i am quite happy with my 2024 progress, and feel like i've grown a lot as a player. i suppose it's best to review accomplishments from 2024 before planning for 2025.

practice improvements

i made some improvements to my practice principles this past year. i'll list these first, as some of you may find them useful and wish to incorporate them into your own routines.

• not so fast: one of the big things i learned in 2023 was to slow down during practice... mechanics don't tune an engine while the car is racing down the highway. i implemented the "practice slow enough that you don't make a mistake" philosophy. but what is a mistake? a missed note? a note that thuds or buzzes? a poorly fretted note that luckily sounded ok? i kept redefining the word mistake in 2024, eventually settling on "hand tension". if my hand tenses up, it is a mistake. hand tension kills speed, tone, timing, and cascades into bigger and more noticeable errors. we've all heard "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" but it didn't dawn on me until this year that smooth = no hand tension.

• gild the lily: one way to make playing slower more interesting is to add embellishments. these can always be taken out later. this not only helps one slow down, but doubles the effectiveness of your practice... like everything else, embellishments need practice. this is where a lot of emotional expression comes from, which is something else that is not practiced enough.

• domo arigato mr. vibrato: not only is vibrato a great embellishment we should all practice more often, adding vibrato can greatly improve your fretting accuracy. i add a bit of classical vibrato, whether or not i plan to use it in a song. i often add it to longer notes or when there is significant jump in the fret board. for instance, i add vibrato to the 9th fret from a 3rd fret barre chord. the vibrato has greatly increased my accuracy of landing that long jump at fast speeds. why? if you don't land in the right place you won't hear vibrato or the string might slip from under your finger. you are essentially narrowing the margin of error, forcing your fingers to hit a smaller target and thus increase your accuracy.

• a second saved is a second earned: i am fortunate to have an understanding wife... i put a guitar stand in the den within arm's reach. watching the news? i practice guitar. watching our favorite series? that's 20 minutes of commercials to practice arpeggios. just a 60 second commercial? that's time to grab the guitar and practice that arpeggio 20 times. i've easily doubled my practice time by reclaiming wasted time.

major accomplishments

• say my name: i learned the locations of all the natural notes on the fret board up to 12. i still need to calculate the notes above the 12th fret ... there's a couple of notes that i still occasionally calculate from their neighbors. i currently calculate all sharps and flats beyond the 6th fret by looking to their nearest natural note. the first 5 frets i have instant recognition of all notes.

• a voice above the din: hands down, this was the surprise of the year for me... plucking three strings at once, but making one of them stand out. i'd been playing with dynamics, accenting a note here and there or playing crescendos / decrescendos, but this was new to me. in this technique you to play the same notes in a chord over an over again while emphasizing a melody by adding pressure to one finger. to practice, make any chord shape. pluck the g-b-e strings together softly. do that three times. you should just hear the chord three times. now pluck the g-b-e string together three more times softly, but this time add additional pressure to one finger on your right hand each time... add extra pressure to the "a" finger on the e string, then the "m" finger on the b string the next time, and finally the "i" finger on the g string. you will still hear the chord three times, but you will also distinctly hear the melody. this technique really allows one to add a lot of depth to a song by playing two parts without drowning out the melody. i don't know why it hadn't dawned on me before, but this is the reason some notes in a chord have a stem that goes up while other have a stem that goes down... to separate the melody from the accompaniment... somtimes also as gray vs. black notes.

• the waiting is the hardest part: this year's song has me really pushing my limits for speed and accuracy. i need to hit over 13 notes per second on one run.. my current best is a little over 11. i couldn't even move my fingers this fast last year, forget about hitting the right strings in any sort of proper time. it takes a long time to build up speed, especially on something really technical. it's not just one plateau, but many. at least five by my reckoning, and i'm still not to the summit. patience is perhaps the greatest achievement with this one. i've practiced the toughest 8 seconds of this song 30,000 to 60,000 times, and spent more than 40 hours of practice time per second. keeping it slow during practice has really paid off here.

• slurring me on: slurs (hammer-ons, pull-offs, and tapping) are a key part of this year's song... punch tones on a swept arpeggio, a decending flurry in c major, and mordents for nearly every finger. i'd used slurs for accents before, but never for extended periods requiring fluidity. when i first started hammer-ons it was like i was weilding a sledge hammer, thinking a lot of force is required. now it's a two-inch bruce lee punch... that's a two inch punch, not a two inch bruce lee... i think my particple was dangling. accuracy is key for these, as it takes very little effort if you hammer-on just behind the fret, but all the force in the world won't help if you are too far back. my slurs are starting to sound quite fluid and i'm able to keep my left hand fairly relaxed even when sliding up and down the fretboard. this is a great carry over skill, usful for both accoustic and electric, in many styles of music... a good left-hand only legato takes a lot of work, and i made great strides in 2024.

• play it again sam: i've kept practicing "jesu, joy of man's desiring" b/c it has taken me a while to get over the red light syndrome and i wanted to keep it fresh in my mind. i've practiced this song far longer than i would normally practice a song. i no longer think about the notes at all when i play... it is a bit weird, but i hum it in my head and my fingers make it sound like i hear it. i realized that when i practice the song i'm more of an audience member, but once i try to record it, my brain tries to take over. i started recording with my eyes closed or blurred focus and got much better results. i spent some time on my audio and video pipeline, learned blender (the bits i need) and started synching audio and video takes. i didn't get anything published this year, but i did get comfortable enough to get a decent recording and learned both ardour and blender.

bag of tricks

some techniques added to my bag of tricks in 2024:

• basic strumming: worked on some basic strumming patterns and chord changes as part of the accountability group and zoom sessions with @Andy Wright. also worked on some basic flamenco strumming.

• poly rhythms: this year i jumped into a simple 3/2 poly rhythm with triplets in the melody and eigths in the accompaniment. i thought it was going to give me more grief than it did. this one turned out to be not too bad as the second bass note falls halfway between the second and third triplet.

• harmonics: this year's song has a lot of one handed harmonics. able to hit these running.

• planting: significant work on finger and thumb planting, and other stacatto techniques.

• tons of tone: i spent a lot of time this year working on getting different tones from the nylon.

• understanding chords: between @David Lieder 's chord quizz, discussions with @Jim Mrvos, triad drills, and discecting the songs i'm playing, i got a much better understanding of chords and music theory. for instance, one song uses a common jazz technique of surrounding the root... 7-2-r or 2-7-r. i later realized that the G chord changes (G, G7, G (9), G) from part of the song i like essentially use the same technique... the high notes are emphasized, so the 9 is treated more like a 2, so the progression becomes r-7-2-r, and thus uses the same technique but in chord form instead of arpeggio. i also spent a fair bit of time working with triad, inverted chords, and some c-a-g-e-d work.

goals for 2025

i'm not one much for goal-oriented methodologies, especially for something i find more akin to exploration than a project. that said, even a principle based methodology still needs goals. i like goals that are vague, unbounded, fluid, and practically unachievable. to me, a good goal is a distant point on the horizon by which i set a general heading.

when i first started playing, i had set one of these distant, vague goals... to be able to play at least one song worthy of some street cred among my nashvillian friends by my third year, which will be the end of this june. i picked "tango en skai" by roland dyens to work on for 2024 (and 2025). i didn't track it, but i'm guessing i've got almost 400 hours of practice time in on this one. my target for 2024 was to be able to play each bit of the song at 90% speed, and the whole song at 80%, with expected mistakes. i am able to play every bit of the song at 100% speed except for two arpeggio runs which are still at 85%. i practice the entire song at 75% speed, with it falling apart at about 80%. i can play all of part "a" at 95% to full speed. all-in-all, this is about where i thought i'd be with this song.

this goal carries over to 2025, and is my primary goal. by june 2025, i'd like to have this song recorded cleanly at 95% to full speed.

i'd like to get "jesu, joy of man's desiring" published by end of january. i've got some decent takes. i need to take a day, go thru the dailies, and do some editing.

i am planning to setup a practice amp in the den so i can start adding some electric guitar practice during tv time next year.

i won't pick another challenge song for at least 6 months, and maybe not until next year. there are a few techniques, such as tremolo and percussion, that i want to focus on without the distraction of a whole song. there are also a few songs that i started and never finished learning. finally, i need to budget to some free time to work on a guitar fam collab this year... if i jump straight into another challenge song, there won't be time for anything else.