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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
But it's completely okay! That's the reason why I gave another 30 days for students to try. I'm very glad you are open with me about your experience, as I read in your other comment how much you've grown!! I'm so happy that you're back, and I hope you're doing okay!
