Note: Before replying to Lason's post, I want to say that I'm not affiliated with this webstie nor any products here. And, I will say both good and bad things about an issue when asked a question like Lason's. With that said:
Short Answer: No, not yet. But, the reason for that is not necessarily the fault of the teaching aids. I've had 2 really busy weeks and haven't had the time to sit down and ingest any/everything yet. Now that some of busy-ness is gone, I'm able to go back to my guitar.
Long Answer: No, but kind of. I didn't seem to have very many "Ah-ha!" moments while reading the book (which I read somewhere is what should be done before watching the DVD, meaning reading it prior to watching the video). It was more learning the definitions and parameters of the book so that I would understand the rest of the book.
As examples, and without giving away the content of the book, I had to spend extra time learning the difinitions of each note in a scale by the numbers, meaning I, II, III, IV, etc. Since I hadn't thought of a scale as being individual notes, it took me a good day to drum these into my head and what they meant.
This leads into something that I wasn't prepared for (mainly because I never taught myself how scales work) was how a scale works, meaning the intervals between the notes on a scale. There is a section in the beginning of the book that is to be memorized (the intervals between the notes on a scale), and to me, they are easy on paper but I'm having a hard time relating them to the fretboard. But, this is something I have to learn, and this is kind of key to the rest of the book. Since I don't know the intervals between the notes by heart, I'm spending a lot of time on this right now because the rest of the book and DVD are based upon me knowing how to find the intervals once some base notes are established. Once I get this down, I think the rest of the book will fall into place.
A few other notes at this point for me (and that others might like to know):
1) The comic book-style format really does work. But, even though it's in a comic strip format, don't expect to whiz through this. There's a lot of stuff to ingest in a relatively small amount of writing (compared to a book with no pictures/drawing), so it doesn't go as quickly as antcipated.
2) Kirk's book and DVD (from the 1/2 of it that I've seen so far) are very sound and pragmatic. But, don't expect to learn this sytem in a few days. For me, this appears to be something I am going to budget about 3 months for with putting in a few hours a day/week/month until I get to where I don't need the study aids and can start practicing on my own. I consider this an investment of my time, and now that I see how it's written, I initially underestimated the amount of effort I will need to devote to this. This amount of time will be shorter for people who have more knowledge of how scales work and have had more fretboard time.
3) After getting through the first few pages (20 or so), I felt drained and had to take a break. The first group of pages set up the terms and definitions that are used througout the book. Without any formal music training other than high school band many years ago, I had to start memorizing a bunch of things, thus the reason it took me tso long to get through the "introduction". Once past that part, it took me a few more days to get through the rest of the book as it was slow going for me.
4) When I finally made it through the written portion, I had only one prominant feeling: "How the $^%& does this apply to the fretboard?" By the end, I understood the definitions and the reasoning behind how scales work and the patterns, but I finished not knowing how to apply that to the actual piece of wood I call my guitar. The DVD and sliderule clear this up, and I realize now that I should have had the sliderule in front of me when reading through the book after the first day or two.
5) My next step is to finish the DVD then start back through the book again. My main weakness is not knowing the patterns on the freatboard as they relate to the major, minor, etc scales, and until I drill this into my head, I'm kind of stuck with learnign anything else. This is a very slow process for me, but the diligence will pay off (I hope).
Sorry about being so lengthy, but this is the kind of review I would have like to have read prior to me getting the set. I would have devoted the week of shipping time to start memorizing the scale patterns so that I wasn't behind the power curve when I received the envelope.
If you have other questions, feel free to ask, but unless I hear from Kirk to the opposite, I won't give out any of the details of the book. I don't consider what I wrote here as giving anything away, and if I did, please let me know so that I will avoid that kind of verbage in the future.
Rob
|