[dr_dave]

Loving it all, Daniel. Great use of the thumbnail on the Up strums in the middle section. Alternating bass thumbstrokes are rock solid. I love the tonality shift at 3:15. The steady tempo through the transitions between styles demonstrates true mastery. Fantastic sustain. I’d say the only thing missing is the clever commentary you used to grace us with in the halcyon days of DTV. Great post.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by  dr_dave.

[dr_dave]

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.

[dr_dave]

Jim – Wishing you all the best. Stay committed and make it a habit.

[dr_dave]

Beautiful Dan. Makes a nice lullaby.

[dr_dave]

I love it, Daniel. That bridge section at 1:30 is very clever, especially the part around 1:53. And then there’s that short bridge in the minor at 2:23. This is great ear training exercise!

[dr_dave]

The whole composition was lovely and relaxing. I don’t know if you did it just for me, but that part around 2:06 is the spice I was looking for among all the sugar. That’s your musical tension and release, skillfully woven into a really pretty piece. It really appealed to my jazz sensibilities and made my ears perk up. I can’t help but think that bit was aimed at me.

[dr_dave]

In “Purse Suit” of Excellence. I think you found it.

[dr_dave]

And you laid that one down skillfully – and beat out the throw! Coup Sûr!

I speak no French whatsoever (well, maybe Oui, Merci, Poutine and Coq à Vin), but I was in Expo Stadium for Montreal Expos v. Philadelphia Phillies the day that Pete Rose got his 4,000th Coup Sûr! The only French I understood that day was the vendor in the stands yelling, “Bière – Beer!”

[dr_dave]

I’m referring to brighter and more carefree times (pre-Covid and pre-transition of TAC) when Daniel’s DTV ruled the airways (not saying he doesn’t still rule, but he’s less liberal with the commentary lately!).

[dr_dave]

I’ll try pasting it here. Maybe the slight change will confuse the software enough so that it won’t block the post.

Greg – you put equal care in your reply to me. Thanks for that. I really look forward to hearing back from you in about 2 months or so.

I’ll share one other tidbit. While I was able to blow through most of FBW rather quickly, it wasn’t until my 6th pass through it when I was first able to truly complete it. I always got hung up on the writing project at the end. No doubt a big part of that was my own stubbornness. I resisted using one of the canned 3 or 4 chord progressions, and I think that was because I didn’t want my first song to be something that had already been done a thousand times. There’s only so much you can do within those constraints, so I cheated by ignoring them.

For me, the catalyst was throwing in a “bVII” (flat 7) chord. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means just yet; you’ll learn about it in the course. It’s one of those what I like to call “spice” chords that really perk up your ears. Often it’s one of the chords included in the ‘Key Chords” daily lesson on the third Friday of the month, accidental chords technically falling outside the key (i.e., including one or more notes that are not within the key) but sometimes encountered in music written in the subject key. Once I removed the constraint, my writer’s block lifted and out popped a piece of music penned by “dr dave, the mad arpeggiator.” https://tac.tonypolecastro.com/topic/15362-mark-the-date-the-monkey-is-off-my-back/?tab=comments#comment-171657

And I’ll offer another thread from the old TAC Community (hurry up and check these threads out it before they are forever lost to the ether when TAC HQ deletes the old Community) as additional inspiration for where Fretboard Wizard might lead you, namely transcription. I noticed in this thread I mentioned I was at the time on my fifth trip through FW (but I think it was actually my 6th!).

https://tac.tonypolecastro.com/topic/15344-wild-roving-by-dr-dave/?tab=comments#comment-171456

The skills I learned in FW, together with some ear training to recognize intervals, major/minor tonality etc., have taken me to a new level of musicality. TAC is not a one-stop shop. Ear training plus some additional theory are coming from a variety of other sources. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I have learned over time is that all this information sinks in over a a long period. In the background, a chain reaction is occurring – imperceptibly at first, until it all erupts like a dropped beer can!

Have fun!

[dr_dave]

I composed and posted a nice reply here, but after I edited it a few times, it disappeared. I tried several times to re-post it, but the quirkiness of the site is preventing that. It’s happened to me several other times. This never used to happen prior to the transition to the new platform in late March.

[dr_dave]

Thanks for calling my attention to the 1:49 to 1:59 part. It fit so naturally within the context that I missed the subtlety that it was over different chords. I certainly don’t have Rick Beato or Adam Neely ears! You should be justifiably proud of that bit and the whole composition. It is lovely. The sweetness is not a bad thing at all!

[dr_dave]

Quoting MG: “As far as Tony’s technique changing in the different speed videos, that just wasn’t the case. Occasionally, he would use different fingers to pick the strings as his speed increased. But that was about the extent of any differences.”

Occasionally there were other differences. Sometimes I would notice differences in his thumb placement on the fretting hand or some other subtle technique variations. In the extreme, for some exercises, I noticed that he would, for example, play a lick as written in the tabs for only one of the three speeds. I admit that was rare, but is happened a few times. And of course there were times when none of play-alongs matched the tabs. I thought that was very good for illustrating the “musician as a human being” aspect of guitar playing. He’s not a robot. For the most part, though, things lined up very well at the different speeds.

[dr_dave]

“It doesn’t make sense to me why they decided to take that away: the content was already there, created.”

So much seems to have been driven by a need to use less server space. It looks and feels like a severe cost reduction evercise. My perception is that quality of the material and quality of the experience were sacrificed in the name of economy.

[dr_dave]

Oh yes, I forgot to explain the “lifer” thing. Yes, I am a lifetime member. I joined as a lifetime member. The first lesson cost me a bunch, but all the rest have been free!