As promised, the last two weeks were spent getting back into chords. First I learned the D and A chords, and while A was very easy (requiring three fingers to play sequential strings in the same fret), D is a little tricky because unlike every chord covered so far, it only requires four strings to be played (every other one has involved five or six). While that sounds easier, it’s actually pretty tough to avoid those first two strings when nearly every other chord involves them. Nevertheless, D and A have now been assimilated into my playing repertoir, making that a total of seven different chords I can play. After that, I received a basic introduction to power chords, chords that only require two strings to be played. Now all that stands between me and completing Yousician’s Level 3 is a unit on knowledge, which will just be a refresher of all of the playing techniques and theory covered in Level 3.

I’m slowly reaching a place where I am almost-mediocre; I can play strings and chords decently well, but still lack the muscle memory to seamlessly switch between them. As such, I feel a burning desire to start learning how to play specific songs, but lack both the tab-reading and quick-strumming experience to do so. For next week, I plan on utilizing several videos I found through Open Educational Resources, and I hope those will help me find a basis upon which I can build towards playing Love and War In Your Twenties, The Mason, and many more.

P.S., check out this Screencast to quickly realize how painstakingly just able I am to play these songs (but maybe skip ahead 20 seconds to avoid unnecessary ear bleeding)

Photo by Lucas Newton on Unsplash