Intermediate Prep & Set Your Goals

You're here, thank you so much for checking out this course. I very much appreciate it and thank you for trusting me with your guitar progress. I take it very seriously, and with that in mind, I wanted to make a video that gave a lowdown of all the points that might make an ideal intermediate course candidate, plus some often needed assistance with things like goal setting, which should also help to manage expectations. But before I list what an ideal candidate. Look like. It's really important to note that there is no ideal guitar student. Everybody learns different things at different times, and if you don't feel like you've perfected some of the things that you feel like you maybe should know, or you don't recognise everything that I list here in this video, please at least give this first module of lessons a go. The jam tracks, the exercises, and the techniques that we cover, along with the things I explained, should get you up to speed. But if there's anything you struggle with, there was a big consolidation module at the end of beginner acoustic, that will be your first point of call, along with particularly the later levels of beginner acoustic. I suggest we look at 5 essential components just to make sure this course isn't going to overwhelm you too much and that you will be able to make the most of the lessons. We have here, the videos, the jam tracks, and the song tutorials and try and predict that that is going to go well. We're gonna start off with what theory you should know so that all of this makes sense, not only from what you can physically do, but from what we should be aware of in terms of musical terms and the things that I'm saying. First of all, you should be able to read basic tab and chord. Diagrams, we had a full video of that right at the beginning of the beginner's course, and hopefully you've got plenty of experience of reading a little bit of both of those. Ideally, you should understand what the 14 and 5 chords in a certain key are referring to. For example, if I ask what the 14 and 5 in the key of C is, you would reply. That would be C, F and G, and in the key of G, that would be a 14 and 5, and the key of G would be. G, C, and D major. If that is totally new to you, you'll perhaps make better progress in the latter stages of my beginner's course, however, we will have a recap of a lot of that here, along with knowing basic chord construction like a C major chord is based on a triad of C, E, and G, and then also the way we play a C major chord on a guitar also includes a C and E note as well, C, E, G triad. And then on top of that as well. Looking at chords now, you should of course know your basic open major and minor chords, perhaps some seventh chords, for example, F 7, C7, along with all E minor, A minor, D minor, for example. Perhaps you've had a go at the F bar chord, but it's not perfect yet. And perhaps you're aware that we have something called a power chord, which can be played like this or like this, or even with three fingers. But we're gonna be looking at bar chords and power chords in their own time, they don't need to be perfect before this stage, but maybe you've heard of them. A little bit of scale knowledge or a bit of experience playing some single strings is preferred because we looked at it so in depth in beginner acoustic. We looked at the C major scale, G major pentatonic, A minor pentatonic, and E minor pentatonic. Those ones in particular would be really handy to have some knowledge of here so that we can. Kick on from that, but we will have a refresher of them when the time comes at the right time during intermediate acoustic, so there's no need to run back right away to refresh all your scale knowledge, especially not for the first couple of modules. We'll be covering the essentials as we go. And finally, it's really fantastic if you could have experience of playing at least one song all the way through, perhaps along to the original recording, and really, we're looking. For more than that to make the most of this course. The jam tracks that we'll be looking at in this module, and also that we've had throughout beginner acoustic, should make that a breeze. The jam tracks that we provide are specifically written to be a bridge between the learning materials, the techniques, and the songs, and playing along to real songs that we suggest that you learn at each level. The jam tracks are the bridge between that to make that as seamless as possible with on-screen chord. Pumps making them really interactive and really visual, so you know exactly what to play at any one time, but that everything in the jam track is at that specific level. And that's everything. If most of that was kind of making sense and you recognise the terms and you think, yeah, I've done a bit of that in the past, feel free, continue from here. And even if you feel quite unsure, you have my permission to continue through at least this first level and just see how you do. Get on. Often, learned guitarists are very self-critical and can really halt progress by sticking to the beginner stuff and just repeating it and repeating it and repeating it. And there are so many benefits to just progressing on and waiting for that absolute perfection to come later, because we tackle things from many different angles and just repeating the same thing over and over again is likely to give you the same result. So if that hasn't been working for you right now, I encourage you, continue on through this intermediate acoustic programme. And let's see what happens. Hopefully that really helps you clarify whether this intermediate acoustic course is right for you. It is all on acoustic guitar. There is an electric version of all this syllabus coming, it's gonna be filmed as soon as I can, but we've got intermediate acoustic to crack on with first. And just a final reminder to make the most of the community support we have available in the Andy guitar membership. That's currently done with the Discord app where. You can be invited exclusively to that Discord and you'll connect with other members, be able to ask questions, get peer to peer support, not always hearing from a teacher. But if you do want to ask me anything directly, tune into the regular weekly live streams that I host myself, and if I can't make a certain live stream, we have other teachers that fill in for me, so you can always get the support you need from a qualified teacher here at Andyguitar.co.uk. Let's not waste another second, let's get straight on with it. I'll see you in the next video.