.
I'm definitely glad you got over your hump of anxiety enough to post some things. And I definitely want to iterate that growth is important, no matter how you're doing it. Ids down below me just informed me he's in Robin Nolan's school. And he's definitely ALWAYS posting up what he's learned. Dominik Graber is another student who told me, "I'm finding my growth is coming more from the community than the lessons."
And I LOVE that. I really, really do! I would never want to discriminate or lambast someone for how they improve. But this specific award was issued to try to encourage recognition and utilization of the lessons on here, which I have noticed are far too forgotten. If someone doesn't feel the lessons are beneficial for their growth, they simply don't participate. But if this is the case, I find it very saddening that out of over 40,000 students only 4-5 find the lessons beneficial. AND, if they DON'T find them beneficial, we (the staff) need to know why. Is it how the lessons are delivered? Are they confusing? Is there something different you'd like to see added? We try our hardest to give the students what they want
As far as commitment to music goes; I agree with you 100%. I loved your thoughts on this as I found it very true. I would like to simplify what I see on here...
Student: gets upset they're not improving
says they don't have enough time to do the lessons or enough time to post a video asking for help
proceeds to randomly ask "I can't get this, why?"
student body: "You could try this, this and this. Post up a video and do this lesson so we can see what you're doing wrong."
student: doesn't do anything
student: spends at least 30 minutes a day going back and forth on forums about random things like guitar players and favorite songs
student: repeats cycle
That's what I'm trying to break. But I definitely agree. And I don't want ANY student to feel like they have to post religiously and practice for 5 hours a day to win. That's not it at all. This was just a contest trying to redirect the attention and time spent from the community aspect back to the learning aspect. I definitely don't want anyone to feel like they're not important if they can't or don't have the time to post as often as someone else.
In case it can help you, I’ll share my experience about the lessons.
I would say when I started here as a very beginner that only knew a few of open chords, everything seemed a bit overwhelming because doing these lessons requieres a lot of personal work and effort. Self learning can be tough and I’m not really sure that everybody understands it.
First thing I did when I enrolled, was reading Syn’s tips wich helped a lot and then I started diving into the beginner’s lessons and had to stop and take my time to process that information.
In the meantime I took another approach to guitar and started taking lessons online with Dave, my teacher, and I learned a lot of songs, using them to practice technique and learn to move my hands.
What I understand now is that I need the combination of two different approaches to learn guitar:
- Learn songs, play my covers and utilise them to work on theory, technique and everything else.
- Do lessons and exercises
The lessons are awesome IMO, well structured, clear, easy to understand and short enough not to be too intense. I’ve seen online lessons not half as good as these for 200$ the subscripition. The only thing is, I guess, at the beginning here I would have needed more examples of songs assocciated to each lesson to help me work on whatever that lesson is teaching and keep me motivated.
It is now, that I would say I have a bit of a background after 2 years and a half learning, when I am really understanding the lessons and using them to make progress, because I’m getting tired of only just learning songs, playing covers…Now I really want to learn the guitar, the instrument, which I woud say is something different from playing guitar and want to know what goes on behind a song that makes it work. But at the very beginning I really needed the fun and the excitement of learning and hearing myself playing a real song and this was my impulse to keep working on guitar.
This is Syn Gates School, but no miracles are done here without a lot of consistent personal work on guitar. I’m not sure many people get it. Actually if you read Syn’s tips carefully, I would say this is crystal clear.
Another thing that I don’t think some people get is that learning guitar is a slow process, you can’t learn overnight, your hands will hurt, you will get frustrated many times along the way and you’ll have to overcome that if you want to make some progress.
You can learn ONLY if you want to learn, no excuses. I have a busy life, I’m a working mom, my son has a disability and life is complicated, A LOT,…but you know what? I do really love music and guitar and that’s my motivation. Other people here have busy and complicated lives too and they still make progress.
Also I have to say that the sense of community here has been very important for me to stick to this site and I love it when other students offer their help when I ask my questions in the forums or when I post my videos it makes me feel really good to have other fellow students watching, commenting, giving some tips… and I love watching the progress of other students too.
But, like it’s been already said, it’s a bother to have all these videos of people promoting themselves. Some days I just have a few minutes off to browse the site and what I want to see is my friends showing their progress, and those other videos make me waste my time sometimes. That really pisses me off.
Sorry for the long post. Just hope it helps