-
Greg said
1. “In November 2020, I started ‘Fretboard Wizard.’ It was amazing, at least the 11 percent of the course I finished. I loved learning about the chord matrix and the ‘standard’ spacing between notes on a scale. I greatly looked forward to all the musical theory that would be unlocked.”
2. “Also in November and December, I started dabbling in the Daily Challenges and learned that they weren’t beyond my skill set. I would usually do the Tuesday licks and Wednesday scales and improv.”
3. (referring to the daily lessons) “For example, there’s a big emphasis on the key in which they’re played but I don’t know what that means. It was like trying to run when you don’t know how to walk.”
Considering how these three statements interact, I think FBW should be a big priority for you. Completing it will help you understand what it means for an exercise or a song to be in a key and so much more, giving you much greater benefit from the daily lessons. It will also make it easier to learn to play songs you enjoy. You’ll start to understand why the songs contain certain chords and maybe understand how music evokes certain emotions even without hearing the lyrics. I think it will renew your inspiration, giving you more focus and better results from the time you are able to invest. Of course learning a few more chords is another great endeavor. While learning the shapes should not take long, it often requires a lot of repetition to groove the technique needed to make the notes sound clearly and yet another layer of practice to make smooth transitions between the chords.
It is very important to ditch any expectations of how long any of this “should” take. Some concepts will come quickly, some will take longer. We’re all different, but I don’t think there is anyone who has denied achieving deeper understanding with each pass, regardless how many times they have taken FBW. You may get some aspects of guitar playing faster than I do, then struggle with some other things that come more quickly to me. It takes as long as it takes.
I am fairly confident that in time, your learning will noticeably accelerate. When we start playing guitar, our fingers are clumsy and we find it hard to smoothly transition between chords. We need to think about what each finger has to do individually. But over time, we learn to lift our fingers off the strings and simultaneously land all fingers on the strings exactly where they need for the next chord. It takes quite some time to achieve that state, but eventually our fingers seem to be on autopilot. Similar results are realized with scales and melodies. We eventually reach a point where the fingers seem to know where to go. These days, I do most of my playing with my eyes closed. I practiced that skill; it didn’t happen all by itself.
One of the biggest surprises to me has been how quickly I now learn new songs. I’m just over 8-1/2 years into my guitar journey (full disclosure: I have been playing a lot more than 10 minutes nearly every day since receiving my guitar as a gift from my wife), but the last 3-1/2 years have been the most amazing for gains in the speed and accuracy of my hands and fingers and also for how quickly I learn new material and memorize songs. I do not think it’s a coincidence that I took Fretboard Wizard for the first time shortly before I began to notice these speed gains.