New to Active Melody any good starting suggestions

[Craig]

Hi All,

I am a new member here, I know the notes on the neck, the open chords, strumming etc, I play acoustic only but still consider myself maybe a late stage beginner.

Any suggested lessons or starting points to ease me into it, I did not join initially as I figured this may be too advanced for me, but I find many other guitar programs and sites too easy.

Happy to hear from any other members especially acoustic players of good starting points on here to help me move along. I really like how Brian teaches so I would like to continue here and stick this out

Thanks everyone

Craig

[John H]

Hey Craig
Welcome aboard you are in the right place for fellowship and great guitar fun. Brian has a vast library of styles and genres from which to choose. Search the library for what suits your interest(s). There are standalone lessons and jam along solo lessons from every genre imaginable. Take time, be patient, utilize all the learning resources and remember there is no straight trajectory to learning/studying You might get derailed by something ‘shinier’ along the way. Stay active on the Forum, participate in the Monthly Challenges (no matter your level) and remember to have fun. Reach out if you need anything. Rock on my friend. You can submit audio/video of your progress any time on the Forum.

John

• This reply was modified 1 day, 9 hours ago by John H.

[Alan L]

Welcome!

There is a menu labeled “my courses.” In there you can find a CAGED course and a theory course. Good place to start and see if there’s anything new for you in there.

From there I say browse the lessons and make a wish list of lessons you want to try. Whatever catches your ear. You can also browse categories in the drop down menu, like fingerstyle, no backing track, even acoustic. Or do a custom keyword search.

AM content is non linear, which some find difficult. But I think that’s the magic in it. The learning is hidden inside fun to play compositions and broken into little nuggets. My approach has always been just play what excites me, and I’ve been here 5+ years, still loving it!

[Michael Krailo]

The key to learning guitar is consistency of effort daily. Doesn’t have to be many hours daily, it could be 15 minutes or a half hour. If you work on this every day, your going to improve over time and get all your questions answered over time. We are here to help you along the way as needed.

One of the greatest tools at your disposal is taking what you learned and recording yourself playing. The goal is not perfection, but just to show yourself where you are truly at. You don’t have to post these video’s of yourself if you don’t want to, but it could help you to get some feed back about certain things you might overlook. At the very least, look at your own recordings and use that as motivation for improvement or identifying what you need to work on.

Make sue you learn the basic playback capabilities of SoundSlice so you know how to loop over a bar or two of a lesson and slow it down.

The other point is to pay close attention to the exact picking pattern that Brian uses in his compositions. There are many times that this plays a big part in getting everything to sound correct and come out in a rhythmic way. I’m assuming that you are not solely focused on finger picking only. There are a lot of hybrid picking techniques which I find very useful as well.

That should get you off to a great start. Just fill out your profile in the My Account section when you get a chance.

Root note patterns >>> CAGED shapes >>> TRIAD'S. Just put in the work and watch your guitar skills soar.

[Ben C]

Hi Craig, welcome to AM and the Forums.

I would recommend EP444. It looks a bit tricky but is actually quite simple. Its probably my favourite piece and is great to play.

A lot of what Brian plays seems quite difficult but a lot of his stuff is a lot easier than it looks. None of the lessons are there to trip you up. Just dive in to whatever lesson sounds cool and see how you get on

[IAN B]

Hi Alan
I’m in the beginner stage as well and as Alan notes the My Courses is a good place to start.
Within this series is
1 Essential Theroy
2Caged System
3 Lead Guitar Course.
I have just about worked through all of these and somewhere in that process I came upon EP436 which is a huge series of lessons which deal with the pentatonic scales, minor, major scsales with a lesson on bending strings and solo pratice. You will also see the backing tracks and a demo presentation with video and video tabulature (very cool).
Don’t rush and most of all have fun.

Ian (aka: dustyoldchips)

[IAN B]

OPPS. I addressed my response wrongly as this in resonse ti Craig.
Sorry.
Ian

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