Week 4: Network Learning Project Update

For my Network Learning Project, I chose to learn how to play a finger picking pattern song on the guitar. The song I chose was “Say You won’t Let Go” by James Arthur. This task has proven to be more difficult than I thought it would be, but I am persevering. Prior to this assignment I knew a few very basic chords on the guitar and could do some basic strumming patterns, but I had not learned any picking patterns. Building up callouses on your fingertips is essential for being able to fluidly play the chords on the guitar. I haven’t played guitar in while and so the callouses on my finger tips had faded away. So on top of learning a finger picking pattern, I’ve had to work on rebuilding my callouses.

I have chosen to primarily use the video above to learn the finger picking pattern. This was one of the original videos that I had posted and has proven to be most helpful. The video I chose to use walks through each chord that is being play and displays the chart on the video. It also slowly shows how to pluck each pattern out one chord at a time. It teaches the finger picking pattern through a slow progression and then plays them all together at an easy to follow tempo. Once each chord and pattern was shown, the video played the patterns more up to speed.  I tried using  the other two videos I originally posted, but one was in a different key with different chords and the other just used a basic strumming pattern. I used Twitter to see if there were any other videos that might be more helpful, but my originally choice turned out to be the best. I wanted to try and sing the lyrics while playing and was searching for a lyrics sheet. With great doubt, I tried Twitter, thinking I would surely never find anything that could help me learn guitar, but to my surprise I found a lyrics chart as well as a ton of instructional videos. Who knew!? So then, I begun practicing away.

It definitely takes a lot of practice to master a finger picking pattern. I started off very slow and began increasing to the normal speed. I still am working on transitioning from one chord to another smoothly. That has proven to be on of the more difficult parts for me as well as singing while playing.

A time I failed was when I first tried to sing the lyrics while playing the picking pattern. I could not figure out how the two lined up together. My timing was all off. I almost gave up, but then I decided to use Twitter to find the song being fully played. It helped a lot to hear how the lyrics and picking pattern lined up. I tried again and slowly found success. I am still very much in the learning process, but I’ve definitely made some progress.  

 

Another frustration of this process is not being able to use an expert. My husband is a very good guitar player and could easily help me learn this song. It would be easy for him to see and hear what I am doing and give me personal critiques. Personal feedback and advice is something that is missing through this learning process that I feel could aid in quicker success. But, I am happy at the progress I was able to make just by using my online network.

 

It was hard to show a before and after picture of my learning process for playing guitar. So I did my best to present a picture that shows me strumming the guitar and then finger picking the guitar.

 

BEFORE:

 

AFTER: