So, I haven’t completed the course in any meaningful way (yet). But I’ve listened through all of the lectures. One challenge with giving any kind of review is that I don’t want to give too much away, the guy has put together a solid syllabus, and should (quite rightly) be compensated fairly with me revealing all his “tricks”.
His lectures are, at times a bit dull, which I suppose is unavoidable if you want to be thorough. But they are also full of interesting references to sports and he’s GREAT in that he cites references that back up his statements, a lot of them are sports
related but they seems absolutely transferable to musicians. They come in both video and audio format, meaning that you can listen to them in the car too, they’re mostly not dependant on visual cues so you get the meaning from simply listening, although there are some moments that are him showing clips of practice rituals etc. But you can always go back and see the clips later.
There are many moments where I find myself making connections to my own playing that are obvious when pointed out, but I haven’t worked on deliberately. An example from my own playing is when he mentions that when we practice we might feel confident and playing with the appropriate amount of attack, but on stage we might get nervous, trying to play it safe by playing more carefully than you’ve practice. This can often give less than optimal results because your body has, in fact, practice on playing with a certain attack, not carefully. I find this in my own playing when playing acoustic guitars plugged in to the PA. The course is full of these small insights, and a lot of them are not directly related to guitar playing. Another example is trying to do some jumping jacks, quick jog or something to get your pulse going, then try playing to simulate the experience of performing with nerves.
I also think his exercises would probably work (because of a general busy life these days I haven’t gotten round to do this in a regular way yet). One thing to note is that a lot of these exercises are not done with the instrument, in fact they might seem unrelated to playing, so you should be a person who won’t automatically give into the “this is stupid” feeling we sometimes get when trying something new that does not immediately make sense to do.
All in all, I think it is worth the money, but as with all these things, the results come with the follow through, not the actual purchase of the course. My qualifier here is that this is a priori, I haven’t completed it properly yet and this is not a testimonial in the typical regard.
Anyways, that’s my experience so far, can return with more information once I’ve completed the course.
