And here’s the slightly faster track for Level 5, which you can add the 8th notes to or still play quarter notes
The Lesson
My intention is to turn this exercise into another “Practice This Daily” video, and I’d love to use your progress clips in the vid to show that it works! Please let me know if you don’t want your clips on Youtube for the world to see. (I promise to show your progress in a flattering light of course)
I can barely play this with my metronome set to 60bpm lol. You want a before video of that mess?? I don’t feel comfortable attempting to play this at the 132bpm, but I suppose I can if that’s what you really want. For reference, I just finished module 6, which is level 1, correct?
Film it anyway. The goal is to see your progress after a month of practice. You may not even be able to do it at speed after a month. But guaranteed you’ll see improvement and that’s all that matters.
I’m 15 minutes into this and my brain is slowly dribbling out of my ears. Are my fingers possessed by the spirit of a terrible bass player? Why do they just want to do their own thing rather than what my brain is clearly telling them to do?
This is a great exercise for basic dexterity before you even think about flying fingers. The changing patterns are what’s messing with me. I’m chunking each bar and then the first four bars and then each bar of the second four and then all four of them. I’m at the point when I can do both sets of four bars separately and now need to put them all together. The final thing to note is that for some reason in the final bar my hand wants to go pinky, ring on the C and G at the beginning rather than doing a finger roll. I’m really having to force myself to do that finger roll on my pinky. As for my plucking hand? Who knows what’s going on there? Am I alternating? Raking? I’m amazed I’m plucking anything with the level of concentration that I’m putting into my fretting hand.
Thanks Josh. No, really. Thanks.
I’m a bit late to the party but having a go nonetheless. This exercise has already helped me understand about the additional shapes for triads, which may be obvious in hindsight but still… realising this has already been useful for another song I’m practising, so thank you!
I started working on this yesterday. Didn’t get a “before” video because I was doing headphones while the wife napped. I’ll get a video tomorrow.
But every time i woke up during the night last night this was going through my head. I can hear it just fine and I understand the pattern, but my fingers weren’t having it at all yesterday.
I’m also starting this late. Took me until day 2 to get it under my fingers, spending more than 10 minutes each day on it.
I guess if I had any feedback for @JoshFossgreen right off the bat it’s that - I completed the course over a year ago, I’ve learned lots of songs including ones outside my wheelhouse, this is the first exercise that’s taken me 2 sessions just to learn the basic pattern. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just depends on the intent. If it’s supposed to be simple to pick up immediately? It wasn’t. If it’s supposed to require some effort? It does!
It helped when I realized the chord progression (and therefore the starting note of each measure) follows the C major scale in the “normal” major scale shape. Which is implied in the video and notation, just not explicitly stated.
I’m starting a week late and can’t even promise I’ll get to practice this daily (sorry Josh) but I’ll try.
Here’s my “before” video, taken after just enough practice to not completely mess up the exercise (there’s a mistake or two in there), but before I put any real work into improving it.
)
realising this has already been useful for another song I’m practising, so thank you!
