New Year's Guitar Resolutions & Setting Practice Goals And Keeping It Simple

Hello, everyone. How are we doing? Happy New Year. It's me. We have Olive in the background who has decided to sunbathe right at this moment on the couch. So today I wanted to do a little live about New Year's resolutions. And I know a lot of people are starting guitar, or some of you have been playing guitar for a while. I get a lot of comments on the videos. Hey, I'm 65 years old. I. I've been playing for years and haven't made much progress. So my goal here, you know, I try and keep things simple for people. And my goal for you is that in 2020, you'll actually be able to reach some more of your goals with playing the guitar. And for adults, I find that a lot of the problems come from the expectations that are set right at the beginning. A lot of us have these really lofty expectations, you know, that we want to play Eruption by Van Halen, you know, one month into playing guitar. So something I talk about with my adult students, because a lot of times adults get really overwhelmed easily by this instrument, especially if they're not making progress very quickly. So for me, you know, I know I used to teach adults, and they would not practice mainly because they felt like they didn't have enough time. They felt if they didn't have an hour to sit down, that it wasn't worth practicing at all. And with this instrument, any. Any time you give to it helps. So I always tell my adult students, hey, if you have five or 10 minutes, use that. Because it's better to practice five or 10 minutes three or four times a week than an hour once a week. And what do you do with that practice time? So if you're only able to practice for five to 10 minutes, I would only focus on one or two things. So if you're working on your chord changes, I would sit for five minutes and just work on chord changes. Work on chord speed, okay? Cause I know that's a big thing, people. Chord changes and chord speed. And in the beginning with my students, I spend a lot of time on chord changes. A lot of time with the metronome, working on picking up the speed slowly over time. So don't expect to go from 0 to 60 in one month or two months. It does take time. With this instrument especially, everyone's hand is different. So if you got small hands, it might be a little bit trickier. If you have hands that are too big and really fat, it might be trickier too. So things to keep in mind when you're practicing, schedule short intervals, five to 10 minutes working on one or two things max. Don't work on 10 things because if you've ever put a timer down for one or two minutes, it's actually much longer than people think. Spend five minutes working on chord changes and maybe five minutes trying to work on a song. That's a perfect little practice routine. And if you do that three or four times every week, I guarantee you will be much better with the guitar by the end of 2020. Something else to do is to take it slow and don't rush. So a lot of you have seen my video on the two fingered chords and I know I get a lot of backlash from people because they're not the full chords, but that's okay. By keeping things simple, it helps you build confidence that this is actually doable. So a lot of my adults, they gave up on the guitar. You know, I've had a lot of students who have come to me from other guitar teachers because they gave up, because the teacher kind of rushed them into things too soon. And like I said before in some of my other videos, using three fingers for a chord for a beginner can be very hard. Using two fingers is usually not so bad. But take things slow. Consistency is key. Yes. Hi, Bill Campbell, how are you doing? So consistency is key. So you have to take things slow and don't be embarrassed by the fact that you have to break things down more. There's nothing wrong with breaking things down and keeping them simple. The simplicity of how I teach is what builds you to the confidence that you can actually do this and then we can build upon that. So, you know, don't rush away from these, you know, these two fingered cords until you feel really, really comfortable with them. Then you can move on. So usually I start with people the two fingered chords. And if you, if you're part of my guitar course, this is in there, the whole progression. Actually, just to give a little really quick, I do have. If you go to laurenbateman.com There is a new Year's resolution sale that's going on now through January 15th. You can get half off the one year pass to my course. But basically what you're going to do is you're going to start with the two finger cords and when you feel comfortable with that, then you're going to learn the three fingered chords, all your open chords, A, D, G, C, A minor, D minor, etc. Etc. You're going to learn all of those and you're not going to learn any other chords until you feel really good. Some people ask me, hey, I want to learn bar chords. I'm having trouble with bar chords. You should not even touch a bar chord. This is my philosophy. Because bar chords are frustrating a lot of people. And people rush into bar chords too quickly. They get frustrated, and then they stop playing the guitar. That's not the point. I usually, for the majority of my adult students, do not even touch bar chords with them until 9 to 12 months into their lessons. We really focus on just open chords, and I do simplified versions of the chords. So some of you might have seen my video on the simplified F. This way you don't have to do a full bar chord. Or we can do a simplified B minor chord as opposed to doing the full barre chord. Because for some people, that's really hard. What's that? Coning. Hey, from Belgium. That's awesome. Awesome. Welcome. I'm in Boston, so that's amazing. So don't worry. Don't feel like you have to rush into these bar chords. Do not. They are frustrating. If you're going to work on bar chords, I would recommend doing it on an electric guitar versus an acoustic because the electric guitar strings are thinner and they will be much easier to play on an electric guitar versus an acoustic. A lot of times when I move to bar chords with my acoustic players, we change the strings on the guitar for very light strings so that it's a little bit easier for them to press the chords. And once they get enough strength in their fingers, then we go back to a thicker string. Those are some advice. That's some advice on taking it slow and not rushing. So don't rush from one thing to the next. Really take some time, you know, with your strumming with your chords. Don't rush to get to the next thing. Because if you don't have your open chords down and you're not fluid with them, rushing to something else is just going to cause more frustration for you. And I'd rather you be able to play a bunch of songs with open chords than not be able to play every song with bar chords. So let's do it that way. And yeah, so the last note I had here about keeping it simple, don't be afraid to keep things simple. There's nothing wrong with doing things the easy way. I get a lot of comments from people being like, that's not the right way to play that song. That's not, you know. And I know, I know sometimes when I teach, I don't teach them the exact way. We're not going to do all these.

All these little flourishes and stuff in some of these songs because for beginner it's just too much. So, you know, if you hear these cool little embellishments and stuff happening in songs, you'll get there. You'll get there. Don't worry about those. The focus in the beginning is to try and play a song from beginning to end. And keep the timing. Timing is your most important part of playing. So if we're working on a song, let's say for example, I didn't have one prepared here, but if we talk about like Brown Eyed Girl, hey, where did we go? I think those are, see, yeah. Hey, where do we go? Now I've got this really cool people at the beginning, timing is important. I would rather you keep the strumming simple and go, hey, where did we go?

Days when the rains came. And if that's your starting point, that's fine. Keep it that simple. I would rather you play in time and keep the strumming simple versus trying to play a really intricate strumming pattern and not have the timing. And then once you're done, you can build off of that. Maybe we can do two downs. Hey, where did we go?

Days when the rains came and then you from there.

Hey, where did we go?

Days when the rain came. And you can build on it. Timing is the most important part of music. If you are out of time, forget it. In music, it's never going to sound good. I always tell people it's better to be simple and go slow and in time than trying being fast instead of going.

And I'm sure some of you can relate to that. It's better to be in time and to be doing, you know, fast and choppy is not good. Slow in time and steady is good. So that is my quick little live stream for you guys. I tried to do a notice so you guys would know when I was going live, someone had recommended that. So thank you very, very much. A three string chord is still a chord. That's right. And you only need three notes to do a chord. Chord. Most chords are triads. They're made of three notes. So you know, you can have a six string chord or you can have a, you know, you can have like a one string chord. Whatever you want to do. That's what you know. As long as it's the three notes that make up a chord. You'll even have some chords or just two notes if you do a power chord. But we're not doing that in this lesson. That's something else. Let's see. Love your pup. Yes, this is Olive who has decided to join us today and is sleeping peacefully on the couch. So thank you so much John. I'm so glad that the two finger technique has helped you. I hope you guys, you know, have lots of fun with it. Put some comments below. I'm going to try and do some lives more just to answer some common questions that you guys put in the comments. I might not do it every week, might do it every every other week or so but I wanted to pop on say Happy New Year to you guys. Thank you again so much for following and subscribing to the YouTube channel. I have another play along lesson that's coming out in a couple days so keep an eye out for that and I'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much and I hope you found these tips helpful. Bye bye guys.