AlkaliMarxist

No worries at all, I appreciate the effort regardless.

I think I'm coming to realize that a lot of things, like the metronome, are just one way to learn something amongst many and the "best" way really varies person to person.

Practice is going pretty well - had a busy weekend so not a lot of time but I've got the structure of The Wind down and it's just a matter of repetition now to build speed and precision. It's been fun. I'll certainly be coming back to this thread a lot as time goes on for all the great resources and if I come upon some specific issues later in my learning I'll definitely reach out.

Thanks again for all your input.

Hey, sorry about late reply, didn't have a lot of time lately and I wanted to be able to take your post in properly before responding.

I totally get what you're saying though, while all the advice I got is great and very appreciated I think I also needed people to just tell me to go for it and maybe make some mistakes. So that I knew I wasn't missing some "right" way to do things.

So thanks for typing that up, definitely taken in a positive spirit, not patronizing at all. I've got a bit more confidence to just get stuck in now and worry less about doing it wrong. I'll be back if I have some more specific questions later on though.

That's amazing

I watched the five gum one, it wasn't anything amazing, but I saw the thumbnail and though "what did happen to that weird gum that they marketed the shit out of for a few years?"

Basically everything is someone's niche interest. Some people are interested in the evolution of the rail coupler, some people are interested in how marketing decisions are made.

Apparently some guy named DT Suzuki introduced a modernized version Zen to the West as like a secular buddhism in the 50s. So westerners see “Zen” as like the meditation and the folk wisdom bits of buddhism.

Hell yeah. Saw them live around the time of their second album. Was awesome, though most people there seemed to just know Del from the Gorillaz songs that he was on.

Thanks, I've started doing some fingerstyle and so far neither hand is taking too much of a beating. My acoustic actually came with wrapped strings, I suppose so they don't die on the shelf so quickly, but I like the brighter sound - that's for acoustic though.

I always found rusts and arks very boring, so no.

My interpretation is that religion itself should be opposed, but not in the sense that the "new atheist" might oppose it as an expression of their own intellectual superiority but in a way which is informed by an understanding of what religion is and what purpose it serves within bourgeois society. To remove the need for the opiate by treating the affliction which causes the pain that it soothes, not to withdraw the opiate without addressing the pain.

Ironically "idealism" is almost always an accurate way to describe the chuddier position on an issue.

I'll give those muting exercises a try.

Do you play much with others? I've mostly heard the metronome advice in relation to that. So that when you go to play with others you have experience keeping tightly in time. Though playing to a backing track would probably serve a similar purpose and I think some people are innately better at keeping time as well.

Thanks a lot for those book recommendations too, I'll definitely seek them out. Tablature is useful, while I can read sheet music a little (learned when I was younger) translating that to the guitar neck is a challenge.

It's kinda an old meme that the second in a series of things is always the worst, to the point where people make a note of pointing out exceptions. It makes sense though, if you don't change enough it feels pointless but if you change too much it won't feel like a continuation of the same thing.