In desperate need of direction

Playing Technique
#1

Hey,

Hope you all are doing well today, since a couple of weeks i’m not really.
The reason why is, since i’m done with playing covers i came to realize i still know nothing much after all these years. The problem is i’ve already dabbled in everything that’s guitar related, but never really kept at it until it was second nature or knew the theory of it. Once i could pull it off i was kind of satisfied, but i never learnt to use the licks or solo’s in my own way, or even think about what I do.

Some time ago i started learning the basics from a book again…starting from all 5 pentatonic and major positions, but i’ve been here a thousand times before. Learning something isn’t the problem , but applying it in some original way that doesn’t sound like an exercise is. Once i learned a block, it’s just that, a block that can be played up and down. Once i shift my position, it’s almost like i don’t see anything but the block i’m in for example.

A couple of months ago i tried taking private lessons from a teacher via skype, he provided me with a self made course where you can find everything from positions modes ect, but it came down to just being stuff you had to remember with no context, so i became bored very fast so i ended up quitting. I guess this course of his would be ideal for people who already know this stuff but just need a refresher or something, i don’t know.

All of a sudden classical guitar caught my ears attention. it’s something i’ve never done before and i would really like to learn some songs…but knowing myself it will boil down to playing some covers without knowing what i’m doing. i’ve already been there and i’m tired of that, so yeah, maybe i just have to start all over and pretend like i never touched a guitar before, in this new classical genre, but where do I start?

Getting back at the basics just seems so slow and tedious, and guitar playing is something that’s always been the opposite for me, learning solo’s and licks so you can sound like the worlds greatest always has been my motivation and right now i lost it. I pick up my guitar, repeat the same old stuff, get bored and put it back down whereas some time ago i could play all day long just to get that lick or whatever sound right.

The thing is, practicing these textbook scales and chord progressions just don’t give me the same satisfaction/motivation as learning a solo that melts my face.It feels like a chore. But one thing is certain, I want to get better, expand my knowledge but at this point, i really don’t know where or how to start over because i’ve tried many different approaches. I think a teacher that gives me direction and context about why this scale or that progression is important would do wonders but i can’t find anyone, so i’m on my own here.

to give you guys an idea about how i play i will upload my latest Van Halen cover: Ice Cream Man Solo Cover - YouTube

At this point it’s not really technique i’m worried about, but actually knowing what i’m doing. Not that i feel satisfied about my technique, but it outweighs my knowledge by far at this point.

Anyone else with the same problem here? how did you get past this? What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Sorry for the rant guys and thank you for your time.

Ian.

#2

Trust me dude I read you loud and clear. A big moment theory wise for me was tetrachords. I now know if I know them all, I at least have access to all the crayons when I start crafting my own phrases. But it’s really the progressions that I am working on now. For myself I like phrygian, minor, and diminished so I work in these scales. I got a book about how music works, modalogy, it is very vague, still very good book, I think there is also an even more thorough book called harmonic experience. Modalogy goes into progressions, cadences, extremely precise specifics on every note of the mode, and how it works in the progression. This book does not play it is the instruction manual for our tuning system.

Since I dont have perfect pitch it really is in my best interest to sort of stick with the same tonic, this is only my point of view. So most of the time I stay with E. I learn how to connect all the Yngwie, gypsy jazz, and flamenco, played with a pick of course on my classical guitar, style phrasing together against a E bass synth drone here, that entails arpeggio runs, tapping licks, scale runs, single string lines, open string lines, pattern motif ideas, pedal point. So I like Phrygian I am a sucker for that spanish matador flamenco sound. So I learned, and this is why tetrachords can be a massive help, that it can simplify scales down and you can begin to understand how to meld between minor and harmonic minor or phrygian and phrygian dominant. They can help open your ear, and you can finally hear it more clearly. Because after all a minor scale is the minor lower, and upper phrygian tetrachords. So I would suggest you to hear the difference for yourself in these tetrachords, quiz yourself, make sure you can aurally hear the difference between them all. I believe this to be a huge key to unlocking us non perfect pitchers to give us that nudge into actually being able to more confidently compose soloing phrasing lines.

But yes I still dont feel music inside, or hear it, I have to find it either through inspiration from watching the greats like paco, yngwie, django, vai, whoever really, or I just dabble around in the scale against the drone constructing motif pattern ideas or mirror flip other ideas from the greats to see if there is still untapped potential, warping them with rhythmic feel. But still I lack the experience of playing changes, keep asking and searching for help. You will find it.

I think a big step that can help is to thoroughly analyze your favorite players by ear only, progressions, basslines, drums, guitar, everything. All songs, live performances, in order to be great you got to put in massive amounts of work.

When you are at your give up point, go watch Stochelo Rosenberg, Django, Jason Becker, Cesario Filho, you wont want to put your instrument down ever.

1 Like
#3

Hey there, great playing on the solo :slight_smile: I think you have a lot going for you, good timing and tone, so that’s a lot to work with.

Too bad about the teacher – sounds like a dud. You need to find one that can help you find your own direction. Having pages of “dots and numbers” for tab with no context is no fun … that’s not music, that’s just mechanics.

Very hard to say what might unlock things for you. I’ll give a few things to try:

  • Barney Kessel is an old jazz player, but his video on youtube is just top-notch when it comes to learning improv ideas. I think it’s in the first 10 mins or so where he talks about coming up with ideas and then executing it. I think that for you, you’ll need to think about the ideas more, which will be hard for you at first as you’ve spent your time so far mimicking others. But you might have more in you than you think, you just need to dig a bit.
  • John Mayer has a shorter video saying the exact same thing as Kessel. Mayer’s a guitar god, believe it or not!
  • YouTube has lots of theory lessions, google “guitar theory intro” for more … but theory can get dry and intellectual, and I don’t know if I’d recommend it for you. See if it clicks, though!

Checking in on basics: Do you know your chords and names, and why they go together? e.g., if I said “a 1-4-5 progression in G”, or “E-C#m-A-B7 is 1-6-4-5 progression”, does that mean anything? Justin Guitar has a video on it.

Cheers and best wishes, jz

2 Likes
#4

Hi there! Have you tried writing your own songs/solos? The purpose of music is to express things, after all. If you aren’t expressing yourself, what are you doing when you play guitar?

That isn’t the kind of thing you will learn from any sort of teacher, book or video. That is the kind of stuff that comes from within. Maybe you’re at a loss because you’re looking outwards for direction, instead of inwards. What do you think about this?

1 Like
#5

Finally a really good creative lesson. Going to mess around with his suggestion this week. Thanks for sharing this gem.

1 Like
#6

Hey, @Mr_Samsa

Well, i did try and make own songs and improvise over those back when i used to play in a band with some friends. it was all just for fun though, nothing serious. But i lack inspiration when it comes down to writing music or improvising and probably because i never really tried and stuck with it, it never got better. Something i’m better at is rearranging songs :smiley: so you give me an idea, and i can get to work with that, but building things from scratch…i just get overwhelmed because there are endless possibilities.Partly because i don’t know what the hell i’m doing. I need confines to work within i guess, wich brings me to my next point. Doing covers of songs i really like is very confined, i only have to recreate something and try to do it as good as possible without thinking about what i’m doing.Maybe that’s the reason i always did this.I thought learning play something that’s way above my ability would make be a better musician…well, on the technical aspect it did help significantly but that’s about it. When someone asks me to play something, I immediatly think about what cover i should play, and if I try to improvise or noodle around, I just strike that good old A Chord and walk those pentatonics with the casual major minor 3rd up and down. So…That’s what i’m doing when i play guitar, i set a goal, I want to learn that song or solo and obsess about it until i can do it. Now I realize it’s just monkey see, monkey do and i would love to find a way to turn this around in a way that keeps me obsessed just like when i’m learning a solo or new song.

Going back to basics is what i need to do, but like I said, i wish i could find a way to keep it interesting, playing a scale up and down to memorize it doesn’t do the same to me as playing a rip your head off kind od solo.

#7

Hello @bradejensen So i guess the keyword here is tetrachords right? i never heard of the term and i will look into it to get a better grasp of what it actually is.

Thanks for the tip and thanks for sharing your story.

#8

Hey @jzohrab ,

Thank you for replying!

Well, i guess the teacher had the best intentions, but you know, he is a jazz player and did music university so, what seems very common to him is like alien to me. I asked him to give me something to work towards to, asked for directions other than “learn these positions in all keys, show me where the 3-5 and 1 is, after that we’ll start having some fun”. So yeah, i don’t think everyone is cut out to be a teacher.

I really appreciate the suggestions you made and i will certainly check them out later today, never heard of barney Kessel, I do know John Mayer but until now never really paid much attention to him.

My basics are as follows : I know the chord names if the root is on the E or A string, I know the difference between major,minor and 7th chords in theory, practice and sound but that’s as far as it goes. I recognize diminished and add9 chords by ear because they sound special but i don’t know the theory behind it other than, there’s some added notes on a basic chord. If you would ask me to make a chord progression i wouldn’t be able to (except the more common 3 chord poppy or rock stuff) because i don’t know what role each chord or grade (I, II, III, IV, V…) plays, and how to take advantage of that. So, when you ask me to play a 1-4-5 in G I would have to process that for a minute and say ok, " so you want me to play G-C-D?" and come to the conclusion that the chords would probably be right except i don’t know wich ones have to be minor or major. It does ring a bell, but I just don’t know enough to go jam in a jazz or blues freestage café :slight_smile:

#9

Definitely true. Also, the student-teacher pairing has to be right … that teacher might be the right one for someone else, but not you. Tuning the lesson to meet the student’s needs is something that takes a different teaching skill.

Got it, thanks. I’ve searched briefly for a good succinct lesson on this, but couldn’t find one I liked, so I’ll throw a few points out here, maybe that will help as a starting point. (There are a few different ways to describe chords, but this feels reasonably simple to me.)

I assume you can sing the notes of a regular major scale, e.g do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. In the key of C Major, those correspond to C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. If you find those notes on a fretboard, you’ll find all your regular scale shapes, e.g https://www.fender.com/articles/how-to/c-major-guitar-scale has a few variations.

Below are a C and an E, in the first instance they’re played together (harmonically), and in the second one after the other (melodically):

-----   -----
-----   -----
-----   -----
--2--   -----
--3--   -3-7-
-----   -----

That’s called a “third”, because if you count the letters from C to E (C = 1, D = 2, E = 3), E is the third letter up. C-E is called a “major third”, because there are 4 half-steps between C and E (if you play them both on one string, you can count the fret wires between them).

Here’s D to F (harmonic and melodic):

-----   -----
-----   -----
-----   -----
--3--   -----
--5--   -5-8-
-----

This is also a third, because D-E-F is three letters. D-F is called a “minor third”, because there are 3 half-steps between D and F.

Following the above, here are the rest of the thirds in the key of C:

* E-G = minor third
* F-A = major third
* G-B = major
* A-C = minor
* B-D = minor

You build chords by “stacking diatonic thirds”. “Diatonic” means “notes contained within the scale”. So, starting with the note C:

The notes C to E is a third, and E to G is a third. On the fretboard, that can look like this:

-----
-----
--0--
--2--
--3--
-----

This is a “major triad” because the bottom two notes (C & E) are a major third apart, and the top two notes (E & G) are a minor third apart.

You can double up any of these notes, as long as you play C-E-G. So this gives the open-position C chord (with the notes from bottom-to-top C-E-G-C-E), and also the common C barre chord (notes bottom to top C-G-C-E-G-C):

--0--   --8--
--1--   --8--
--0--   --9--
--2--   --10--
--3--   --10--
-----   --8--

Now stacking diatonic thirds in the key of C, but starting on the note D:

D to F is a third, and F to A is a third. That can look like this:

-----
-----
--2--
--3--
--5--
-----

This is a “minor triad” because the bottom two notes (D & F) are a minor third apart, and the top two (F and A) are a major third apart.

If you find combinations of D-F-A notes on the fretboard, those are all D minor chords.

Staying in the key of C major, if you build diatonic triads starting on all of the notes, you’ll get the following triad “qualities”:

* C: C-E-G = Major
* D: D-F-A = minor
* E: E-G-B = minor
* F: F-A-C = Major
* G: G-B-D = Major
* A: A-C-E = minor
* B: B-D-F = diminished  (!!!)

Yep, B is a “diminished triad”. From B to D is a minor third (3 half steps), and from D to F is a minor third (three half steps). It sounds different than major or a minor triad.

For each of these triads, you can double up notes (or not) as you wish, and you’ll end up with common guitar chords.

It’s customary to label each triad with a roman numeral, with upper case for major and lower for minor, so you get:

* I    C: C-E-G = Major
* ii   D: D-F-A = minor
* iii  E: E-G-B = minor
* IV   F: F-A-C = Major
* V    G: G-B-D = Major
* vi   A: A-C-E = minor
* vii  B: B-D-F = diminished  (!!!)

See the I-IV-V there? That’s the C chord - F chord - G chord chord progression. Other common progressions:

I - vi - IV - V - I
I - vi - ii - V - I

If you stack yet another diatonic third on top of each triad, you’ll get 7th chords:

* I    C: C-E-G-B = Major seventh
* ii   D: D-F-A-C = minor seventh
* iii  E: E-G-B-D = minor seventh
* IV   F: F-A-C-E = Major seventh
* V    G: G-B-D-F = Dominant seventh
* vi   A: A-C-E-G = minor seventh
* vii  B: B-D-F-A = minor seventh flat five, aka half-diminished (!!!)

The type of thirds stacked on each other yield the chord quality. Starting from bottom to top:

* major + minor + major = Major seventh
* minor + major + minor = minor seventh
* major + minor + minor = Dominant seventh
* minor + minor + major = minor seventh flat five

Still see the I-IV-V chords? That’s still a regular I-IV-V progression, C chord - F chord - G7 chord.

If you add yet another diatonic triad on top of each, you’ll get “ninth chords (major, minor, dominant 9th)”; yet another = “11th chords”; and finally “13th chords.”

When you move to different keys, the chord qualities (Maj7, min7, min7, Maj7, dom7, min7, min7b5) built on each scale note are the same. So, for the D Major scale, the chords are:

* I    D: D-F#-A-C# = Major seventh
* ii   E: E-G-B-D = minor seventh
* iii  F#: F#-A-C#-E = minor seventh
* IV   G: G-B-D-F# = Major seventh
* V    A: A-C#-E-G = Dominant seventh
* vi   B: B-D-F#-A = minor seventh
* vii  C#: C#-E-G-B = minor seventh flat five, aka half-diminished (!!!)

(I won’t get into why D sharps the F# and C#, but if you try to sing “do-re-mi”, starting on the D note, you’ll find that you need to play F# and C#.)

My direction for you: take time and find both triads and 7th chords in the key of C for each scale note (aka "scale degree). Look things up where you need to, it’s fine to fit existing chord diagrams and lessons to the above.

Hope this helps a bit! jz

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#10

If you can find someone/s to play with, it will probably help a bunch, and not like a band, another guitarist who is interested in learning. Then you can hang out and learn together, jam etc. I think it helps so much with actually remembering things, and applying them.

What you can also do is get a blank book, and start writing everything you know in it, and keep adding to it each time you come across something. That way you can read it back in future and really get a good grip by memorizeing truly what you know.

3 Likes
#11

Dude yes, often times I have these ideas so I make sure to notate them down. Transcription paper is a huge help, dont worry much about getting the rhythm right, but tab it out asap! Soundslice can be a great start.

#12

Hey again @Janske1987

I see. I don’t know what to say about inspiration, as sometimes I feel it and sometimes I don’t, sometimes it’s something that ends up finding me and other times I have to work to find it. It’s such a tricky thing to talk about. But even when I’m not inspired, or when I’m not focused on writing new music (I haven’t written a new song for about a year now), there is always that drive to express myself through music and to get my music out there so I can make new music, I’m always doing something to achieve that goal, whether it is practicing my technique, recording or trying to book gigs. It’s fine if you don’t have that drive, but I find that it can be very useful in the sense that it gives me an inner sense of purpose and direction.

Do you know what drives you? It can be something else. Whatever it is, maybe that’s a good place to find direction. It doesn’t have to be songwriting, but it can be any sort of new challenge that can help you get out of that rut. Maybe it can be a little uncomfortable at first, but maybe that’s a good thing, as discomfort can help us grow.

Here’s the thing: there might be endless possibilities to any given creative work, but once you actually start working on it, you will find several limitations very quickly. You are limited by your technical skill, your theoretical knowledge, your tastes, your imagination, by time (no one lives forever after all. There’s a limited number of musical pieces that a composer can write), by your state of mind, your beliefs, your culture, etc. You can create anything, but you won’t create anything, you will create what you want to, can, and choose to create. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it you’re satisfied with it or not, if you could have created it differently or not. Regardless of what you come up with, your creative work is incredibly special, because there’s only one person in the entire world that can create it, and that is you. So why not see what you can come up with? And if you end up not being satisfied with it, there’s always the next song.

What I do to write music is simply to pick my guitar, shut off my brain and jam until something interesting comes up. Then you jam some more and you find another interesting thing that maybe could be glued to the first thing. Then you jam some more, you experiment with all the stuff you come up with, see what goes with what, glue stuff together, cut stuff out, and when you notice it you got yourself a song. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it doesn’t need to be “right”, it doesn’t even need to be something you end up enjoying. You just flow along with the process, like you’re building yourself a Lego house, just messing around and having fun, and when you do it enough times you end up becoming really good at it. You can end up stressing yourself out, but you can also have fun and feel really proud of yourself when you make something nice.

I think I understand this. It’s like some sort of wish for challenge, isn’t it? Like you get fun out of having a new challenge thrown at you that you need to overcome, and you progress little by little. But it sounds like you’re having some sort of existential crisis, now. Either because you want to challenge yourself with new things and you’re not sure how to do that or what to challenge yourself with, or because the search for challenge for the sake of challenge has stopped appealing to you in the way it did before. Am I understanding well?

Have you tried listening to different styles of music? The basics of rock can be very different from the basics of, let’s say, atonal music. So going back to basics can mean very different things. Attempting a completely different style might be an interesting way to study basic stuff like scales.

1 Like
#13

@jzohrab , This is awesome! Thank you so much for writing this down. It will take some time to make perfect sense of it,it’s only about stacking 3rds and knowing the outcome AND where it is on my fretboard but i will get to work with this…and take my time like you said.

Cheers!
Ian.

#14

Cheers, it’s actually simple when you get your head around it. Just take your time, as much as you need, to get it bit-by-bit. Everything really builds on this. e.g. you can take a jazz chord lesson that talks about “root thirds and 7ths”, and it’s just this info. Or chord progressions like “ii-V-I”, another jazz basic progression", are built on this.

Re scales, everything can be tied back to the major scale, more or less. Modes (like mixolydian) are related to scales (they just start the scale off on a different degree). Even the minor pentatonic you might know about is related to the major scale.

Re the stacking thirds, maybe see if you can get some chord progressions on guitar, and then see how it maps to the theory. It can be useful to go back and forth, from theory to fretboard, and vice versa. Look at theory like a skeleton upon which you hang your musical ideas – it’s a guideline, not a straitjacket. :slight_smile:

Also, you might find that a lot of your music is in a minor key … the easiest way to think about that is that the minor scale (Aeolian minor mode) is the same as the major scale starting on the 6th note of the major scale. That’s a terrible explanation … so taking the notes for C Major:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C
1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8
               ^

See how A is the 6th note in C Major? If you start at A, but play the notes in C Major, you get A minor:

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  A

so the chord qualities are the same as the corresponding ones in C Major, just offset:

* i   A: A-C-E-G = minor seventh
* ii  B: B-D-F-A = minor seventh flat five, aka half-diminished (!!!)
* III    C: C-E-G-B = Major seventh
* iv   D: D-F-A-C = minor seventh
* v  E: E-G-B-D = minor seventh
* VI   F: F-A-C-E = Major seventh
* VII    G: G-B-D-F = Dominant seventh

So, eg, the Stairway to Heaven solo progression goes Am - G - F (more or less), and that’s i-VII-VI in A minor.

Bit by bit, it will start to make sense, I hope! There are other explanations out there … and perhaps I’ve shown too much at once! But at least, this is where chord progressions and notation can be traced back to, and all of the fancy-pants chord extensions (V7b9b13 etc) can be derived from this info.

Best wishes! z

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#15

Hey, @Mr_Samsa!

-Yes, i just cannot get in that zone with anything else except playing guitar. It chills me out, couldn’t live without music in general but playing my most beloved songs myself just gives me a feeling I cannot get out of anything else. At this point I still love it to death, but i’m afraid i’m getting bored with doing things the way i do…wich is playing covers only. I really would like to pick up my guitar and play some minor progressions when i’m sad or major country stuff when i’m having a good day, whatever. just noodle around in some coherent way, with confidence in what the hell i’m doing and where i’m taking it. Playing covers did not teach me that. I can improvise a little bit, but really, it’s embarassing if you just saw me play Ice cream man or whatever. I suck at improvising and now after all these years i see where i went wrong, it’s like being able to shout random fancy foreign words but not understanding what you are saying or how to make a sentence. So, my motivation is getting that feeling that i get from playing, covering solo’s and rocking out with my favourite bands did that, but it’s getting old, me too i guess…but my real motivation should be making real sense of that foreign language.How to use the words.

Haha, nice way of putting it :smiley:

Yeah, I think so. It’s like a measurement in a way how well i would be able to play that particular thing while i wouldn’t be able to come up with something nearly as cool myself. It’s like the McDonalds of guitarplaying and right now, i’ve gained so much weight i really need to go see a dietician.

Oh yes, I kind of learned to appreciate lots of different genres. From the most brutal technical stuff to friggin’ prince :smiley: I always liked how classical guitar sounded, but i never learned how to fingerpick so i was thinking, maybe…just maybe I could finally have a go at that while i’m trying to make sense of it all. I mean, i have to take it slow anyway because i have to develop the patterns in my right hand!

Cheers!
Ian.

#16

Hello,

I was in a similar boat until last year. Trying to play my favorite songs or improvising by ear and feeling really really stuck. I skipped the basics and wanted to learn Sultans of Swing on my 3rd guitar lesson. The teacher never really even bothered teaching me how to hold a pick. So much for having a good foundation!

Then I discovered Coursera last year, and bit the bullet and started with the basics. I had technical gaps in my playing that needed addressing but also the theory. Check out the free courses by Berklee Shool of music. They are amazing. The one on constructing chords is great and In now understand this on the guitar. Also the Musicianship classes taught by George Russell. These will get you on the piano which avoids the boredom of basics issue on guitar. He’s an fantastic teacher and by the time you’ve done these you’ll have many of the theory concepts under your belt in a very applicable way. Do some of the strait music theory courses as well - The University of Edinburgh one is good. By the time I’d done a few of them the theory was starting to sink in a bit - and if you write your own songs I suspect it will stick.

The other resource that is really helping me is the Justing Guitar website - he has pedagogy of guitar from all levels, teaches very clearly, and his classes - like the Major Scale Maestro or his Blues lead and rhythm courses - do a great job at linking theory and practice. He has really good exercises for learning how to turn the theory into play. And he has great suggestions for how to create a practice routine that covers all the necessary aspects of becoming musician on guitar. I can’t say enough good things about it. And its also free.

1 Like
#17

Hey @jzohrab!

Just wanted to say that i’m really stoked about this, today at work i was pondering questions all day long, just now I was trying to stack thirds on C D E F G A B, and wrote it down, trying to determine if it was a minor or major third…looked wich one came first. If a major third comes first it’s major and if a minor third comes first, it’s minor. 2 minor thirds equals diminished. Now the next step, write down what 7th chords are :slight_smile:

It’s weird but i’m kind of having fun, really curious to know some more. The hard part is translating that to my guitar tbh :smiley: it takes long before I consciously said to myself where my fingers are but i’m taking it slow. no stress, move on when it’s really a piece of cake.

Thanks again for explaining this stuff like i’m 5.

Cheers!

#18

Hi @fenrirokie !

Thanks for the tips on those courses there.
Did you follow this one? https://www.coursera.org/specializations/musicianship-specialization ?

It kind of peaked my interes for the following :

''In the capstone course, you will write and perform a 24-measure musical composition in A A B A song form. This culminating project will combine the skills and knowledge you learn and provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate your growth as a musician. ‘’

But at the same time, it scares me out…like, maybe it’s too hard for me and i’ll fail miserably :smiley:

Could you elaborate a little bit about how these courses work in reality? is it like attending a skype session 1 on 1 or with a class? or is it more like, “here’s what you need to know, get dropbox read it and on this date you need your composition.” ?

Haha, sorry, i just found this out a bit further on the website :

‘‘in addition to the video lectures, each lesson features Berklee student performances and interviews. The students share their musical journey and offer advice for those wanting to study music. The course culminates with an assignment that asks you to compose and perform a riff blues tune using the minor pentatonic scale. Above all, the course is designed to share the joy of creating music and sharing it with others.’’

like I said, that stuff scares me out :smiley:

Cheers!

#19

Yes, when signing up for the course select “just audit” written in small letters. Then the course is free. It is completely self-paced though broken down into one week blocks. the lessons are short chunks with video, and assignments. You can post questions or recordings and get feedback from other students. If you are taking the course free some things might be restricted (like quiz’s - which you can take but not have graded).

I find it very well organised and manageable.

The musicianship classes are great! I still haven’t done the last in the series - where there’s procrastination there is often discomfort (fear, doubt, self-doubt). So I should probably make myself do it as well! Taking the time to work out the theory and chords on the piano was painful but very good for me. Let us know how it works for you if you do it.

1 Like
#20

@fenrirokie , I’ve decided to take the plunge. I’m taking the “developing your musicianship” course and i’m starting this evening. I will keep you updated as each week goes by. I’m feeling alot more confident about it now i know it’s something I can do on my own pace, and i’m not obligated to take part in group sessions and stuff like that.

Thanks for your help so far :slight_smile:

cheers!