next level guitar review

Maya Vs. The Guitar, part 2

So, I’ve been playing every day for a month.  One month!  I’m such a noob.  But I’m such a proud noob! I started out, literally not knowing which side of the guitar was up (fat string to the ceiling, skinny string to the floor, okay, got it).  But yesterday?  I played a rousing round of Twelve Bar Blues, using 7th chords, with an 1/8th note strum and a percussive “chuck’ on the 2 and the 4.  Dayum!  One freaking month!  I was so proud, I had a celebratory margarita, and we all went around singing funny made-up-on-the-spot lyrics to the oh-so-catchy I, IV V chord progression that your classic 12 Bar Blues is based on.  I’m having a blast.

I know that one month has passed because, well, I wrote the day I got my guitar on the calender.  But also, my membership to nextlevelguitar.com expired.  Did I renew?  Yes.  Here is why.  When we first got the kid’s 1/2 size guitar, maybe six weeks ago, we fooled around on youtube watching guitar videos—when you know nothing, learning anything increases your knowledge base by 100%, woo hoo!  But one of the vids I ran across had this nice, friendly fellow, David Taub, teaching a bite-sized bit of info about something, I don’t remember now, maybe the chuck?  Anyway, I thought, this guy seems smart, what’s his deal?

Turns out he’s got a whole site of organized lessons, 150 ‘beginner’ lessons plus hundreds of others, over 700 at this point, and he promised a structured approach to get you up and going.  Great!  I signed up for the three day trial and found him likable and engaging, even silly at times (enjoyably so—nothing’s more fun-killing than an overly-serious teaching style), and the bite-sized videos—they range from five to twenty minutes long, usually around 10 minutes, each containing a digestible bit of info, say, a new set of chords, or a strum pattern, or a bit of music theory, or practice routine, etc—were uniformly valuable and informative.  So I paid for a month.  David starts  his beginning vids right at the very beginning, perfect for me, with things like how to hold a guitar, how to hold a pick, how to tune a guitar, etc., and journeys on through to lesson 90 where I am now, 12 Bar Blues with 7th chords.  I mean, they go a heck of lot of other places, with 600ish vids I haven’t seen yet, but I don’t know what’s in those, could just be lots of slideshows of David’s dog, Samantha, for all I know.  But given the high level of focus to the 90+ I’ve seen so far, I’m guessing there is a wealth of good stuff in the remaining 600.  So far there has been plenty on your basic open chords, chord changing techniques, a handful of strum patterns, the notes on the neck, embellishing chords with suspended chords and add chords, intros to arpeggiating and fingerpicking, the aforementioned chuck, suggestions of songs to practice with that use the chords currently being studied, etc etc, all organized with progressive practice routines, and plenty of joking around.  It’s been great.  And that’s right, I’ve whizzed through 90+ of these puppies in 30 days.  Boy are my fingers tired.

I see, now, that there are many guitar-lesson sites, and they may be terrific, but I can’t make comparisons because I saw this one first, liked it, signed up, and have happily been trucking along without trying the others out.  David’s friendly style and ‘you can do it’ attitude, plus the organized delivery of information, has all been too satisfactory—and too complete a meal—for me to go looking elsewhere for side dishes.  And, while I’m sure this growth curve of mine has got to level out sometime, I wonder where the heck I’ll be in another 30 days?

Bottomline, it’s been really, really fun so far, and I’m learning as fast as I want to, with a clear feeling of progress.  So, two thumbs up for nextlevelguitar!

My only complaint is that Samantha the dog hasn’t made more appearances.  She’s adorable.

ETA: for my further guitar adventures and a nextlevelguitar follow up, go here.