Media added by Matt Wildcat

A day late due to finishing up college stuff, but here's my next part of my CAGED System understanding! A lot of rambling and going back and forth here as I try to make sure I know what I'm doing and talking about, but I think I got there eventually! Now I just gotta expand and experiment with changing positions and switching between pentatonics and arpeggios, you can do that right? If there's anything I've missed or gotten wrong, please let me know! I wanna be able to get the knowledge down so I can start trying things out, learning and doing better! Also, I really need to use Dark Star more often, this guitar's got such a nice sound that I've overlooked forever!

Finally back to playing now that my chest ins't trying to end me XD. Thought I'd go back to the CAGED system as I've covered it briefly before but wanted to really work on making sure I understand how it works and how I can use it! Here, I go over the chord shapes and how moving the shapes to different positions creates other chords, and how this process can create all of the chords in different places! I apologise if my words don't make sense, it sounded better in my head. I also apologise for my sucky knowlegde of some chords, I'm working on doing better! So long as I've got this all right, I'll be moving onto each chord's arpeggios next, and then hoping back to scales so I don't burn out! (And hey, don't drop the ball this time, me XD)

Here's my brief take on lesson 53, plus some questions I've got (at the end of the vid!). Not gonna lie, today was a bit rough because I started to doubt myself a little in terms of my ability, so I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. Hopefully I'll be able to push that aside and press on tomorrow. If anyone can give me some advice or critique my current playing technique (picking hand, fretting hand, guitar positioning, anything like that), please do so. It's been driving me crazy today as I just don't know whether I'm on the right track. Cheers all!

Here it is, my first original lick - using lesson 52! I know it's not the greatest, it's not shredding and some of it is probably kinda boring, but I'm proud of the progress I've managed to make! Who knew it could be so tough writing a lick over one chord! It's not complete, I improvised the ending because I'd spent all day writing and just kinda burnt out and wanted to jam it already. With that though, I really hope you like it!

First proper attempt at an improv solo jam thing! I took the advice of writing my own licks and adding sweeps in, but obviously I needed to take a step back to the basics of learning scales and what notes I can use to write my licks first! So, once I learned this scale, I decided to quickly try jamming it out! After several horrible videos, I finally wrapped my head around what notes sound good with each other. It's not perfect, there's still a few dodgy notes here and there, but given this was complete improv, I think it sounded pretty good! Tomorrow, I'm gonna focus on writing a simple lick to play over this track, then I'll move onto the next position! Very excited!!

I know, /another one/. Nice short vid for once. No commentary on this one, so here's my thoughts: I think I've finally got it! When I was playing, it certainly felt smoother. Now, I'm not sure whether I'm nitpicking, not holding the pick right, playing slow initially, or whether I still haven't quite got it, but watching the video back, my hand still looks a little bumpy and not as smooth as I initially thought. My left hand made a fair few mistakes - Watching Ben's video on how Syn sweeps, I picked up on a slight change I needed to make to my pattern, right at the bottom of the sweep, so most mistakes are here where I try and correct that (Downstroke on 5th string instead of upstroke). But I'm happy with my progress overall. Now, I'm gonna go work on some scales!

Another long vid. Here, I try and sort out my sweeping motions. My commentary isn't exactly the greatest, and looking over the vid, I'm actually kinda doubting whether I got it down and if I'm being too critical of myself. I attempted to take what I learned from the first sweep picking lesson, but I really think I need to keep working to get it right. I'm not happy with my pick placement, and I'm not actually sure if I'm tilting right and getting that fluid motion. It felt more compared to previously? Honestly, I don't know. Any comments, suggestions, ideas, etc are appreciated, because I'm unsure.

So, wasn't planning on posting this today (Or at all, tbh). Originally wanted to do more work on NRtD and cover some sweeping lessons, but had to prioritise this for college.. Just a rough practice attempt at "The Drug In Me Is You", using bar chords. It's not entirely correct in terms of exact chord placements or rhythms, I did simplify it a little. Still though, a good exercise for getting used to bars and stretching my hand (More painful than I imagined though, RIP hand). There are lots of mistakes and my phone vibrating at the start, which isn't ideal, but I liked the sound I got and it wasn't overly terrible, so here it is!

AKA "Why you shouldn't slack for nearly 2 months." Skip to about a minute in for actual guitar, I ramble again. I know, it's crap. I've been slacking real bad,and it shows - BUT I did learn up to the solo! Turns out, my tiny, slim fingers do actually have some reach to them! I know the notes, I can reach them, I just gotta stop panicking, relax a lot more since I'm so tense in my right arm, and go back a few steps to using metronomes and going real slow - I skipped a lot of steps in my eagerness to learn this. I rushed too much. It shows. Don't be like me, folks. But anyway, here's progress. I'm gonna really try get back into my routine of playing consistently again. I was doing so well for about a month!

Here's my first ever attempt at fingerpicking! It's something I never thought I'd find myself doing, so it's gonna be a long road of hard work to get somewhere, but I wanted to be able to show my progress as I keep working at it and improving, so here's the first step! It's messy, it's rambling, it's probably not very clear and there's a whole list of things to work on, but I'm already proud of myself for picking it up in the first place and managing to wrap my head around how the basics work (Thanks to the lessons on here, of course!) I'll be updating with more videos as I go, gonna make this my main little project for a while (Like NRtD was). Hope you enjoy!

Long video alert, with a lot of rambling comments! Honestly I was so close to throwing in the towel today with this, it's been a rough day mentally, my chest is killing me, but I really wanted to get this done. Massive thank you to everyone who left me advice and helped me get to this stage! There's a few bits where my timing is off, where I generally screw up notes and just lose it, etc, (it gets a lot better at the end) so this probably needs yet more work, but I think I need to take a break and work on something else before I come back to do the main riff.

Not my best demonstration, but still an exercise I hope some will find helpful! Particularly good for the left hand, this focuses on hammer-ons and pull-offs that you can add to your solos to make them sound cool without too much work! Just... don't do what I do and rush to try and get it perfect, because otherwise it'll end up really sloppy like how I do it in the video. Really need to work on these once I put the NRtD intro to rest for a bit lol

Here's a little speed picking exercise that you can add into your warm-ups to help improve with alternate picking, strength in your 3rd and 4th fingers, or just switching notes and strings! The notes are 10-7-9-10-9-7, and this is played on every string, going down. You could also go up if you wish, I didn't think of that until right now as I post this, lol. You can also probably adapt it for a pull off/hammer on exercise, but that's up to you! I hope this is able to help! \m/

Continuing from yesterday! So, there's still a lot of work to be done here. I've identified my new biggest issue, and that is my arm locking up. Watching over the video, I can see how badly it's affecting because a. The sweeps are not as clean as I thought and b. my arm is aching from being locked up. I need to really get that raking motion down, so more focus on that it is! Hitting the notes seems to be better. Me reviewing my picking pattern has helped immensely as I don't hit that open note as much (of course except when I video it! >:( ) but obviously it still needs some conscious work done. Pinky finger may also still need some work, and I wasn't able to figure out the pull-off that was recommended to me yesterday just yet. Also, metronome issues and just me not being able to count nor hear. Also, please excuse the cat screaming in the background. He likes to crash my recording sessions.

Normally wouldn't post stuff like this. Practising NRtD's first 8 bars of intro solo over and over again. It's not great at all, it's really sloppy. I've managed 45-ish mins practice today, had to skip yesterday, so it could've been a lot better, but my main focus was to show off my progress on my picking hand, as I've managed to change how I hold my hand (Thanks to Jak and Ben!). All comments and critiques welcome!

After taking a break yesterday, I came back and improved! I'm a lot more confident with playing this now, just one slight slip-up nearing the end which you'll definitely hear but I think I recovered well. I'm playing along to the official soundtrack, and the timing at the start is pretty hard to nail down, but I got really close! Finger positions are a lot better too, just gotta work on slides and making those notes sound smoother. It's not so easy standing up, but worth it! Got a better tone on the amp too, it's not much but it's better! Hope you like it! \m/

Inspired by the Video Games Music thread! So, spent a fair while today learning the first half of this theme, worked out by ear. I'd originally been playing it from memory and as such got a few things wrong. Went back, listened to it, and re-worked it out. There's still a few points where I tried reverting back to the original way I played it, there's a time where I hit an open string, and a few instances of using the wrong finger to play. I've been really trying to drill into my head finger positioning, and using my pinky more, which is song is great for, as well as stretching. It's not perfect, but I plan to come back to it and make it better! Also, standing up is HARD!! Another thing I struggled with is the tone. Original is a lot crisper and cleaner. I couldn't replicate this as well as I wanted on my amp, I used a twang setting with a LOT of reverb, treble and mid, a fair amount of drive, and I think some Tape Echo. It's close, but not 100%. Hope you like it! \m/

Done for a college assignment. Attempt at the SGS Economy Picking Etude 1 after around a week of practice. Had to focus the camera on my picking hand so apologies that you can't see my fretting hand that much. I keep having problems where I don't let the strings ring out long enough, but here I think I managed to get it somewhat right. A little annoyed that I completely botched the bend right at the end, but this was my best recorded attempt to date. Planning to try move onto the next step of the Etude with the 6 notes, can do it around 70% speed but any faster and I lose it. As for my picking, I feel like it's not smooth enough at this speed, still feels like I'm plucking more despite trying to angle the pick a little. Is it just because it's slow and that once I get faster, it'll be a lot smoother? Also, is it bad I rest the guitar on my left leg to reach notes comfortably? Tips + comments appreciated! (Also a side note to everyone who offered me advice yesterday - Thank you!!)

Quick little cover of the main theme to Banjo-Tooie's Glitter Gulch Mine level. Not the full thing, just as much as I could capture in a minute. Using metronome at 135bpm. Will try and leave tabs in the comments!

Another shot at the A7X Burn It Down intro after a bit of downtime. Still not perfect, but definitely an improvement from previous attempts. Using a metronome at 115bpm playing two notes per beat. Apologies for the bad quality, phone really isn't the greatest.

Not a full cover as I can't record over a minute on my phone atm. Just a fun little vid of a song I've wanted to learn for a while now. Learnt completely by ear, in drop D using nothing but power chords, so let me know what you think or if there's anything I can improve on!

Just a fun little vid. Learnt how to play part of ALPOH ages again, and then eventually decided to learn it at a higher octave just for fun shortly after that. Haven't played this in a while, so definitely needs more work, but again, just a bit of fun. 🙂