when to move on

[Jack Napier]

How long should I spend on each lesson?

 

[Jen Hapke]

You should have the feeling that you really know what the lesson is about and you can use everything properly. You should be able to play something good to the backing track.
I am not that patiant with many lessons and arrived at lesson 60 but now I start over from the beginning and spend tones of time with the CAGED system. I learned the pentatonics and the major scales in my first run but didn’t cared so much about arpeggios and double stops and I add them now. In my first run there were no backing tacks so now I am using them all the time.

 

[Jack Napier]

oh nice, thanks. So what your saying is that I(one) should move on after I am comfortable playing and improvising what is taught in the lesson, over the backing track?
Thanks

 

[Jen Hapke]

Yeah exactly.
One thing you could do too is you can transfer what you learned to another position or another key (depends on the lesson).

 

[Richard O'connor]

I second @Jen but when moving on I’d still go over what you’ve previously learned even just for a short while. You don’t want to learn something, nice on and then forget what you have learnt.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

I honestly spend about a week on each lesson because there’s so much you can do with each lesson! But as I advance, I’m probably going to be spending a little longer. Like Jen and Richard were saying, you’re the only one who really can tell how long you should spend on each lesson. If you find yourself stumbling, it may be wise to spend a little extra time on it. However, there is a HUGE piece of advice I like to give to every guitar player. Don’t expect to be flawless before moving on. To truly develop these skills, it will take YEARS to be proficient on them. So don’t feel like you can’t move on from the CAGED system lessons because you’re not moving around the neck as effortlessly as Papa Gates. Learn something, then practice it, utilize it, and once you feel you at least understand the concept and can apply it well for a while, then move on. You don’t want to burden yourself with the depressing feeling of not advancing because you’re not “good enough”. Hope this helps! @richard, it’s great to see you back on the forums, buddy!

 

[Calvin Phillips]

THe improv challenge is great because it’ll give you a review of any lesson. I feel you should go over them and go back and redo them. Cycle through them and do them again. Eventually they become second nature. Honestly Lesson wise, I’ve only made it up to the advanced. I haven’t even touched syn’s stuff yet. There is so much theory material to cover, different scales to learn. I feel those all should be known before even going into why syn plays the way he does. I also had to take a few weeks to rewrite certain parts of my songs because I realized how out of place they actually sounded lol.

 

[Noah Berends]

I try to spend about a week to a week and a half on a lesson, however, I never feel like I’ve truly moved on from a lesson. I feel, at least in my practice, that it’s always important to revisit even the most basic things. Before this school, I had a bad habit of believing that I was in a sense “beyond” a lot of the concepts in the beginner lessons. So I went back and watched some of the beginner lessons, even the ones on the pentatonic scales, and I thought, man, this is some good information and basic exercises. In repeating the exercises in the beginner lessons I also realized I was not at 100% in all of the concepts being taught. So even when I move on from a lesson, I make it a point to revisit it once in a while, even for just 10 minutes to ensure I stay up-to-speed with the concept.

 

[Jack Napier]

Thank you everyone for those kind words of advice!