Over the last 10 days, I have learned and completed exactly two songs (though I’m a day or two away from a third). The first “unit” of Yousician’s level 4 contains four melodies designed to develop the ability to play single strings strumming up, as well as down. I’ve already spent some time strumming up and down with chords, which I find much easier, because I’m still playing muscle memory catch-up from before I was using a guitar pick for everything. Even without the added wrinkle of quick-strumming eighth notes, the melodies are far more intricate than those from previous levels, requiring a lot more finger movement along the fretboard.

While my progression through the activities has slowed to a glacial pace, I actually feel like I’m making better progress than ever before. To get the hang of these songs, I’ve been slowing them down to 70% in the practice mode. I actually slowed the second one down to 50% when I started it, but realized that was too slow for me to actually gain a sense of the rhythm of the song. At 70%, I still struggle mightily the first few times through the song. By the end of my second day with each song, I was dipping my toes into 80% speed. The third day has been getting up to 80% and 90%, and by the fourth day I’ve started at 90%, and then played through 4 or 5 times at 100%, by which point I’m getting a very serviceable 3 stars (but not perfection) on each one.

So I’ve been spending about four days on each song, yet I’m more attuned than ever before. When I first tackled Ode to Joy, I definitely couldn’t play it perfectly, but I at least knew what I had to be doing, and it sounded right sometimes. With these newest melodies, I’m pretty well hopeless when I first start, and I need to go through the song several times at much slower speed before I can even begin figuring out where I need to strum down and up, or which parts I’m especially struggling with on the fretboard. I’m more attuned to my progress than ever because I’m starting from a weaker position than ever before, but I’m quickly reaching a position of more intricate competence than I ever have. That it takes me four days at a time is only more encouraging–in the space of an hour, I can go from totally lost to totally jamming, and when I played Greensleeves for my girlfriend over Facetime, she recognized it right away!

Here’s the first two parts of Greensleeves!

I’m truly amazed at how effective using Yousician for a mere 15 minutes every day has been. I have no point of comparison for how fast I’m improving, but I personally don’t care about the rate. I know for a fact that I’m getting better, and that’s pretty neat 🙂

Photo by rocknwool on Unsplash