Billy Jean exercise frustrating!

WOW :flushed: M8 L2 (Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson) I can do the slow workout but the medium workout seems insanely fast to me! I canā€™t even imagine doing the fast workout. I am REALLY STRUGGLING to get the medium workout.

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I remember that one being tough. Get the tempo into a metronome or drum machine ans inch it up 2bpm, master it, 2pm more. Rinse and repeat. You will get it!

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@420bpm Hang tough, man. You canā€™t make an omelette without breaking a few fingersā€¦er, I mean eggs.

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Hi @John_E, thanks for that suggestion. :+1:t3: Yeah Iā€™ve been working on it and did get much better at the medium speed but I think Iā€™m gonna skip the fast workout on this one, maybe Iā€™ll come back to it along with other workouts that were challenging once Iā€™ve completed the course. Iā€™m learning so much here, itā€™s all good. But thanks for the suggestion of working up little by little with a metronome, that sounds like an excellent idea which Iā€™ll surely use.

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@MikeC :rofl: LOL Thanks for the encouragement! :+1:t3::+1:t3:

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I think I played it at medium speed and then moved on because there was no point wasting time trying to play it faster. I came back about 6 months later and could play at the fast speed with no problems.

If you play it the "rightā€™ way though, itā€™s even worse than this because Louis Johnson played the octave on the E string with his thumb :laughing:

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I stopped doing the 50 Song challenge because I started hitting songs that were too tough for me. What I found myself doing instead was picking songs that were way harder than some of those but I put my head down and worked it because I wanted to learn the song really bad. Now I am going back to the 50 Song challenge I find a lot of the songs very easy. That said the damn Strokes song is still killing me. Itā€™s funny how certain things are easy for one person, hard for the next.

Itā€™s the old sayingā€¦practice, practice, practiceā€¦
Billie Jean will get her due.

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Yeah, itā€™s interesting how this works. Some songs are super-easy for me to play because I always liked listening to them. Other songs/genres that Iā€™m either not familiar with or never cared for are not easy for me to warm up to.

I find learning etudes more enjoyable than some songs/genres, possibly because they are more melodic to my ear than a song or genre that never appealed to me.

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I finally had a breakthrough with this. I was frustrated and moved on. Then, I took a week off of practice as I was out playing in Death Valley on a camping/off roading trip.

I then revisited the lesson and within about 30 minutes, I did it! After resting my hand a little, I could then do it on medium speed pretty easily. The fast speed, not so much :rofl:

Now I use this as one of my warm up exercises before starting the next lesson.

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Hey, thatā€™s amazing! I knew you could beat it

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No one wants to be defeated.

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This is where I am going to my post my hard to achieve lessons not just Billie Jean. :rofl:

I am on M10 L3 (Module 10 Lesson 3, 12:8 time and ā€œI Put A Spell On Youā€).

I canā€™t really say that Iā€™ve nailed the slow workout cleanly but I am trying to do the medium workout and it is VERY challenging.

LOL I decided to just stay on the slow workout for a while to get that down.

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I will just leave this here :open_mouth: :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBoOHZZ6OY

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Went back to Billie Jean the other day and I know its an easy tune yet it does my head in and thatā€™s just the slow work out. :crazy_face: :crazy_face: :crazy_face:

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Slow it down. Way down. Slow it down some more. Play it like that, rinse and repeat. Lock it in slow, then slowly bump it up. Itā€™s there, i promise you youā€™ll find it.

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Thanks for that information
It is slowly working

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I have nothing but belief that you will get this. One day youā€™ll look back on this and recognise the value of the exercise. Keep going, my friend. Youā€™ll get there.

Another frustrated Billie Jean student here as well. I was just going to post on the lesson thread; Iā€™m not able to get through the slow speed workout. Iā€™ve repeated it a couple of times now and about the time I think Iā€™ve got it down it shifts up the octave and I lose it again. Round and round I chase it like that and itā€™s crazy. Itā€™s the first lesson Iā€™m not able to get through on the slowest practice speed. But Iā€™m going to skip it for now, and keep moving like everyone says. Iā€™m trying to picture how the person thinks, who came up with this riff.

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