Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to start a Modern Method study practice group. It's a slow process through this book and I thought we could support each other going through it.

Here is the idea:
- Every week reply to the thread with an audio or video link to what you're working on in the book.
- We could also ask each other questions
- Everyone could go at their own pace

Anyone interested?

Here is Tomo's comment:

"Thanks so much for subscribing to my Guitar Wisdom. This is good! I hope subscribers will share their experiences and encourage one another to keep working on this method book. It is a great book for learning about patience and dedication."

@Tomo-san Thanks for the encouragement.

I wanted to post a audio clip, but I don't know how yet. Maybe next week.

This week I'm working on the chords and Second solo. For review, I'm going back over the First Solo, but this time without a metronome and just trying to make each bar sound great. The first run though it took 30 minutes to play second solo -- just once. HAHA

I've increased the practice time with the book to around 30-45 minutes a day. Previously I was doing the Troy Nelson books, but I think this Leavitt book does more of the fundamentals and I seem to practice differently with it. For example, I've learned all these chords before in the chords exercise: C / F Fm / C C7 / F Fm / C Am/ Dm G7 /C -- but I never played the changes listening so hard for string noise and wrong notes. The fingering for Dm was new to me, and it's way easier for me to play with the fingers falling "all at once". The medium sized Fm was new too. This time around playing with my ears switched on, I hear that sometimes, I accidentally mute some of the notes in a chord ... but never noticed before. Previously, I was trying to play changes at some target BPM even if they weren't clean. Oh well, at least I'm learning how to listen now!

Next week I'll try to post some audio so I can share all my mistakes for encouragement!

Take care everybody.

Anyone else want to post?! Just reply. :)

I just joined this site, but I do have the book and will try to work through it. I did lesson 1 in the book today. I will see how it goes. I like the idea of accountability and encouragement

@Kevin great. Post how it goes :)

This week: I spent many days on the 2nd solo without a metronome, then worked it up to 50 bpm. I've also been learning "Get Lucky" on ukulele. Funk is so fun, it's like your fingers get to dance--tricky to mute everything and play tight. Not much else to report. Summer is here in Toronto. =D 8-)

@Kevin M Sine how did your practice go this week?

I will join in! I bought the books however the first is still sitting open on my music stand on the first exercises having been set aside for some time now. I think this thread may help with discipline for me working through the book.

I will start tonight and post back with my progress!

@E M POOL. Great. Yeah, come on and join in!

@Kevin It's going well. I got the 2nd Solo up to 70 bpm, but if I go faster I start making mistakes. I think Ill move on and get it ip to speed through review over time. On to pg 26.

Hi Kevin, I played whatever what notated. So, when it was single notes, I picked single notes, and when I saw a few notes, I raked the pick across whichever strings to make those chords. Hopefully that makes sense. Basically, just copying what I saw Tomo do in the videos.

Ok, so I moved on to pages 8&9 doing lessons 5-8. I have not started using a metronome yet as I am just trying to get my brain and fingers on the same page. If I had to guess I am probably around 50bpm on lessons 7 and 8. on both lessons 5 and 6, I went through pretty quickly about 65-70bpm. I will stick here for a few days to really get a handle on it. My goal is to hit 70bpm fairly clean. I will let you know how it goes.
Keep up the good work Jean-Michael. How are you making out E M POOL?

Oh and congratulations on the daughter graduating!! I forgot to say that :)

I am moving on to pages 8 and 9, so far so good. I cant say I have mastered pages 6&7, but I was able to set the metronome to 60 and get through it with may an error or 2 due to fingers missing the note as opposed to not understanding the notes/chords.

How is everyone else doing?

Hey Kevin nice job man. :)

I had quite the week... I hurt my elbows. I think it was a combination of factors. I was feeling a bit run down, but I didn't stop to rest. That plus some shoulder weakness, kettle bells, & work stress. Anyways all that contributed and I discovered that I way over-grip the guitar with my right hand, plus when I'm "trying to play well" I tend to just tense up my body.

I'm doing some physio exercises and playing less acoustic guitar. I also lowered the action a little. I'm trying to let go of needing to sound good, I think that might be the trick for me to reduce this tension. Ha.

I moved on from the second solo. I got it to sound nice at 80 bpm, and at the moment I'm working on the etude no. 3, on page 26. It's almost there, just need some weekend time to try it do it on the looper. I've noticed that when I go back to revisit other etudes and songs, I usually need to start slower at 70 or slower and rework the tricky parts to get it back up to speed.

I noticed a funny thing during review. Sometimes, when I'm mentally tired, the picking hand does something like mumbling. It's like ... keeping time and flubbing notes kinda like when we were little kids and didn't want to look up how to spell a word and just wrote sloppy. I found that the same thing happens with reading, after a piece is partially memorized, my eyes can kind of zone out and actually maybe I haven't _fully_ memorized it. It takes real effort to actually look at each note and play what I'm reading. It's a bit like meditation and distraction.

Hey E M Pool how is it going? Does the book make your music stand collapse under the weight? ;)