What’s up everyone,

I started playing guitar back in 2001 on an old Les Paul knock off hand-me-down from my step-father. Really wish I held onto that guitar, honestly.

It wasn’t until around 2004 that I bought my first guitar of my own, an Ibanez RG321.

A few years later and I bought my Schecter C-1 Blackjack, which was my main guitar for several years.

I didn’t buy my first acoustic until 2013!

When I bought my Epiphone Hummingbird I certainly started playing a lot more acoustic, but because I was in college at the time I hardly had time to play. Then after graduating from college I found myself working 2 jobs and both of my guitars collected dust for longer than I care to admit.

This past November it dawned on me: I tell all my students still in the buying phase to start out on an acoustic. Yet, I have minimal acoustic guitar experience. I only know how to play 1 or 2 acoustic songs and had never learned finger style to that point.

For the first 15 years of my playing, outside of the fundamentals like learning the main guitar chords, everything I learned was metal, rock or blues.

With that realization I made a choice: For the entire year of 2021, I will only play my acoustic.

I am really excited about this journey as I feel it is going to take me to where I’ve been trying to get musically for quite some time now.

For the month of January I’ve been really focusing on tightening up my guitar chord transitions, which is what inspired me to write that lesson. I’ve also been focusing on strumming and rhythm and just started dipping my toes in the waters of finger style guitar.

I’ve been listening to a TON of Kaki King and Mike Dawes lately. If you know much about finger style guitar, you’ve probably heard of them. What’s even better is both of them have master classes over on JamPlay.com. I checked them both out, since they say they’re designed for beginners to advanced.. But damn it, it was too hard, haha.

Now I am working on finger style exercises to get the fundamentals down before I start working on that master course content.

I’ll probably record a video of where I’m at now and then do another at the end of the year and share it up here, as well as post my findings along the way- be it in a blog post or a full-blown lesson.

My ultimate goal for this year? Learn to play this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aPF0GQOQmE

Check in with y’all soon.

Until next time, take care.