I always wanted to play the guitar, and during the last semester of my senior year in high school, the music department offered a guitar class for the first time. My future wife and I took the class and loved it (well, I did :-). I also had some buddies who played guitar and I leeched off their knowledge.
Fast forward (mumble mumble way too many mumble mumble) years, and I’ve hacked together enough skills to play at a competent level. However, lately the musical midlife crisis inside of me says it’s time to up my guitar game, finally learn some proper theory and habits, and be able to take my playing to the next level! I had a conversation about this a few weeks ago with my wife, and sure enough my always-spying-on-me phone offered this video into my feed:
After reviewing Jacob’s site, I learned he gave private guitar lessons - so I signed up for one immediately.
This week was my first lesson, and I’d give it a musical/fun score of 11/10. He did an awesome job of just talking with me for the first part of the lesson to understand where I’ve been as a guitarist, and where I want to go. I told him that essentially I wanted to make my playing more “interesting” by being able to play in different keys, play up and down the neck, etc. We talked theory at a high level, and he helped me answer questions like “Why do I gravitate towards arrangements with the same handful of chords?”
Towards the end of the lesson he had me play a few things that I would play for fun or to get my hands warmed up. Interestingly, I’d picked a few tunes starting in D with a walk-down progression in them. He then showed me how to play this same progression up and down the neck - which I’ve now done about 10,000 times and will play for you in an upcoming video.
Once I got more comfortable with the progression I thought “Wait a minute…this sounds very close to the way one of my favorite bands, The Civil Wars, play their cover of I Want You Back:
So suffice to say that lesson was extremely satisfying and I can’t wait to get signed up for lesson #2!
-Brian