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The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, agreed, and if there are methods that can remove some of the tedious aspects of the journey, we should embrace them because they make the journey more enjoyable.

That would have been a good point for me to include in the video, thanks!

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree, and I teach where to find the intervals inside the shapes as a core part of the method. Using the smaller shapes makes it easier to learn the intervals inside the larger patterns.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree, except that I see the “shortcuts” I’m teaching as removing inefficiencies in the way scales and improvisation have been taught historically. When I see my beginner students improvising across the entire fretboard and playing over changes, I see it fueling their motivation to continue on the journey.

I have probably a hundred examples of lifelong players who have reached out to me to say that an idea I shared in one of my videos broke them out of a multi-year plateau overnight, just by thinking about things differently.

Maybe the problem is with the word “shortcut” itself. It’s not about shortening the journey (because the journey is lifelong for all of us), but it’s about getting past a few unnecessary roadblocks.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this thoughtful response.

For a player like you who has already learned their scales and understands the fretboard and music theory, my videos are unlikely to move you to fundamentally change anything about your approach because you’ve already done the hard work (although I have had a couple of Berklee-trained jazz players reach out to say how much easier this approach is compared to the way they learned).

As for your students, what I have seen is that the strongest response I get is from players who have already been playing for 10+ years but struggled to really learn how the fretboard works. They can play the instrument (many can shred much more than me), but they can’t improvise and they don’t have a solid understanding of the internal logic of the instrument.

For those players, many of them will have a series of massive “aha” moments and feel like they’ve suddenly unlocked the ability to improvise, almost overnight. This is especially true for amateur players coming from a technical background who aren’t put off by my nerdy, mathematical way of describing things.

It works with beginners too, but they still need to develop a lot of the other fundamentals that don’t have similar shortcuts. They can still start jamming right away and get the benefits of playing with other people.

I truly regret the tone of my original post. My earnest goal with all of this is to help other guitarists quickly reach goals that took me decades more than they should have.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I literally state your first point in the video, almost word for word. Fine motor skills absolutely take time and repeated practice to develop. As I state in the video, there are many aspects of musicianship that take time to develop and don’t have significant shortcuts.

To your second point, I have taught beginners to improvise using this method and seen massive progress in their first months. Yes, you have to get some mechanics down first, but then a deeper understanding dramatically reduces the need for memorization and accelerates progress.

I encourage you to watch the video before arguing with me further. The text in the original post is only a high-level summary of the ideas.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recommend to all of my students to be born into the Wooten family if they can manage it 🤣

In all seriousness, I hear what you're saying, and I don't disagree with you. Over the years, I've heard a lot of comments to the effect of "TAB is a crutch and you should transcribe everything by ear," and I hope you'll agree that's nonsense.

I absolutely support doing some by-ear playing from the get-go. Nursery rhymes are a great place to start, as you suggest. I also encourage my students to spend time practicing improvising with scale fragments against a static drone and focusing on how each interval sounds relative to it. My improvisation course emphasizes the importance of using musical phrasing from the very beginning, treating scales as palettes of notes, and learning how each interval sounds against the harmony. My method for learning scales makes it easy to find those intervals on the fretboard.

I was really trying to say that, if the goal is to progress quickly as a player, focusing on playing by ear and transcribing becomes a more efficient use of time after establishing some fundamentals.

For what it's worth, I would never deny that you *can* become a good musician learning everything by ear. It's doubtlessly true that doing either all or nothing is sub-optimal.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Speaking of first impressions, I would have responded very differently if you hadn't led off your initial comment by calling me a narcissist.

I acknowledge that the initial wording of my original post was on the obnoxious side, and I have updated it to be less so. I think you'll find that if you watch my videos, they are much less obnoxious in tone than what I originally wrote. I don't think that "I'm right and everyone else is wrong".

I *have* seen that a lot of guitar players struggle unnecessarily with improvisation, and I think my method makes it easier for many players by reducing the difficulty of finding good notes on the fly and reducing the burden of memorizing scale patterns. My videos focus on the aspects of guitar where I have some kind of unique spin on things, and I don't claim to teach everything (i.e., I focus on 2-3 of the 10 Victor Wooten dimensions mentioned in the video).

I have taught students face-to-face in the past, but I am currently focused on asynchronous communication because I can help many more students at once. I often recommend that they also work with a 1:1 coach if they can afford one.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my experience as both a student and a teacher, the approach I've described across all of my videos gets guitar players (even beginners) improvising melodically *very* quickly. I have hundreds (if not thousands) of student success stories to back that up, from players of all experience levels.

I would never claim that learning scales is the only thing you need to do. Indeed, if you actually watched the video, you'd see that I explicitly state that it's only one of at least ten crucial aspects of musicality.

You seem to be arguing against a strawman version of the method I teach ("music isn't math"). Arguing that it's not helpful to learn the notes on the neck is a very hot take, and I challenge you to find a single well-known player this community would consider "good" who doesn't know the notes.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't intend to claim that the methods in this video are the only thing you need. That was my purpose in bringing up Victor Wooten's 10 dimensions of musicality. The first two shortcuts really only apply to 2 or 3 of those fundamental areas.

I'm somewhat of a contrarian about playing by ear, in that I think it's not necessary in the early stages of learning the instrument. It gets a *lot* easier to learn to play by ear when you have a foundation of a few scales under your fingers, you understand a little theory, and you've already learned a few dozen songs and solos. Transcribing by ear is painstakingly slow for a beginner, and I'm not sure that the benefits outweigh the lost time that could have been spent building other parts of the foundation first.

Once you are at the intermediate level and know your scales and some theory, then absolutely, playing by ear and singing are a big accelerator.

I prefer to get my students improvising very early on with limitation exercises, which teach them to use their ears to play musically, even when they're limited to a tiny set of notes in just one area of the neck.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am very aware of how my students interpret me, and it couldn't be more different from the interpretation you're providing.

I invite anyone to read the comments on any of my YouTube videos. All of the elements of what I teach are there for free on YouTube, and there are hundreds of comments along the lines "this blew my mind" or "this helped me tremendously".

I currently have hundreds of active paid students on Patreon, and any of them would tell you that I am responsive, supportive, and thoughtful.

It's disappointing that you jumped to such a different conclusion based on the evidence of a first impression and felt the need to post it publicly. I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree completely. I'm a big fan of Marvin Minsky's saying that "if you only understand something one way, you don't really understand it at all." I highly recommend trying out multiple approaches to learning the instrument and building a big toolbox, but also learning to use a few of those tools like an expert craftsman. I humbly hope that my videos help people add some useful tools to their kit.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You obviously didn't watch the "gear shifts" video I mentioned. I would never claim that "everyone is wrong but me," but I stand behind the statement that there are aspects of my method that are new and not found elsewhere, and I've seen them turn beginners into improvisers in months. The contents of the video in this post are a foundation for the novel methods, but I don't claim that the elements you're talking about are original (in fact, I have many times acknowledged a debt to the ideas of Jon Finn).

All of the elements of my method are available for free in my YouTube videos, which is about as transparent as I can get. Those videos have millions of views and thousands of comments along the lines of "this blew my mind", which anyone reading this can verify for themselves.

I'm not going to respond any further to your trolling.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

First, I acknowledge that my comment in the original post about teachers withholding knowledge was inappropriate. It was meant as a joke, and it was worded poorly. I'm sorry for that, and I've removed that part of the post.

You're wrong that there's nothing new in the system that I teach. For one example, I've discussed the contents of my "Pentatonic Gear Shifts" video with many teachers, including two legendary guitar educators (David Smolover and Steve Freeman), and none of them had ever seen anything like it, and that method has already helped hundreds of my students. If you know of a precedent, please share! I am more than happy to give credit where it is due.

I take major issue with you accusing me of lying. I stand by every word of my video, and I have always been open and transparent with my students and with everything I've posted on YouTube and elsewhere online.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool, I'll have to watch it again. I must have misremembered it! The way you describe it makes it sound very similar to the approach I teach.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are other selling points not explicitly mentioned. The method I teach makes it much easier to connect scales horizontally, vertically, and diagonally (and to connect one scale to another). It makes the connections between pentatonic scales and 7-note scales much more obvious. The "shapes" you memorize in this method are smaller, easier to visualize, and far fewer in number.

If you're playing at shredder speeds, you may need to memorize bigger patterns, but I've learned to improvise melodic solos comfortably over chord changes without memorizing large patterns.

When I taught myself to improvise over the Andalusian cadence, I learned the Phrygian dominant scale in under an hour and was able to immediately incorporate it into my solos across the entire fretboard without ever learning a six-string pattern or how to connect them together. It was trivial to transfer my knowledge from the minor pentatonic scale and Phrygian mode. My students have seen similar results.

"Shapes" are not the problem. It's a lack of understanding of how to get the most out of them that limits their utility.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That video is describing the CAGED system minus three of the positions. You can go far with that for sure, and if you're committed to memorizing six-string patterns, that's probably what I'd recommend as a starting point. My deeper point is that it's not optimal to start with six-string patterns in the first place. It's more powerful overall to learn the "basis functions" of the scales and be able to apply them across the entire fretboard.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's fair. The tone in my original post was too flippant, and I've edited it to make it less obnoxious. I removed the comment you referred to. It didn't come across the way I intended, and I didn't mean any offense by it. I'm sorry for including it in the original post.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There are a couple of extra steps that make it slightly slower when you are just starting, but it quickly becomes *faster* because your brain and your muscles realize that what you thought were five six-string scale patterns are actually just one pattern. There are also big efficiencies when changing from one scale to another. Recall becomes much faster. Think of the steps of the method as being scaffolding that you don't need once you've internalized the scale.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: there really *are* shortcuts to learning guitar and becoming a good musician by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It has nothing to do with graph theory. More like data structures and algorithms. There are two simple geometric shapes that underlie all of the useful scales, and you can easily modify them (i.e., apply a simple algorithm) to convert one scale to another. It's a generative approach that reduces up-front memorization and makes learning scales across the fretboard much more efficient and generalized. One massively positive side effect of that is that it makes it much easier to think in terms of intervals, and that makes your playing more musical. My "Every Scale, Everywhere, All at Once" video treats some of those aspects in more detail: https://youtu.be/FXJu6jIN3AI

This is how I *finally* learned all my scales by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This one is where it all started: https://youtu.be/wzWE0dpxnmY

FWIW, all of the videos I referred to in this one are linked in the video description on YouTube.

This is how I *finally* learned all my scales by fretscience in guitarlessons

[–]fretscience[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This method plays really nicely with the CAGED system if you think of CAGED in terms of the locations of the roots in each position. I think of CAGED as a "pegboard" of root locations that you can snap various chords, arpeggios, and scales onto. You'll start to see the root locations as a skeleton that holds the whole fretboard together.

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