Hi all,
I expect there are lots of new folks here like me who started playing during the pandemic. I'm a long time guitarist who plateaued a long time ago, and it's been really great to have something fun and new to learn. When I'm doing it right, the sense of progress is immensely gratifying in these trying times.
However, it's very easy to feel directionless when I sit down to practice. It gets frustrating, and at times, can even make me anxious if I don't feel like I'm progressing as much as I should. What should I set my metronome to for each exercise? Where did I leave off last time? Am I actually getting better?
To be able to efficiently put the wealth of information I've found online into practice, I built a practice tool using an app called Coda. It's basically a fancy spreadsheet that's more flexible and has extra bells and whistles to let you build your own apps, sort of.
This tool helps me know exactly what to do, and how to do it, and it fills me in on what I was thinking last time I did each exercise in my routine. It charts my progress automatically, and makes it easy to access any tabs, audio files, or any other resources I may need for a given exercise.
For the analog players around here, I apologize for how massively overkill and techie this is. But I find it very helpful and wanted to share it in case anyone else would like to give it a try. You can find the link here: https://coda.io/d/Mandolin-Progress_dt-YjRth7iL.
It should be easy to make a copy and start your own (Coda is free). Yes, this is my actual practice log so you could technically check up on me and yell at me if you see me not practicing!
I'm happy to answer any questions in this discussion, and I'd love to hear your suggestions on how to improve it.
Cheers,
Nick
Bookmarks