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I'm active on the Justin Guitar community forum.  It has an area for people to post their learning log, progress and such of their guitar journey.

This blog will be a copy and continuation of that learning log to make it visible to others.  Hope you enjoy it.


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This Blog

 This blog is a copy of a post in a Justin Guitar community forum under the topic of learning log. Because blogger/blogpost publishes my story in reverse order, you may want to scroll all the way down to the very first post to get these storied in the order that it happened, rather than the default / reverse order. The one thing I'd like to say about learning the guitar is how amazingly and continually rewarding it is.  Sure, it's a challenge at the start, but it doesn't take long to get progress and soon it starts becoming fun.   Almost all of my posts on this blog are from the perspective of a solo guitarist who's also singing.  If you are a guitar player in a band and not lead vocal, not looking at fret board and such are not as important. If you are contemplating learning guitar or any other instrument, you are starting what will become a life long LOVE of playing, performing and singing music.   It's particularly mindful and also fun and so very g...
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Retirement and travels

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 I retired in 2019 and we spent 6 months renovating our house ready to hit the road in our SUV and caravan (aka RV / camping trailer) and circumnavigate the continent of Australia. This is called doing the “big lap”. We signed a 12 month lease on our house and moved into our caravan only to have no where to go as covid hit and travel restrictions meant we had to delay our trip. Thankfully we live on 6 acres and were able to live off grid in our caravan until we could hit the road later in 2020. Many evenings were spent sitting around an open fire playing guitar and singing. We had fun in our own back yard. We’ve now been on the road permanently since late 2020 and hope to keep going for another 2 years or more. When I chatted to a local friend about our plans, he said with the guitar we’ll be popular on the road. I wasn’t really sure what he meant, as time has gone on, we’ve had some great camping experiences thanks to the guitar. Much of the time I’m playing ...
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Stuff

When I first started playing I would hear Justin and others encourage me to play along to the original song / video. I just couldn’t do that so I’d play the song my way. In my head it was close to the original, in reality it was a fair ways off. It was just such fun to be playing old favourites. Now I’m much more able to play along to the original song yet don’t feel compelled to always do that. I’m proud of several of the songs I do that are along the lines of the original song, and also love it when an artist reinvents a cover. One example of that is the Civil wars cover of Billie Jean.  Civil Wars - Billie Jean Completely different to the original and yet awesome in it’s own right. After I’d been playing for a while, I noticed many of my songs sounded too similar. Justin has commented on this in a number of his lessons when he talks about the D D u u D u strumming pattern that’s very common, esp among beginners. So I started looking for songs that forced me t...
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