Looking back on my musical learning, and being primarily a hobbyist (or "professional student") as I like to call myself, I've had a couple of areas of growth that came "late" - or much later than they could have. Perhaps sharing some of these experiences can help others.

For me, one personal challenge I've had is being able to remember the chord progressions for pop and rock songs. I have a friend who just seems "naturally" better than me at this - he can seem to hum the melody to himself and his fingers almost "naturally" move to the right (or close enough) chords. When I try to do the same, it's almost like a 'trial and error' approach, where my fingers will go to chords that sound nothing even close to the chord that turns out to be the right one. What I've finally come to realize is that I just have not committed enough different songs to memory. Period. I've recently put aside ALL other aspects of playing to ONLY work on learning to memorize favorite songs and deeply understand the key / (nashville) number of the chords in each song. What I don't yet do (in the interest of time and to avoid confusing my muscle memory) is to transpose the songs to different keys.

What musical plateaus are you guys working on, or have at some point gotten past, that were challenging to you ?

TIA,
Joe

BB/RB 2025
Windows 10