Wendy,

Interesting update......

Note that Andy Kemp is a very good player so listen to what he says!

You might see if your library has a book called Zen Guitar by Sudo - it's about the philosophy of playing and practicing, not about how to play.

The style that Caroline Herring is playing is mostly about the picking hand and the fingerpicking patterns. Most people, including me, worry mostly about the fretting hand and neglect the picking hand. You can learn a handful of picking patterns and practice them until they become completely automatic and then apply them to almost any chord progression, throw in a few fill notes, and you will sound like her. So get that picking hand in automatic by repetition. Also, decide if you are going to pick with your fingers, with fingerpicks, or with fingernails, and stick with one method.

I am teaching a 12 year old girl guitar at the moment and I find that she loves to practice songs she likes but does not practice scales, songs from the lesson book or music theory stuff. So I now teach her what she wants to know and let the other stuff seep in from playing rather than from tedious practice. So I guess with limited time like you have, I would recommend going right to the songs you want to play and getting them down well, and then adding another and another. Don't spend too much time on scales. Now you can play bar chords, the CAGED method will let you play any chord anywhere on the neck.......but that is not what Caroline Herring is doing - she is mostly using 1st position chords, a capo and some transitional notes to color the sound a bit.

You probably know that there are lessons on YouTube for all well known songs. Just search for the song title and "lesson" and someone will be there to teach you how to play it. That is a far cry from learning the guitar back in the day!

Have fun with it!


Colin

I try to critique as if you mean business.....

http://colinwardmusic.com/

http://rosewoodcreekband.com/