that house is about the same age. But yeah, it's funny because the windows are like this far off the ground, so she can just sit in the window and look right out. She doesn't have to be on any furniture here. At least the windows are an appropriate height. But at the other house, the windows, they're. They're quite large, but they're about like 6 to 8 inches off the floor. So fortunately, Olive will. Will make sure we don't open the bottom window. So Olive doesn't jump out on them, but she likes watching them. But she hasn't had much time there yet. Stuck on you. I don't. I'm gonna look stuck. Was it stuck on you? But I think I thought it was, like, stuck. Like Sugarland. That's the band Sugar Land. And of course, they use a lot of the cowboy. A lot of those cowboy cords. Very, very Sugar Land. Was. I always forget the name. Yes. Sarah, thank you so much. Awesome. Yeah, that was. That was the band Sugar Lamb. So again, you know, just getting into the. The holiday season and reminding you that, you know, it just takes a little time to practice and hop on things. And if you don't have the crash course yet, go grab it. Laurenbateman.com forward slash, crash course. It's. It's nine lessons. It's in order. And it gives you a little bit more of a sense of what it's like to take a course with me because YouTube's a lot of fun. Okay. I have a lot of information here on YouTube. I've been doing this, gosh, almost seven years now. Can you believe that? Seven lucky years. Amazing. It'll be eight years, I think, in March. But, you know, I get a lot of great materials here on YouTube. But the biggest thing I find, my students message me. Students who've bought the seven level is they're like, I really just wanted the structure. I was really looking for the structure because I'd watch a video on YouTube and they would say it was for beginners. And they're like, I couldn't follow along with it. It was too complicated. Or 1. They didn't break it down enough. Because I get that from a lot of students. They're like, I like the way that you break things down and just really make it easy and do it in steps even. Even for, like the two finger chords. Because most teachers, when you take. They're going to start here, okay. And I don't want to throw guitar teachers under the bus, but there's a certain teacher, actually there's quite a few of them, who put the. I'm moving my microphone in the wrong direction. Who put an F bar chord in a beginner course. This is. This does not belong in a beginner course. It's. It's. I would consider that more intermediate when you're starting to get into bar chords. So for me, my goal is to help beginners have fun, fun with the guitar, okay? So we don't focus a lot on the theory, okay? I just talk in a regular speech to you. You're gonna understand what I'm saying. We're not going to talk about thirds and fifths and roots and flats and a 59 sharp four, divide by three times two. Which is what I tell my guitar teachers who work at the music school because they know a lot more theory than I do. Theory is important. Don't. Don't throw me under a bus. I do believe theory is important, but when you're learning to play guitar, I don't think it's that important. I think what's important is that you start having fun with it and you start appreciating the instrument. Because if you have fun, you will want to practice more, okay? You will want to learn more songs. You will want to keep coming back to this. If it's not fun, you are not going to enjoy it. And you're going to take the guitar off, you're going to put it back in the closet, or you're going to throw it back down the basement and you're not going to use it. And that's not the goal. Everyone learns guitar to have fun, okay? You learn to guitar to have fun. So the goal should be to try to get you to have fun with it as fast as possible. It may not be perfect, you know, it may not sound exactly like the song, but the fact that you can play along to a song and say, oh my God, this sounds like Horse with no Name, or this sounds like Eleanor Rigby or this sounds like the Beatles, this sounds like Van Morrison or whatever you're playing. That's the fun part and that's what gets you excited. My teacher started me with a D chord. Is that a correct way? I. Yeah, it's one of the first four chords that I teach. I think it's one of the harder of the first chords. I don't think it's wrong. But the thing with the D chord that a lot of students have issues with is this third finger tends to hit the bottom string, which can be frustrating. Plus it's a three finger chord. It's so much harder to move three fingers. I usually graduate people. We'll start with like a dsus4. That's the name of the chord. I just call it the EZD chord. Okay, so we have E minor with a pivot into an easy C or an E minor with A pivot. I love using pivot points. Okay. A lot of, a lot of teachers will teach you E minor like this. But then it's hard. It's great if you're going to go to an A minor chord. But if you want to go into C chord, which is a very, very common chord change from an E minor, there's no pivot. So like if I do my E minor with my first and second guess what, I can leave this finger in place. If I'm using a two finger chord, I just have to move one finger. Or if I am using the full chord, it's two fingers instead of moving all three. Okay. So that's why I like to teach pivot points when as much as possible if it's. It's not always possible. But that's why my first chords usually are the G, E minor, C and D chords because you literally can play thousands of songs with those. Hey, Ken from Germany. Snowing over there. Oh my goodness, yes, Willie. The crash course is for absolute beginners. So I go over how to tune a guitar, how to hold a guitar, we talk about guitar picks. I'll show you your first chords, we'll learn our first songs. The goal is to get you to play, you know, a couple of real songs. I'm not talking Twinkle Twinkle or Mary had a little Lamb. I want you to play real songs within two weeks. So I've been practicing about 15 minutes a day. Awesome. Almost have Odajoy down. Oh, that's amazing. Fantastic. Very, very good. Love that Serbia is in the house. 60. Thanks for your channel. Yeah, put a one if you are over the age of 50, put a one in the chat right now. I want to show you that you are never ever too old to start learning guitar. I saw someone else said that they were in their 50s, 60s. There we go. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. B flat is the most difficult chord for me when start. Yeah, B flat is a very hard chord. I wouldn't teach that to a beginner. Look at all those ones coming in. I love it. My teacher started me with E minor, C and D and then intro to hammer ons off. Got really frustrated until I found the seven level course. Oh, thank you, Kelly. Yeah, you know those hammer ons and pull offs aren't easy. Aren't easy. And I. Oh, Pam Boons, she's also in the. In the seven level. That's a name I see all the time. So yes, there are people here who've taken the course and they've done it and like I said YouTube's a lot of fun. It's great. There's a lot of great instructors out here. But for some of you, you might have noticed, you'll watch one instructor and they'll tell you to do something one way and then you'll watch another instructor and they might tell you to do it a completely different way. Which, when you're learning something, can be very, very confusing. So whether it's me or whether it's another guitar teacher, my recommendation is to find one that works well for your learning style. Because we all have different teaching styles. And I'm the first to admit that I'm not going to be the greatest teacher for everyone. And that's okay. I want you to find the right teacher for you that works well. And that's why I offer the free crash course so that you can really see what it's like to go through a course with me and make sure it's going to be a good fit before you decide to go buy a course. So definitely. Lauren bateman.com forward/crash course Go check that out. You'll get on the mailing list. We do have some sales going on the seven level. Never goes on sale, just so you know. But we do have a special promotion going out to our email list. Okay. So it's kind of like one of our best offers of the year. So if you're interested, go grab the crash course, get on the mailing list because we're gonna be sending out emails starting next week letting you know what this is. So get on that so you can take advantage of it. And again, if you're not an absolute beginner, laurenbatement.com forward/sales we have a lot of sales going on on my kind of late beginner intermediate courses. Blues guitar 101, expressive rhythm and strumming lead guitar 101. If you want to get into playing lead guitar. If you bought the lead guitar 101 and the blues 101 course, those are awesome courses to really get into playing lead guitar. Electric stuff. What else do we have? Music Theory 101. If you're interested in music theory. Most of my students are. But just in case you are, I do have a music theory course. Finger picking 101, another super popular course. Definitely. If you want to do any of those courses, particularly, particularly the finger picking one, make sure you have the C, G and D chords, C, G, E minor, D chords down. Because that, that's the four chords I use the most for that finger picking course. So really, really great one. I Think that's all of them. Oh, the power and bar chord course. If you're someone who wants to do power and bar chords, Power and bar chord mastery is also on sale. Singing 101. I forgot I did a singing course this year. I have so many courses now. It's so much fun. But you can go to laurenbate.com forward/sales. It'll show you which ones. It's 30 off and you can go. You don't have to put in a code. It should automatically put the coupon code in. But I think it's like Black Friday is the coupon code. But if you go over to the website, you will see it. I. Let's just say one. But I play two hours every day. Good for you. Good for you. And one and a half years I can drop the one and make it two. Awesome. Ken. And oh, you've been playing since 14. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And I got lots of students who are in their 70s. I got students even in their 80s. You're never too old. One of my favorite quotes, if you've ever gotten emails from me, is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. But the next best time is right now. So yes, obviously we all wish we did things 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. For some of you it could even be 40 or 50 years ago. Okay. We can always keep wishing. I wish I had done it back then. I wish I had done it when. Or you could say, you know what? I'm gonna do it right now. And there's a number of you I saw who just picked up the guitar. You just started learning. This is the best time to do it right now. So go grab the free crash course. Lauren bateman.com crashcourse.

I got an email about that. Had a six month payment plan. Is that still available? Jeff, email infoaurenbatement.com infoaurenbatement.com Micah will get back to you. We can definitely extend. I think it was a 5 or 6 pay. You were right. He can get you the link for that. That's not a problem at all. My guitar teacher read me the riot act because I did not like the song. He didn't like the songs you wanted to learn. How dare he? How dare. You know, I was not a huge country fan when I started teaching. It grew on me a little bit. But obviously I had a lot of I in Boston and there's a lot of country music fans. I mean, I liked old, old country. What my dad Listened to, you know, I, I love Patsy Cline. We listened to a lot of that, you know, growing up. But I wasn't into the newer, the newer country. But all my students wanted to learn country. I had a number of people who did. So guess what? I learned a lot of country music because that's what my students wanted. So you know it there, there's certain songs I want to teach people because they, they teach a specific skill. So for example, dust in the Wind. Not all my students wanted to learn dust in the Wind. But for finger picking.

You know, it had some really cool stuff. And I'm like, listen, if we don't have to do the entire song, but I do want you to learn the intro from a technique standpoint, I think it teaches you a very important skill. And then we would move on. But yeah, no, you got to learn songs you love because that's the inspiring part. That's what keeps it fun for you. Ed says he's 58. C to G is pretty hard. Yeah. And there's no pivot point, unfortunately. The key is to move the third finger first. The third finger is the hardest finger to move. So if you can get that one in place first. The other option is to use those stuck like glue cords and you can do this gnc. It's a, it's like a brighter sounding C and G, but it works. Those, those are your cowboy chords. Those work. Well, I'm more of a rhythm guitar player. Wish I could improve on leads. Yeah, check out lead guitar 101. That's one of the courses that's actually on sale. And we teach you about a scale. We'll teach you how to play a solo and get started with some of that because it is fun. I don't mind. You know, I'm mainly an acoustic player but I do know how to improvise. I do know how to play lead. And sometimes when I just want to relax, I'll throw on a backing track and I'll just goof around a bit. And it, it's, it's nice. I like it. It's a little bit meditative for me. But I would never play lead guitar in a band. When I performed light, I had. I have one guitar solo that I would play on my electric guitar just to change thing up things up. But other than that, I always played, always played acoustic. That PRS is sweet. Oh, breed loves are great. Carl. Those, those are lovely guitars. Yeah. This is a, a prs it is a toner. It is a parlor sized guitar. Okay, so this is a Paul Reed Smith, but they also make smaller stuff. Like a lot of my students really like the Taylor GS minis and they have a koa wood one which is really, really nice. I have a lot of students who like that. Martin also makes some really, really cool small guitars. There's so many. So, you know, find a brand that you know and love or find something that you just, you just fall in love with and buy it. That's what I say. Because if you love the guitar, you're going to want to play it more. Okay. And that's why I brought this on. Just to show people like what a smaller guitar looks like. If I had my tailor, it probably wouldn't. It might fit in the frame, but it's bigger. Okay. And so is it my crafter. They're both grand auditorium style guitars. So they are quite large and that's why they have such a nice sound. They're not dreadnoughts. They're a little bit smaller than a dreadnought. But this is, you know, this is nice and small. Easy for me to hug and hold on. Not easy for me to love my guitar. But again, the trade off of a smaller size guitar is you have a smaller sound. Some people don't like that. Okay. So this guitar is going to be a lot brighter than my Grand Honorium guitars. So that, that's the trade off. But if you're someone who's smaller in stature like me, like I said, I'm about, I'm like five, four and three quarters. So I'm short. So a parlor size guitar might be better suited to you. This one is like a wine. I think it's like a merlot color. I forget what the color was on this. But I think they also have a natural wood one. But very nice guitar overall. And it has the button strap where I like it on the bottom down here. The only thing, you know. And a lot of guitars don't have this. It doesn't have like a built in electronics or a built in tuner. My crafter has the tuner built right into the guitar, which I love because then I don't need an extra tuner that I'm going to lose because I lose things so easily. It's like guitar picks. How many tuners do I lose in a year? So. Oh yeah, you, you saved the email. Perfect. Okay, awesome. Great. Jeff, I'm glad that you found it. Amazing. Yeah, I love my Gibson L1. It never goes out of tune and sounds awesome. William, that's awesome. Yeah. If you can Find a good guitar that stays in tune. Amazing. What price do you consider expensive guitar? I would say yes. Steve has the GS Mini Koa and loves it. Expensive. I mean with inflation now, no, I would, I would consider anything like a thousand dollars and up an expensive guitar. Now granted, my tailor, my crafter, when I bought it, and this was, God, I think I bought that like maybe 12 or 15 years ago that I, I spent a thousand dollars on that, which was a lot of money for me at the time. I never bought a guitar that expensive. Expensive. But up to that point I, the most I'd ever spent on a guitar was 500, which were my Ibanez. My Ibanez electric I think was 500 and my Ibanez acoustic was also 500. And that again was many moons ago. I think this guitar is around 600, which I would consider a good price point for a decent quality guitar. Could you get, you know, could you get a boat or. For a hundred dollars, we call them boat oars because that's, that's what they're good for. They're good for rowing a boat because they're so bulky and clunk and they're not even made of real wood. They're made of like particle board. But again, if that's what you can afford, that's what you can afford. I would consider a reasonable price guitar in the $300 to $600 range would be a reasonable guitar that you're probably going to get something that's easier to play and very nice. And then once you get into the four figure range, you're paying a lot more for like the tuning pegs, the electronics, like the preamps and stuff that are inside the guitar. And, and you are getting, you know, slightly better quality woods as well through that. But my tailor, so the Taylor, it's the 324 CE Builders Edition. And that was a $3,000 guitar. That was the most I'd ever spent on a guitar. And I never got a tailor because they are so expensive. That's how I ended up with the crafter because it's supposed to be like the Korean knockoff of the tailor. But a couple years ago for my birthday I decided, you know, I hadn't bought, I hadn't bought a guitar in over a decade. And, and Megan, my wife, was saying, you should treat yourself. You never get yourself anything nice. You should treat other than cars. You know, I love my Camaros, but she's like, you should get something nice for yourself. And I finally, I bought the tailor because the Crafter. My electronics broke and I couldn't play live and I needed something for my live events. So I said let me get an, I'll get a nice tailor. So that one's really nice too. But you know, that's a super exciting expensive guitar. You know, that's I, I would consider 3, 2000 to 3000 a very expensive guitar. A thousand is a reasonable expensive, like you're going to get a better quality. But 300 to 600, especially on the acoustic side. Spending more money on the acoustic side I think is a hundred percent. A hundred percent worth it. Yeah. So my most expensive guitar listed for $12,000. Holy smokes. I think I was in Bath, England and they had, you know, it was like an autographed Tom Petty guitar. They had like these really vintage classic guitars. They were like $10,000. A lot of them were 10, 12, $15,000. And I was sitting outside the window just drooling. You had to make an appointment to get inside. You couldn't just go in. So I was looking out the window being like, I wish I had known this was here. I would have made an appointment just to, just to go around. You wish your wife would say that to you, Brian. I know. Don't we wish all of our spouses would say, hey, just go spend some money on a guitar. Maybe you can tell her the story and she'll be a little bit more supportive. Any, any thoughts on Dean? Yeah, I think they're great guitars. A good friend of mine, Carlino Guitars, who makes my guitar straps, that's. He made this guitar strap for me. He's in Medford, he also makes his own guitars. He sells Dean as one of his main guitars for acoustic and he said he's really impressed with the quality of them. So I think that's also a great, a great company. You know, Luna also makes some great ones. Although I think Luna might be more known for ukulele's but I think you know, Tacomine is another one. All your major brands, Fender, you know, prs, Ibanez, you know Ibanez has a Reed, has some really great beginner acoustic guitars. There was one, I think it was like an art core or something I played and it was like 300 bucks. It was just like a little lightweight, small bodied acoustic. And it was like three or 350 bucks. And I was like this is actually a really nice sounding guitar. Really nice playing guitar for 350 bucks. Okay. Especially for an acoustic. Awesome. Your PV260 parents paid around 240. Now they're gonna going for 1900? Yeah, I would believe it. Jackie signed up for the crash course. Woo hoo. Nice job Jackie. I'm so excited for you. I was stubborn about only wanting to learn a specific style of music. Yeah. And that's what happens, Logan, when you get outside of in learning other styles you learn different things. In terms of lead and rhythm, it can really help. I wasn't a big blues fan but I had a lot of students who were like, Lauren, can you do a blues guitar course? So it really forced me to dive into the blues a lot more before because I really wanted to understand the genre before I made a course on it which is the Blues Guitar 101. It actually really made me appreciate it so much more. So if you're someone who's not really into blues, I had a lot of fun making that course and it's actually quite a large course. It's 50 lessons. So if you're interested in getting a little bit into rhythm and lead and you playing a little bit more blues, go check out that Blues Guitar 101 course. It really is a great course. I had so much fun making it and it's priced a little bit more because it is a much larger course than some of the other courses. You know, like the lead guitar one I think might be 20 lessons or so, but that one's like 50 lessons I think. So it's, it's priced a bit more because there's a lot more inside of it. But it's a really, really great course. So if you're interested in the blues, definitely go check that out. All right. And if you haven't gotten on the mailing list, laurenbayman.com forward/crash course, get on the list because if you're interested in getting the new year started right and making this the year you learn guitar, go do that crash course. Okay. And then you'll be sent some stuff, some emails next week letting you know that there is, there's a cool offer on, on the seven level. All right. It never goes on sale. You're not going to pay less than 297. So if you're expecting to pay less, you will not pay less. But we do throw in some extra little bonuses for you to make it nice for you. So if you're interested in that, definitely go sign up right now. Practice as hard as you can with these holidays coming up. Thank you for being on here live. Super, super excited for all you that jumped on here and just got started. I can't wait to help you playing your guitar a lot more. We'll get it singing. Darlene got a Zager. They're also really great guitars made here in the US So enjoy your night, everyone. Thank you for being here, and I hope to see you all in a lesson real soon. Bye bye, everyone.