I made the decision a long while back that I wouldn’t seek perfection across my Yousician experience, in part because it would take me far too long to progress, and in part because it only takes one single error in a string of tens or hundreds of notes to set me back a minute or two of time. When I only have 15 minutes a day, that’s precious.

But I was getting tired of bashing my head against a song for three, four, five days at a time before mastering it, so I decided to go back and revisit every song I hadn’t been able to play perfectly the first time around. And hoo boy, did THAT show me just how far I’ve come. In a single day, I aced 8 or 9 songs from Levels 1 and 2, and made a single mistake in all that time. It took me another two days to ace the remaining songs from Levels 2 and 3, and the only time I really had trouble was in one or two places where it kept telling me I was playing a dead note.

The last time around, I would have absolutely believed it. But the difference in quality between last time and now is night-and-day. I’m playing every chord, and almost every note, way cleaner and crisper than I was before. I suspect that most of the “dead notes” I get are because I have a few non-metal strings on the guitar nearing the end of their life. I think this in part because the dead note is most often the fourth string, and occurs even when I play it “open,” without a finger on the fret board. When you’re playing all six strings, it’s REALLY hard to miss only the fourth one. But I digress.

I’ve come leaps and bounds since starting playing guitar with Yousician, and there are sings and reinforcers for my progress everywhere I look. I worry about what’s going to happen when I don’t have a free inquiry project as a reason to play every day, but I think it’s mostly become a habit by now, and one I thoroughly enjoy. Check back in next week for the culmination of (this stage of) my journey. Cheers!

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash