Hey guys,

I'm getting towards the end of Guitar Fundamentals 1. I'm on chapter 6, playing in keys. I've been working through these lessons slowly, and practicing Lisa's sings alongs over and over. I've got to be honest, I'm having fun playing these open chords. And for the first time, what I'm playing sounds musical. I love that techinique of hitting the bass note first. I find myself getting creative too, muting strings, playing part of the chord as an arpegio, then changing to another chord smoothly...it's great.

When I first started playing a year and a half ago, I didn't even know what a major or minor chord was. Somehow I discovered the power chord and turned my gain way up, and learned a pentatonic shape.

I took some private lessons and my teacher had me learn the five open chord shapes. But we immediatly got into the barre chords, and he told me not to waste too much time with the open shapes. He knew my end goal was to play hard rock, like Van Halen, Ratt, and Cinderella. Is it that open chords aren't used much in rock music?

Should I continue working through these open chord exercises slowly and master them? Or speed things up and quickly get to barre chords, and of course the Rock lessons.

The way I see it is, if your getting noticible improvement and making something musical, then stick with it.