Setting Guitar Goals for 2022 // Zager EZ Play Guitar Giveaway

Hey everyone. Hi guitar enthusiasts. Lauren here. Happy New Year. So nice to see you guys. I figured in lieu of my normal posting I usually post something on Wednesdays. I wanted to go live with you guys because I have some exciting things coming up that I wanted to share with you. I see all your stuff over there in the chat. We have a retired marine. I deeply appreciate this gesture. You are so welcome. You're so welcome. So, so part of today I guess one of the big announcements while we get things going and I'll, I'll make this announcement. Cold ass Michigan here. It's probably really cold in Michigan so I will make this announcement throughout depending on when people pop in. But we are doing a little giveaway on my website. I want to thank Zagger Guitars who sent out. I'm going to turn my phone off so it starts blinking. I thought I already did that. I don't know how it turned back on. Okay so we have Zaga guitars who gave us a few guitars. We have five of them. We actually five guitars to give away and we're giving them away to veterans in need in their, their acoustic guitars. They are so set up for righty. So right handed acoustic guitars they are the easy play. Zagger guitars really appreciate them doing that and we're giving them away like I said, to veterans in need. So if you're a veteran in need or you know someone who is a veteran that wants to learn guitar, you know, maybe on a limited income, on disability or something, we want to help them out. So we're going to ship them a guitar. It has to be here in the United States. I'm going to pay for the shipping so I'm going to pay it to ship it anywhere within the United States. And they will also get access to the seven level guitar system, my guitar course. So not only are they going to get the guitar, they're going to get the tools they need the system. They need to go from being an absolute beginner to learning how to play the guitar in their favorite songs. If you want to Recommend someone it's laurenbayen.com backslash giveaway lauren bateman.com backslash giveaway fill out that form and we'll take a look at them. We're going to be keeping this open probably for the next few days depending on how many, you know, submission forms we get. I also want people to pop on and see the live. So once again it's Lauren bateman.com backslash giveaway. If someone wouldn't mind typing that into the chat for Everyone, that would be fantastic. But laurenbateman.com giveaway on the website. You can fill out that form. And we'll be giving away some guitars for the New Year to our veterans out there in need. Thank you. If you are a veteran, thank you for serving. Really appreciate everything you guys do. I support our troops big time. We have a lot of veterans in the course currently. There was a post the other day, someone was asking who else was a veteran, was. And it was just like loads and loads of answers, you know, people from, from Vietnam, even, even more recent as well. So thank you all for your service. I really appreciate it. That's why I got my. My wore my Captain America shirt here today. Oh, Jack Waters, thank you so much for the Super Chat donation. Really appreciate it. We'll use that if you do Super Chat donations. We'll use those to, to pay for the shipping on the guitars. But I was going to pay for the shipping anyway, but, but thank you so much. So what we're gonna do today is I'm gonna talk about New Year's resolutions, New Year's goals, and hopefully this will be helpful even if you've been playing the guitar for a while. But I know a lot of people, they make New Year's resolutions, they wanna learn how to play the guitar, and they learn very quickly that it's not easy, okay? So anyone who tells you learning the guitar is easy, be a little, little cautious. There are easier ways to go about learning guitar. But I've been playing for over 20 years, I'm still learning. And you know, my students, they see, I go. We have a private Facebook community and I go in there live and I show them videos of me practicing. And I make mistakes all the time because I want, I want you guys to know that even though I've been playing for so long, I am not perfect, Okay? I am not perfect. And a big thing of my guitar teaching is that it doesn't have to be perfect as long as we're having fun and, and we're improving and getting better. That's the goal. And that's the whole goal of this channel, is just making the guitar make sense for you so that you can have fun with it. And down the road, if you want to get into all that crazy theory stuff, I have courses on music theory, so you're more than welcome to do that. But we keep it simple in the, in the beginner program. So the first goal, the first thing I want to tell you about, I got, I wrote down like it looks like five or Six tips here that we're going to go through. The first one I want to talk about is being realistic, okay? So this is not an overnight thing. I don't want you to be in a rush to get to the destination because it takes years, okay? Like I said, I've been playing guitar for 20 years. So if I make it look easy, well, I've been doing it for a long time, okay? So I want you to know in the beginning, your strings, they're gonna sound muted, the chords are gonna be slow, the chord changes are gonna be slow. And in the course, if you're, if you're in my course, you know, I give you easier versions of the chords to start with and your timing is going to be off, your rhythm is going to be. Be horrible. And some of you, some of these things will be better than for others because we're all starting at a different point in our guitar journey, okay? Some of you are coming to me and you've never touched a guitar before, and some of you are coming to me and maybe you've been playing for two, three or four or five years and you're looking to get some more advice and take things to the next level. I, personally, I played guitar on my own for 10 years, okay? I was, I was mostly self taught. I don't have a degree in music. For those of you who don't know me that well, I don't have a degree in music. My degrees are actually in biology and archaeology. I used to work in a cancer research lab and. But music was my passion. And so I quit my job to, to do music and now I'm here helping you guys. So hopefully I made the right decision. And hopefully you guys over there think I made the right decision as well. So don't think this is going to be an overnight thing, okay? Be realistic that it's going to take time. And you're not going to be Stevie Ray Vaughan, you're not going to be Eric Clapton, you're not going to be Jimi Hendrix in a year from now, okay? The goal is every single week, every single month that passes, you're just trying to get 1% better than you were before, okay? If you get 1% better every week, then a year from now that's going to be leaps and bounds better than where you started. So be realistic. I know that's going to be hard for you perfectionists out there. I fortunately don't suffer from perfectionism. If you're one of my students, you know that just for my typing alone. But I Am not a perfectionist. And you shouldn't be either, okay? Because to this day, I'm still not perfect. All right? If you can get to, like, 95% accuracy over the years, that's pretty good. But everyone still makes mistakes. I've been live at concerts and seen people make mistakes that are professional, so it happens. So the other thing I want to say is, don't learn too much at once. This is what happens with a lot of beginners, particularly when you're on YouTube. Because the great thing about YouTube is there's a lot of information. Even me, I've got. I've probably got hundreds of videos at this point, different song lessons. And that's the great thing about YouTube is there is a lot of information out there, but sometimes you don't know if that information is the right information for you for where you're at. So. So I always tell students, you know, keep things simple in the beginning. That's why I teach my students in the seven level system. We learn four chords to start with. Well, it's really like five. There's an extra little bonus chord in there. But we learned four chords to start with. Why? Because part of learning guitar is about muscle memory. Being able to close your eyes and switch the chords on your guitar without even having to look at them. I can do this with my eyes closed. I can even do it in the air. I can make a C chord, a G chord, a D chord, A. I have the muscle memory in my fingers. And what happens for a lot of students is they go watch a video on beginner guitar chords, and there's like 10 or 12 or 20. There's a bunch of different chords in the lesson. And what happens is you're spreading that learning out over 20 chords. I always tell people it's easier to remember a password that's four digits long versus remember a password that's 12 digits long. So the same thing applies to guitar. It's going to be easier for you to remember and build muscle memory if you're practicing the same four chords over and over than if you're trying to do all 20 of them at once. And there's more than 20 chords. There's hundreds, thousands of chords. But we start with four. And, you know, I show you how to use a capo to do a lot with those chords. We can play thousands of songs with just four chords. And the four that we start with, C, E minor, G and D. Okay, so if you've seen some of my videos, you know, I love C, E minor, G and D, because you can do so much with those chords. Okay. I actually did a video recently. 15 songs. You can play with those four chords using a very, very simple strumming pattern. So you can go search that afterwards. Just put. Lauren bateman, you know, four chords, 15 songs. I'm sure that will. That will pop up. Oh, Noel, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Noel, for, for your donation. That's gonna go right towards shipping out the. To our veterans. And if you're just popping on a little bit, a little bit late into this programming, I mentioned before. Laurenbateman.com giveaway. We're giving away five Zagger Easy Play Guitars to veterans in need that want to learn guitar. They'll also be getting a free copy of my guitar course. We want them to have the instrument and the tools necessary to learn guitar. So if you're a veteran or. Or if you know someone that is a veteran that has always wanted to learn guitar, if that's their dream, that's part of my mission. My. My mission is, you know, I help people, you know, get the music out of them before, basically before we leave this earth. I don't want anyone to die with the music still inside them. So we want to help people. And that's. That's what this channel is all about, helping people learn to play guitar and have fun with it. So thank you, Noel. I really appreciate that. So let's talk about the next thing, which is speed versus clarity. This is related to chords. Talk about this all the time and what you want. If you do not have a metronome, you can download one on your app. I use Metronome Beats, so you can download an app and use a metronome. Or there's, I think, online metronome.com or something. You can find one online. But the reason we use a metronome is because it forces you to go off of some else's timing. And yes, using a metronome can be very robotic. That's why in the course I have play alongs with me, because sometimes it's easier to play along with me in my timing versus a metronome. But what the metronome does is it's your scorecard. So it's telling you, are you doing better from week to week? Because one of the biggest reasons that people give up guitar is one, they realize it's actually much harder than they thought to learn. So that's one thing. But another thing is they have no way of knowing if they're. If they're getting better. Or not. How do I know if I'm getting better? I'm still playing my GC and D chords, and they still sound like crap. I feel like, okay, I've been doing this for three months and my chords still sound like crap. That's totally normal. No rush. There is no rush. If they still sound like crap after three months, guess what? You're normal. Don't worry about it. So what we do with the metronome is we put the metronome on, and it's got a click.

And you basically pick two chords, C and G. I'm just going to use those two. And you're going to go back and forth. Okay. And the whole goal is to speed up the metronome. And a lot of people, you know, they. They email me because I get emails from students, and they're like, you know, I'm stuck. I can't get past 60 beats per minute. What do I do? Well, what you do when you're stuck like that is you bump the metronome up to 70 beats per minute. Okay, 70 beats per minute. And you try and do it as fast as you can. I don't care if it sounds like this.

As long as the fingers are getting on the right strings, that's key. Okay. Because a lot of people, again, this is going to be hard for the perfectionists out there. You always want it to sound nice. And when you're working on speed, you have to sacrifice clarity. So you have to sacrifice the niceness of the chords to get faster. And then you go really slow to make things sound nice. This way you play each string. Oh, I have a muted string. Okay, I'm gonna fix that bottom finger. Okay. So when you want to get clean sounding chords, you go slow. This way you can assess the issues, what fingers might be muting the strings. And then when you want to go fast, you have to sacrifice some of the clarity. It will sound like crap. If you're playing. If you're doing chord changes and you're trying to build speed and it sounds nice, you're not going fast enough. Okay? So. So that's the key. That's the key to that. So make sure that you are pushing yourself to go faster. Oh, I believe it's worth the money. What kind do you recommend for beginner? Are you talking about a metronome, Christopher? Hopefully. Because I was just talking about metronomes. I just caught your. I just caught your question there real quick. Metronome. I use metronome beats, Korg. If you go on Amazon, I always Use Korg when I was at my private studio before they had apps. So that's. That's what I would use at home. Let's see, next one we've got keep a journal. So this is. This is very important, especially if you're keeping track of your metronome times. You need to know no price of a guitar. Okay? I'll answer that after I answer this question here or finish this section on the journal. So keep your journal and write down your speeds, okay? Because you need to know you're not going to remember, okay? Write down because you want to see three months from now, six months from now, you're going to open that journal and you're going to go, wow, three months ago, I was at 20 beats per minute, and today I'm at 80. And that's going to make you happy because you're going to see you made progress. Also, in your journal, you should write how you feel. Even if you hate, hate the G chord. Just write down, you know, today I'm not the greatest at the G chord, but I'm going to get better. I'm going to get better and try and keep it positive. Write those successes down because your words are very powerful. So if you're like, I suck at the guitar. You know what? You're telling yourself that you suck at the guitar. And. And that's not true. You're just learning, all right? We all, in the beginning, even me, stunk at the guitar. I'm not a prodigy, okay? I am not. I wasn't naturally talented. I'm the only one in my family that plays a musical instrument. So I don't have the music gene, okay? Like, a lot of you, okay? I don't have the music gene. I didn't go to school for music, but I just love music, and I wanted to have fun with it. So tell yourself positive things, okay? Man, I hate learning guitar. No, I love learning guitar. I might not be good at it today, but I'm going to be better at it in a couple weeks or three months from now. I'm just gonna keep getting better. So those negative things that you. That negative talk, it's gonna sabotage your progress, and it's gonna sabotage you mentally because you're just gonna keep saying these negative things. You're like, I'm dumb. I can't do this. No, you are not. No, you are not. You are learning, and you're gonna get there. So don't sabotage yourself with that negative talk. Keep it positive. Okay? Today I'm just gonna try and get my G chord clean. Okay. That's all I'm gonna do today. I'm gonna try and get my G chord clean, lean. And if you do, you're going to reward yourself and have a lot of fun and celebrate that success. Every little success is a celebration on guitar and that's what keeps you motivated. So, Chris, on a beginner guitar, particularly acoustic, I recommend not going below the 299 level. This guitar. So this is a crafter. Everyone asked me what my guitar is, so this is a crafter. Twin Birds 32nd anniversary. I feel like this guitar is about 12 years old. Thank you, Caesar. Thank you, Paul. You guys are awesome. Making some donations here. Really appreciate it. That's gonna go to shipping out our guitars to our veterans. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. You're all awesome. I love you all. Sorry I'm getting so excited with the, with the money and stuff over there. So beginner guitar 299 for acoustic. Why? Because they're just better quality, better. They're better made. Okay. If you can afford a $500 like the 499 price and up, you will even get a better guitar. This crafter, I feel like this might have been like a $1,500 guitar when I purchased it. And I bought it from a friend's store so he gave me a discount. But I think retail, this was about $1,500. This guitar. And it plays very nicely because the strings are very close to the fretboard.

And you know, so that would be my recommendation. For electric.

You can get away a little bit cheaper on an electric. Again, if you can go to that 300 to 500 range, that's great because you will get a better quality. You'll get better quality electronics and other stuff like that. But with acoustic guitars, if you go and get like a hundred dollar guitar, they're just, they're just made of like cheap particle wood. We call them boat oars. A friend of mine who's a guitar teacher used to call them boat wares because basically all they're. All they're good for doing is, is rowing your boat. Okay. They're very, very hard to play. So I would recommend the 300 to 500 range is, is a sweet spot. And you know, if you can go above that, even better. Okay, fix my guitar strap so that answers that one for you, Chris. Hopefully that helped. Let's see. I did that. Motivation. Record yourself. Record yourself. This is a powerful tool and you don't have to share these recordings with anyone. But again Like I said with guitar, the hardest part is motivating yourself to keep practicing and keep going even when it gets hard. Okay. Because there's going to be points, and I have, you know, I had those points too, where you just, like, you want to throw this thing on the ground and you want to put it back in the closet or throw it down in the garage or in the basement, and we need to remember where we started. So I tell students as much as possible. I tell them in level one of my course, which is where the starting point, the first song we learned is Horse with no Name. And I say, you know, record yourself playing this song if you want to share it with the group. The private Facebook group. Awesome. Share it with the group. If you don't, then you don't have to, but keep it for yourself. Because when you get to level two and level three, usually level three is the frustrating level for a lot of people because we get into the full C, G and D chords and we get into some more intricate strumming. In level three, you should go back and watch your Horse with no Name video because you're going to realize how bad you were in the beginning and how much progress you've made, and that's motivating. So I tell people usually every month, if you can make it a goal the first week of the month, you're going to record a video yourself playing the same song, don't you know? And you can do a different song if you want to, but I recommend doing the same song. So if you got month one and you're playing Horse with no name and it sounds like this, you know, it sounds like that. And then you go to month two, but it sounds kind of like this now.

You know, then you get to month three, and you're like.

It'S like, oh, I can hear the progress, and. And I'm much better today than I was three months ago. That's super important. Super important. Some more donations came in, Patricia. I wish. Is it Theha. Thank you guys so much on the super chat. Donations really appreciate. You guys are awesome. So these donations are going to be put towards mailing out the guitars to our veterans. We are doing a giveaway this week. I will keep it probably open through the weekend to get as many nominations as possible. And we're giving away laurenbateman.com giveaway. We have five, five Zagger Easy Play guitars that we're going to ship out. Zagar has been kind enough that one of my students reached out. We reached out for a student of ours who was a retired veteran that was going blind. His name is Al. He actually lives here in Massachusetts, surprisingly. And we got a guitar for Al. But not only did Zagar send us one guitar for Al, they sent us five other guitars to give out to veterans in need. So thank you guys so much. Thank you. Jack Nanc, Hopefully, Nancy a. J. Hopefully I said that. Right. But we're going to be sending these guitars out to veterans in need that want to play guitar. So if you are a veteran in need or you know someone that's a veteran that has always wanted to play guitar, they are five right handed guitars. Okay. Just want to specify that they're right handed guitars and we will be shipping these in the United States. So we have five of those guitars. Lauren bateman.com backslash giveaway laurenbatement.com backslash giveaway and we will be giving away five guitars to. To veterans in need this month. So I want to thank Zagger Guitars for that. Dennis has been absolutely amazing. I emailed him and he emailed me right back. I'm really impressed with the customer service of this company. I mean the fact that he just, I mean that was just amazing that he, he did these guitars for our veterans. So I'm so excited to support a company that, that supports our veterans like that, no questions asked. They were, they were super nice and did more than we expected. So I think you're gonna see me probably playing a Zaga guitar soon. We'll see. Thanks, Kyle. Thank you, Jay. You guys are awesome. Appreciate it. Speaking of horse, I'm having some trouble getting the swing rhythm in that song. Any suggestions? Great, Great. So that is a swing pattern. Usually when I teach beginners, I teach them to do a straight pattern which would be, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, four, or 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And so, so a swing pattern is a triplet feel. Okay, what is a triplet? So we have quarter notes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, four. And a triplet is for every one of those beats there's three notes. Okay. So if it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4,. One triplet, two triplet, three triplet, four triplet, one triplet, two triplet, 3 triplet. And that's usually how you would count them. One triplet, two triplet. Okay, so could you get the threes? So that's what it is and what we're doing. And it's hard to see because I don't have my Diagrams up here, we are skipping the middle triplet. So it's 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 1. It's like a shuffle, like a blues.

Okay. So it's kind of like a blues. One, a two, a three, a four.

So that's why it's a little tricky timing wise. So you might want to just do all downs and do one, triplet, two, triplet, three, triplet, four, triplet one up, two, a three, a four. So you just have to go very slow with it and then, then you can speed it up. So hopefully that answers your question. Lastly, I want to say have a good practice schedule. Well, there's two things I want to say left that I have on my list, but this one is, have a good practice schedule. Chords, strumming and dexterity. That's what we work on at the beginner level in my seven level guitar course. All right. Is dexterity, chords and strumming. Okay. Because if you can do that. So dexterity is something like a spider exercise.

You know, or other picking exercises. You know, how to do arpeggios on chords and stu.

Hand dexterity. Because we have to work on the right hand. That was my left. My right hand and the left hand, or if you're lefty, your left hand and your right hand. And so there's lots of different exercises to work on finger dexterity in the course. Because if you can get the hands moving, the faster you can get the hands moving, the faster you can change between chords. All right. Eventually, if you want to do, you know.

Scale stuff, the faster your hands are moving, the more you can do with them. Okay. That's the dexterity part. Richard. Thank you so much, Richard, for your donation. Richard De Silva from New Hampshire. I know Richard. I've met Richard in person. He came to one of the grand openings for my school. Thank you, Richard. So nice to see you here. So, and then we focused on chords because obviously every song has chords, right? So you need that. And then the strumming, the rhythm, the timing. So if you can get all three of those things together, it opens up a world of the guitar for you. Because once you go through the seven level system, you can then go on to play lead guitar. You can go to learn music theory. Finger picking. We get into power chords and bar chords. You can do intermediate type strumming, you know, like a percussive rhythms.

So you can do all kinds of cool things, but you have to have a good foundation, the guitar. And that's where the seven level guitar system comes in for Any of you guys who are looking for more of a step by step approach. Lauren Bateman guitar.com course laurenbatemanguitar.com course has all the information on the seven level system and it really gives you the step by step. A lot of students are like, that's why we like this course so much is because it's very methodical. I think that's because of my science background. We're very, very methodical in this. And every level has a reason, a purpose. But once you get to the end of that, you know, level six, seven, you can start branching out and doing whatever you want. You want to do blues, you can do blues. And I'm working on a blues course for those of you guys who don't know. I had so many requests and you know, I got really busy last year. But my focus is to, to record an entire blues course for you guys because I know you've been asking for it. So we're going to do it this year in 2022. I do promise you guys that we will have a full blues course as well that you guys can, you know, graduate to after you do the seven level program. So again, I just want to mention our giveaway today. We have five zagger guitars, easy play zagger guitars that we're giving away. Laurenbateman.com giveaway you can go nominate a veteran in need that maybe can't afford to to get their own guitar. Maybe they're on a limited budget. And not only that, we will be giving them a copy of the seven level course. Okay. So they're going to get the guitar which is the instrument and they're going to get the skills they need to actually play the guitar. And I'll have to talk to Brian who's, who's going to be shipping out the guitars for me. I was going to be paying for, for the shipping for all the guitars but you guys keep throwing in donations in the super chat. So we're probably going to use your, your don year to ship out those, ship out those guitars. We have five of them. We're going to be sending them to anywhere in the United States. So we will be paying to ship those out. So it's going to be no cost to them. So they're going to get a free guitar, a free guitar course. We hope to make them happy this new year and thank them for their service. You know, I have a lot of veterans in the course currently who've reached out to me and said, Lauren, you know, this has changed my life. This has Helped me, you know, I have a lot that have ptsd and music is such a healing process. That's honestly why I got into the guitar. A little bit about my backstory and really what intrigued me about music and I think why I liked it so much growing up. So I grew up in a very strict Italian family, so I don't know if you guys know what that's like, but you don't really have too many opinions or you're not really allowed to have an opinion. Mom and dad say jump and you say how high? Okay, there is no, there was no. You know, my wife, you know, she grew up and she was allowed to ask questions. We didn't ask questions in my family. Okay, your parents told you to do something and you did it. So I didn't really have much of a voice growing up or didn't feel like I could have a voice growing up. So I turned to the guitar and I turned to music and songwriting and that's how I was able to get a lot of my emotions out and a lot of my feelings. And it, it was a healing instrument for me. So I, I understand that process and I've written, you know, three albums worth of material. You guys can go, it's on itunes. I think all three of them are on itunes if you want to go get that. Jack Waters, thank you again. Julie Owens, Jim Johnson, thank you guys so much for your super chats. And there's even a little bird dancing that says, you are amazing, Jack. I don't know how you put that in there, but that's awesome. So, you know, music is, is so helpful for everyone. And, you know, I didn't serve in the military. My wife's father is actually a Marine, so he was in the military, but no one in my family was. My dad was, was drafted, but I think the war, the Vietnam War ended before he had to go over, so, so he didn't serve. My grandfather didn't serve in, in World War II because he was flat footed. So. So I guess we're not a really good military family, so I feel I want to support our troops. We always support our troops. My dad's, my dad is huge on, on supporting troops. And I think that's, that's where my, my devotion comes from, is, is from him. I remember growing up, whenever someone would walk in, you know, with a veteran hat, my dad would always hold the door for them, thank them for their service. You know, sometimes he'd buy them a drink or he'd buy them dinner or something. So I think, you know, now that I'm getting older and the channel is becoming more successful, I want to do more to help. And veterans always hold a special place in my heart because I never serve. But I want to thank you guys for serving because I'm able to do the things I love because of you. So thank you so much. I am here because you served and did wonderful things for this country. So thank you guys so much. I truly appreciate that. Florida ig. Thank you. From a vet. For a vet. Well, thank you so much for your service. And if you're a service member, put it in the chat here. Share with everyone. Let us know if you served. Because I love connecting with our service members. I love connecting with everyone in the group. You know, it was so inspiring to see all of those posts when someone asked about who served and there were so many posts. I mean, people who, who had done 20 years, 30 years, 10 years, five years, we had so many people. It was, it was really cool and really amazing. So, so thank you guys so much. And you know, it's only 2:30. So I'm here. Why don't we, why don't we answer some questions while I'm here? Let's see. So we say struggling to stay focused since finishing the seven level course. Okay, good. Do you recommend starting the or to continue practicing the three skills? So this is from Nancy. So, Nancy, after the seven level, depending on how you're feeling, I have some students who do go back and they do the course again. I'm just gonna move this microphone over a little bit more so I can see my chat better. So there's people who do go through the course a second time. I usually recommend, if you're going to do that, that you start at level three, don't go back to level one because that's a little bit to basic and beginner level one and level two, if you go back, go back to level three. I find where people need the most help is usually with the strumming. That's usually like usually by level six or seven, the chords have kind of smoothed themselves and worked themselves out. It's usually the strumming that really trips people up. So if that's the case, I would recommend if you bought the bundle package or you bought the stage two or you're a platinum level member, you have access to the expressive rhythm course, which is the intermediate rhythm course. And it basically goes from the beginning level one, level three, through all of the strumming into more intermediate strumming. So if you feel like, strumming is where you're lacking the most. I would recommend going to the intermediate strumming course. This way you can really hone in on that strum skill. If you feel like your chord changes still aren't up to speed. What I would do is, is pick, you know, pick five or six songs that you really like. They don't have to be songs that I've, you know, done on YouTube, but at least you have the lessons. But pick five or six songs that you really like and play with those until you get them down really good. And then you can always start working on music theory or, you know, wherever your heart takes you. That's why I have so many of those mini courses, because really, guitar has so many avenues. Once you get through the seven level, there's so many branches of the tree that you can go off to. Some people prefer finger picking. I'm, you know, I'm a big finger picker. I love finger picking.

I play lead guitar, I play electric guitar, but my love is really the acoustic and finger picking. But I know some people like playing lead guitar and playing scales, so they might want to jump on the Lead Guitar 101 course and start learning about scales. And if you're a finger picker, you go do the finger picking course. So after the seven level, go where your heart takes you. But don't. I wouldn't do, because there's like five or six mini courses now. Don't do all of them at once. Pick one and stick with it. Just like, what was goal number two? I think don't learn too much at once. Focus on one thing, get good at one thing and then move on. Be like, I'm going to go through the finger picking course and I'm going to master Travis picking and I'm going to learn how to play, you know, Landslide and Dust and in the Wind and all those cool songs. I don't teach the songs in the course, but I teach you the skills to play the songs and you go through that and you get good at it and then you're like, cool. Well, now I want to learn about bar chords and power chords. I really want to work on my bar chords, then go do the bar and power chord course. So that's how the course is structured. And that's why I don't give you a direct approach for what's next because it's really where your passion lies. Because it's the love of the instrument that's going to keep you going and keep you progressing. So if you're not into lead guitar and scales and you don't want to do, you know, you don't want to do that stuff and it's going to bore you. Then don't do it. I have lots of students. I never taught them a skill because they didn't want to learn skills. They just, they literally just wanted to sing and strum and do finger picking. And that's what we did because that's what they loved. So why not just keep working on the things you love? So follow your heart. You know, if you're someone who's more into singer, songwriter style, maybe go more for the power chord and the finger picking course. You know, if you're someone who's more into classic rock, ccr, Clapton type stuff, maybe get into the power chord course or the lead guitar course. Those would be my recommendations. Yeah. On that.

Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. From a vet. For a vet, you guys are awesome. Thank you for your service. I have a 25 year old travel guitar. I have large hands. I find it hard to clearly hit notes and chords. I feel I might benefit from a larger guitar. Yeah. So, Jim, you know, there's some people who have very large hands. Okay. And they have big fingers. Some people have thick enough fingers that they can play an E minor chord with just one finger. So sometimes you can use less fingers. I know some people, they can play an A chord. I can't do it. My fingers aren't that big. But they can play an A major chord with just two fingers. Sometimes you can just play with one. All right. I like the three finger version, but sometimes you have to make adjustments. And there are guitars that every guitar is unique. Okay. And you can even customize some of these guitars too. But every guitar is unique, so there's different widths and thicknesses. So people with larger hands. You may benefit from a guitar that has a slightly thicker fretboard. I should, you know, I'm not really a tech person. I wish I knew more about guitar tech. I probably should start learning to make suggestions on wider neck. I mean, classical guitars always have a wide neck, but their necks are much wider and can be tricky for a beginner to play because they are so wide. But if you have a really large hands, getting a guitar that has a wider neck could definitely be helpful because the spacing between the strings is a little wider too. So if anyone has suggestions, they can, they can throw it over there in the, in the chat for you. Maybe someone has a suggestion.

Yeah, I'm old enough to remember Vietnam. Yep, Vietnam vets USN USNR 71 to 73. 81 to 97. Thank you so much. Jody Zagar is just a bit wider. Thank you. Thank you, Caesar. I appreciate that. Yeah, Zagar is going to be sending me a guitar to demo their. Their production line. I mean, they sent six over to Brian.

Obviously, with the holidays and the New Year's. Their production line is a little bit backed up right now. So they gotta, they gotta fill the orders that they've committed to, to their paying clients. But they're going to give me a guitar to demo. So I, I will tell you the, the how I think about it. Is it easy to play? I'll let you know. But I know Tommy Emanuel is one of their artists. He plays a few guitars, but I know he's one of their artists that plays the Zagger guitar brand. And if you guys know Tommy Emanuel, he's, he's okay. He's, you know, he's all right.

On average from your students, how long to complete the seven level guitar course? That is a great question. So on average.

It'S so tough. So in my private lessons, when I would meet with people a half hour every week privately, the seven guitar system would probably take us nine to 12 months. In all honesty.

I move people a little bit slower than most teachers. And even there's some books, like, I got the Hal Leonard there, they have a tab method and people move from zero to 60 way too fast. So, you know, I get people, they're like, oh, I've been on level three for a week, and, you know, what do I do? And I'm like, well, you've got to be on that level for a few more weeks. So in reality, I would say the average person, when I worked with them in my studio live, we went through all the materials that are in the seven level course in nine to 12 months. Okay. And then we would move on to other stuff. So some people, I, you know, depending on where you're coming, if you're someone who's been playing for a while, you might get through it in six months. Okay. And that's perfectly fine. Maybe like, you know, a month of level. Usually level one people work through in like the course of one or two weeks. The same with level two, they go through pretty quickly. Then you get to level three. And I think that's the frustration because there's a lot of material in level three, including the strumming, and that gets tricky. So people, you know, they work through level one, they work through level two, and they did those in like one or two weeks. And then they get to level three, not understanding that they need to stay in level three for maybe two to three months. Okay. That one level. Because there's so much to learn. So you just stay on it for a couple months to get those cords down, and then you move on. So I would say nine to 12 months is average. But obviously I have some people who go faster and I have some people who go slower. It really depends. And age plays a big part too, you know, especially if you're someone who has arthritis. I have a lot of students who are older, they have arthritis, arthritis in their hands. And I just tell them, you do the best you can, work through at your pace. There's no race. This isn't a race. This is your guitar journey. And it's. It's your goal to have fun, have fun with it. That's the bottom line. So hopefully that. That answers. Answers your question. Yeah. 12 months is what Jack said. So cool. Is the Campfire Songbook. How do you determine the strumming patterns for each song? Yeah, Robert. So Campfire Songbook, I have a lot of songs that I've done on YouTube that. And I'm working. I'm actually doing more. I have. Just so you guys can see one of the songs in there. This. This is. This is Puff the Magic Dragon. I'm going to be recording some songs later today, but that's one of the songs that's in the songbook. So what I would do is go through the songbooks. I feel like I have tutorials for at least 50 to 60% of the songs in that book. What I would do is I would go either on my website, because I have all the strumming patterns on my website, laurenbatement.com all the strumming patterns are there, and I would just go and write the strumming pattern in the book. That's the only downside to that book. It doesn't have the strumming patterns. But you. I have lessons for probably 60, 50 to 60% of the songs in there, and I'm going to be doing more. So I'm going to keep knocking that book off. All right, so they're talking about, just so you guys can see.

This is the Hal Leonard. It's campfire songs strum together. And it's pretty cool because it has chords for ukulele, baritone, ukulele, guitar, mandolin, and banjo. So there's a lot of stuff in there. It's written in standard notation, but the chords are on there. I know it's hard to see with the lighting, but if you go. That's what I recommend. Just go check out my lessons or go to the website laurenbabin.com and write down the strumming patterns that I put on the website because I still have all the songs on there. Just don't necessarily always have the chord chart for copyright issues. And to mention again on the website laurenbateman.com backslash giveaway. We're giving away those five Zagger guitars to veterans in need. If you know a veteran in need that wants to learn to play guitar, I'll be giving away guitar and one of my courses. You can go.

Nominate. That's the word. Nominate someone right over there. Hey, Zayn, how's it going? I got the. I got the white capo on today, but. But we have the orange capo. Don't worry. Orange capos here, watch. I'll put orange. Zane always comments when I use the orange capo. So that's how I know how I know who he is. Do more reggae. You know, I did. I did. I Shot the Sheriff by Eric Clapton. I don't know if you saw that lesson video. You can go search that. There's some pretty cool kind of reggae rhythms in that. So go check that one out. Plus there's a cool little lead line as well. But would you recommend the beginner course for someone who has been taking lessons from teacher for approximately one year? Yes. I have a lot of students who've worked with a teacher and. Or worked with multiple teachers, in fact. And they said that they learned more in the course than they did in one or two years of working with another teacher. Not to say that's going to happen. It really depends on the teacher. Everyone has a different teaching style. I find a lot of teachers who are university trained.

They take the hard route and not all of them. There's some great. I have some great teachers at my school who went to Berkeley and stuff and they're phenomenal. But it really depends on their teaching method. So if you feel like you're not quite understanding what they're teaching or you feel like they're taking you in a different direction than you want to. They're focusing a lot on music theory. They're focusing a lot on sight reading. I actually don't do sight reading. I know I'll get a lot of flack from people who are classically trained, but I don't do a lot of sight reading. What I do do is rhythm reading because I think reading rhythm is. Is very important. Especially if you're going to strum the guitar. I don't teach sight reading. I teach tablature because it's just much easier for people to pick up and listen. If you're not going to become a session musician, you don't need to to sight grade music. Not, not for guitar. Just so you know, I'm very, I'm bad at sight reading music. I can kind of do it, but that's actually what made me quit piano was the sight reading of the music. I couldn't do it. I picked up a guitar, I learned chords and I was like, forget it, I'm not doing piano anymore. And it was just fun and easier for me to understand. So, you know, you can always do that stuff. But, but I've never taught it to students. You know, I've performed on a stage, I've recorded albums, I'm here, I'm successful at guitar and I can't sight read music. So. So not, not really a requirement to be good at guitar or have fun with it. Yeah. And it is always good to have more than one teacher. You know, when I studied voice, I know you guys are probably questioning because some of my, my vocals are questionable in some of my, some of my lessons, but I did take voice and I took from four different teachers. You know what they all had? I had some that were better than others, but they all had something valuable to teach me. So I never want to like completely knock another guitar teacher because every teacher has something valuable to teach. You just might be learning from that teacher at the wrong time in your journey. So if you're learning for someone who's really focusing on theory and sight reading, maybe a little later in your journey, they'll be the right teacher for you. But every teacher has something valuable. I sometimes explain things in a completely different way than someone else will explain it. And it makes sense for someone so we can all have those different aha. Moments. Thank you so much. Who's on here? Conjuto fan. Thank you so much. Oh, Severo, that's you. Severo is one of our, one of our students in support of my fellow veterans. Thank you so much. And Severo does a lot of work with veterans that he does some volunteer work with as well. So thank you so much, Severo for that. I appreciate that your vocals are better than Dylan's. Thanks Brian.

That's awesome. Yes, Jim, so glad to have you. What's the first thing that I learned on guitar? First thing I learned on guitar.

See, I made a mistake you got. Did you guys hear it? See, I'm not perfect. I made a mistake. But that was the first thing I learned on guitar was. Was a Nirvana song.

That's the first thing I learned. I did a lot of, like, Blink 182. I tried learning some Melissa Etheridge songs, but I wasn't very that good yet. And that's how my journey started. I started playing like, a little, you know, little licks and stuff here and there, but that was the first thing I learned on. On guitar. So. Great question. Do you think a D, a D, two, H, HB Martin is a good guitar to work with? I mean, Martin's a good brand. I don't know that model specifically, but Martin does really make some nice guitars. So I would go for it if you're interested. Tears. You want tears in heaven? Please demonstrate changing chords while strumming and specifically using the strap strums. Matt, fantastic question. I'm gonna just. So for you guys that are in the course and in the private Facebook group, I've been getting so many questions about strumming. I was gonna go live and do a whole session for you guys just working through the level three strumming. So we'll do that. But a big tip. And. And I never mentioned this in the course because I would think I was so focused on teaching you guys the rhythm when you get faster. So if I'm. If I'm playing a rhythm, let's just say I'm going to do 1, 2, 3, and 4. And down, down, down, up, down, up. And I'm going to just do the G, E minor, C, D. Okay, but see how fast I can change my chords when I'm strumming.

You may not hear it because my chord changers are so quick and my strumming is very fluid. I'm usually changing the chord on that last up strum. So let me see if I can freeze it. I'm going to play fast through, but I'm going to freeze. So 1, 2, 3, 4.

I don't know if you guys can see that my fingers are in the air. I'm not touching the guitar. Guitar. But I did my upstrom to go to my E minor chord. I'm not on the E minor chord yet.

See, there's the upstrom and I'm on the way to the D chord. Okay, so that is. I gotta write an email and put that in the course. I gotta do a little addition to the course because that's a very important thing for people to know.

Is that the chord is kind of changing on the upstrom. I do it so quickly. I'm freeze framing here. You won't notice it. It's a very split second thing.

So you don't hear it because I'm going so quickly and I'm so smooth with my chord changes in the strumming. But that's something to work on. And I tell students this, I do tell you guys in the course is because everyone's like, oh, you know, this is what happens. We do this.

Okay, so some of you. That's probably familiar. Okay, you're probably familiar with that pattern and what I recommend to do. Do what you're doing with the fretting hand. Just don't stop the strumming hand. So if my strumming pattern is 1, 2, 3, and 4.

See, even though I'm not fully on the chord, it sounds better than pausing. So, Matt, that's what I would do. So focus. If you're working on strumming, focus on the strumming. Keep this consistent. Keep this consistent so that you develop your timing and force the fretting hand to catch up to the strumming hand. So hopefully, hopefully. That was some, some good tips for you there, Matt. Great question though. Oh, Breed Loves are great guitars. I, I played. I Almost bought a 12 string breed Love because it was. They're beautiful sounding guitars. Definitely like the Breedlove brand as well. How about teaching some walk downs from G to C and C? Okay, so Jim. Yeah, so walk down is basically. I do have a video on walk downs. If you search Lauren Bateman bass walk downs or Lauren Bateman walk downs, there should be a video. But what you're doing is you're walking down a scale. So if you're going from G.

That'S a very common one. G, F sharp, E. So that's third fret, second fret, open string on. On the top top string or you go up E. F sharp, G. So usually you would go from a G chord to like a D sharp to an E minor. This is. It's very common. We use it. I'll grab the orange one. It's used in land slime. You know, when we're coming from what do we have.

G to the F sharp to the E minor. Now here's another walk down C to B to A.

So walk downs come everywhere. We're just walking down a scale to other notes, other examples. Heart of gold. I can't remember the exact chord progression, but it's like.

So he goes C, B, A, G. That's also.

Ccr. Have you ever seen the rain? They also do that same walk down.

A little bit slower though. But it's the same walk down C, E, A, G. So that's all you're doing is you're walking down a scale. Those are kind of the most common ones, is going G, F sharp to the open E or walking up E, F sharp, G, and then C, B, A, G or G, A, E, C.

G. What does that sound like?

Okay, so lean on me, right? Isn't that what it is? So you just see these walk downs are used very commonly used in music. And that's why when I'm teaching guitar, I teach skills because I think it's important for you to recognize the skill and be like, I know what they're doing there. Like, I teach people Travis picking, you know, and then when you hear Travis picking on the radio, you can pick it up like nothing as a very, very distinctive sound. And you're like, oh, I know what they're doing. I know Travis picking. I can play that song. So it's a really, really cool thing. Myrtlewood is an amazing tune. I don't think I've ever played Myrtlewood. What age did you get your first guitar? I was 16.

It's in the case over there. I don't have it. It was one of those clunker ibanezes. It's about 20 something years old now. My sister bought it for me as a confirmation gift when I was 16. And believe it or not, my mom told her to not get me the guitar because I wasted the piano lesson. So my mom was like, don't get the guitar. She's not going to do anything with it. And, well, we proved mom wrong, didn't we? And we still tease my mom to this day. My sister paid like 80 bucks. She bought it off some kid that was at her college at Boston University. And that was my gift. An 80 guitar with a case and a VHS tape and a book. I had a Hal Leonard book. And that's how I got started on the guitar. And it was a clunker. I mean, I. I take that guitar out every once in a while and I'm like, I don't know how I learned to play guitar on this guitar because it's. It's a tough one to play. But it was a, you know, just an Ibanez beginner. I think it like a dreadnought. So it was huge. And, you know, but. But I did it. I persevered because I just love the instrument so much.

You love Me so much. Anthony Jr. Shout out to you. Thank you for being here. So excited to have you. I feel like my strum hand is always moving in 16 speed. Is that necessarily bad? No, no, not at all. I think mine, if I were gonna. Yeah, I would say mine probably automatically moves in in 16 16th note speed most of the time too. And you'll probably see it in the, the videos. When I do strumming sometimes my hand, it doesn't always stick to the strumming pattern. I tell you because my hand is on autopilot. I have so much muscle memory in my strumming hand. And this is something because people ask me all the time, Lauren, how do you sing and play guitar at the same time? Well, in order to sing and play at the same time, your strumming hand has to be on automatic pilot. Okay. You can't see, sing and play at the same time if you're strumming hands on automatic pilot. I should be able to have a conversation with you. I should be able to do whatever I want.

Okay. So my strumming hand just really has a mind of its own at this point. But again, I've been playing guitar for over 20 years, mostly as a rhythm guitar player. So it, it does do its own thing. So that's not bad. That's a good thing because it means your hand is instinctively keeping the time. So that's good. I did shout you out, Anthony.

I already did. And who else do we have on here, Jeff? Like when I improvise over songs. Yep. Same thing with improvising too. Explain people. Small fingers don't exist.

Yeah, I mean if you are someone who does have smaller hands, say you're a shorter stature person, like 5 foot or under 5ft, you may benefit from like a 3 quarter size guitar because the scale is a little bit smaller. Smaller. But yeah, always good to practice while doing something else. Yeah, I tell people, this is what I tell people to do. And I have a video, I have almost a video on everything. Now when you're trying to sing and play at the same time, tell people, stand up and walk around.

If you can get up, sit down, walk around, you know, do the Rockettes. You can see my socks. I'm not even wearing shoes.

Grab some water. As I see my water glass over there.

See, I'm so real with you guys. I don't think any of these other teachers would, would be in there show you that they're wearing their socks. I jump on, I jump on in the group and I'm wearing like my PJs and they, they see my Mario PJs or whatever I'm wearing and I'm usually drinking coffee. So we, we have fun aerobic guitar with. With Lauren. Yes, exactly. So, hi. From Isle of Wit uk. Hello. Is it wit or white? Oh, I apologize, Donna. I'm sorry. Can you recommend an amp with the core selection? If I did get my donation. Oh, Jim. It probably came in and I might not have seen it because I was talking to the camera, but it'll pop up up there. I did see a few gyms come in, so I'm sure you're okay. Recommended amp. So the amp I like. So if you have an electric, I prefer. I like the Fender Mustang amps. I think they're very great. I do have a spark amp down here, which I think is pretty good for an acoustic guitar or I like. But my preference for acoustic. Other Fishman loud boxes. That's what I like. For course, I would recommend my guitar course, the seven level guitar system. LaurenBatemanguitar.com backslash course. LaurenBatemanguitar.Com backslash course. Where we go through, you know, playing absolute beginner to kind of the late beginner, early intermediate stages of playing guitar. And then of course after that I have all my other mini courses that you, you guys can learn from. Thank you. Oh, REO Speedwagon. Yes. I've had a few requests for REO Speedwagon, Greg. So I'm gonna have to get on one of their songs at some point. There's so many great songs. I will never run out of content ideas for you guys because there's so many great songs. And if you hear that's when my Boston accent really comes out is when I say I, dear. Because there's an R at the end. I took voice lessons and I trained myself out of a lot of my Boston accent. But when I get excited or if I'm on the phone with my. My parents, I sound like Tony Soprano. So. So it's very interesting. My voice has changed a lot over, over the years. I've learned how to project. So I got your seven level lifetime member. Yeah, Jim, that's awesome. Yeah. So we have a platinum member. Platinum level. And you get access to the courses, all the courses for as long as you need. And my live zoom calls and all that fun stuff. Do I ever play around with the ukulele? I've played a ukulele a couple times, but I, I mean, I could learn the chords. I haven't had them all memorized, but I've never. I remember I was at the guitar car school and we had a ukulele and I picked it up and I started playing Come to My Window. And people like, we didn't know you played ukulele. And I was like, this is the first time I've played a ukulele. I just knew some of the chords. So. Brian, thank you so much for your. Your donation. I really appreciate it. That's awesome. What are some ways I can get the hang of strumming patterns to different songs quickly? Lori? I would just say learning as many different songs as possible. There's usually, you know, there's some strumming patterns that are very common. For example, that 1, 2, 3, and 4 and very common. Or down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. I mean, unless it's a song that has a really specific rhythm, like a song, say, song like Wonderwall, you know, Wonderwall, you gotta play it. It won't sound like the song.

It won't sound like Wonderwall if you don't play it that way.

So those are ones that you know where the rhythm is kind of the riff. But there's a lot of songs that you can use the same strumming patterns for, and they'll work perfectly fine. So my recommendation is to learn, like, half a dozen strumming patterns and just use them in lots of different songs. And if you're looking to push your rhythm more, I do have an intermediate guitar playlist that has some more intermediate songs like Wonderwall, like Melissa Etheridge, Come To My Window. What's another one I did recently? Guns N Roses, Sweet Child of Mine. That's a really great one. That has lots of cool strumming. That's what I recommend. Just learn. Keep learning songs and learn as many rhythms as possible. Eventually what's going to happen is the rhythm will become ingrained. I can hear a rhythm and usually play it. I might not know exactly what the rhythm is, whether it's sixteenths or eights, but I would have to sit down and break it down. But usually, I would say 95% of the time, if I hear the rhythm, I can just instinctively play it on the guitar. My hand can find it. But again, I've been playing for over 20 years, so I've played lots of songs, done lots of different rhythms and stuff. So rhythm is almost more important than the notes. Yeah, the timing is super important. Have you ever played a mandolin? I have never played a mandolin. I am interested in trying. I had some people who taught mandolin at the school, I'm sure it's not that hard. I mean, once you play one stringed instrument, playing other string instruments, as long as it's not a bow, like a violin would be different because there's bowing technique. But I mean, if you play a guitar, you should be able to play a ukulele, you should be able to play a banjo. Although I know there's different picking techniques on a banjo, but in a mandolin, you should be able to play that too. It's just learning the shapes of the chords on the different instrument. And Rich, if you have this campfire songbook, it actually has mandolin chords. So you could just, you could just buy a mandolin and learn the chords in the book. So there you go. But the rhythms are the same. I think mandolin uses a lot more 16th note rhythm patterns, like very fast, you know, very fast rhythms. So that's something new. Yeah, I'm gonna fly too, Jack. I've been on here a little over an hour for you guys, but I just want to give one last shout out for our guitar giveaway. Thank you to Zagger Guitars. We have five easy play guitars that we're donating to veterans in need. They'll also be getting a copy of my 7 level guitar system. I'll be mailing out these to the anyone in the US that's a veteran, either active or retired. Okay. Someone in need. Someone that wants maybe, you know, someone who's like been dying to learn the guitar but, you know, maybe, maybe they're disabled and they're on a limited budget. I've helped a lot of disabled and wounded vets over the past couple years. So, you know, if you know someone that's been wanting to learn guitar, you think would benefit from learning guitar and having guitar in their life. It is such a wonderful thing to have a part of your life if you play guitar. You know how much this instrument has enriched your life. It's enriched my life. And the reason we are all here today, the reason there's 208 people and 135 likes on this, this live here, is because of this instrument. It has brought us all together. It is. Music is such a wonderful and amazing thing. And if we can help five veterans, if we can help give music to five veterans, I would love to do that. Lauren Bateman, get laurenbateman.com backslash giveaway laurenbateman.com backSlash Giveaway Go to the website. Nominate someone. We have five guitars we're going to give away. Thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate seeing you guys here. So nice to go live and see everyone. I've got some songs to record for you guys. I got some lessons to record, so I got to get back to work. But I wanted to pop on and say hi to everyone and say Happy New Year and thank you again so much for making my channel such a big success this past year. I can't wait to share more songs with you guys, more lessons. And we have that blues course that's going to be coming out this year, too. So can't wait to share that with you guys too. Thank you so much. Thank you to Zagger Guitars and I'll see you guys in a lesson video real soon. Bye everyone. Have a great day.