Strumming into 2024; ready? :)

Here are some updates from Justin... and a new free feature on JustinGuitar.com! [View this email in your browser]( Life Stuff & Updates Are You Ready for 2024? :) My guitar playing friend, Happy New Year! I had a lovely recess over the holiday, and I hope you did too! We celebrate a double Christmas every year; my partner is Polish, so she always cooks up a traditional fish-based feast on the 24th, but she also does a traditional British Turkey and trimmings on the 25th. It’s a lot of work and a lot of food! It takes a couple of days to get over it. :) We took a few days break in Somerset before New Years Eve, visited the incredible Safari park called Longleat and the light display in the evening. Quite an incredible place; so much better than other zoos or theme parks! The weather was pretty awful, so the trip involved wet, windy and very muddy dog walks. :) We stopped by The Newt for a lunch on the way home—amazing food. Then, a pretty subdued NYE with friends. I managed quite a few days with no tech, hardly using my phone and no laptop use, which is nice. Even though my job is playing guitar, I spend a lot of time on the computer scripting, editing, recording, transcribing, doing admin, replying to emails… all of it is based on my trusty MacBook Pro. New Year Recommendations ✨ Just because it was New Year and I suspect many of you might be looking at ‘cleaning up’ and ‘fresh start,‘ I'd like to recommend a couple of tools I find super helpful. One is an app called [Alfred]( (Mac only) which must save me hours a month; a supercharger! The other is concept for organizing files that I got from the book [Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte](. It’s a system for organizing folders and files, and it’s been a huge help and enabled me to keep things organized in a logical and productive way—and somehow it helped organize my head too. Guitar-related, I'd recommend you the same I did to my [Music Theory]( students in our first Live Class of the year: revisit this [Goals & Destinations]( lesson, and write down your plan for 2024. [Sharing your notes on the Community]( will help you stay accountable, and also inspired by other guitar learners. ;) I’d like to share something a bit different, too. My student Paul emailed me about new music and introduced me to an artist called Ren. He released a song called Hi Ren about a year ago, so yeah, I’m a bit late to the party, but it’s incredible. It’s not child friendly; difficult mental health topics and swearing, but wow, incredible performance and art in a pure expressive form. It’s confronting and bold and a must see. Incredible video production too. [Watch Hi Ren on YouTube]( kid is a genius, if you like it there is more to dig into on his channel. Immersed in Blues! 🎸 I'm still fully invested in the new Blues Immersion Course, spending every available minute on writing lessons, transcribing, and recording. This program is a monster—an incredible amount of work, but I’m really enjoying it, and I’m sure many of you will love it. More about it soon! My reading and listening time has been all Blues based as well! I read a super interesting book about the life of Robert Johnson called [Up Jumped The Devil](. Fascinating! I tried using an ‘enhanced learning’ technique and listened to the audiobook while reading it. Not sure how to judge if remembering it all was more effective or not, but the [Audible]( is very well done. I’ve not been doing many [song lessons]( lately, simply because I’ve been so absorbed in the new course… but I will get back to them very soon! I met a few young people (and parents) lately that have requested some newer music, it makes me feel old :) lol. But they’re right, a 15 year old is probably not so into rare [Neil Young]( recordings… so I’ve been exploring adding some more pop to the library. It’s all about balance, right? Neil Young one week, then Justin Bieber the next! :) But about songs, we do have some exciting news to share with you. Drum rolls, please... 🎊 Introducing the brand-new Student Performance tab! 📹 We're thrilled to invite you to showcase your progress and talent with us. It's simple: once you've learned a song from one of my tutorials, record yourself playing it, locate the "Student Performance" tab below the video lesson on the site, and you're all set! :) This feature doesn't replace the [AVOYP in the Community]( it's an additional space for you to share recordings. :) The Student Performance tab does not support likes and comments yet, but your enthusiasm could encourage us to develop that! If y'all embrace it and share videos there, we'll enhance its features, potentially allowing interaction on the published videos! :) I'm eager to watch you perform and see how this goes.  [See Student Performances]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [TikTok icon]( [YouTube icon]( [Logo] Copyright (C) 2024 Justin Guitar Ltd. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up on my web site justinguitar.com, hope you enjoy my newsletters! Our mailing address is: Justin Guitar Ltd PO Box 695 Farnham, Surrey GU9 1NB United Kingdom Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe](