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In my opinion practicing too much is detrimental.  Its better to practice with focus points for brief periods of time.  BUT, be consistent.

Choose a few goals, but don't try to work on everything that needs work.  Better to progress faster through rapid skill sets that are developed a few at a time, than overload yourself with things to do.  Pick your battles and prioritize.

One of the things I am glad about our material, and how quickly it can be learned, is that a student can progress literally by simply hitting mute on the television commercials and practicing and working on material while they are muted.

If you do this, and use proper tools, to accomplish what you are setting out to do, i.e metronomes etc, you'll find that in less than a month of consistent practice you'll come farther than you'd expect.  The hardest part of this is the consistency, you have to make it a habit to:

1.  Focus only on what you need to do to overcome the barriers to the practice objectives, and not just widdle or noodle.

2.  Practice consistently.

Instructor

Knowing the notes makes everything easier.  I can only speak in respect to how I teach them.  For example, in 2 lectures from now Don will see what I would term the "big picture"  in the way that I teach Lead Guitar Phase 1 improvisation, and he'll also in 4 lectures from now, be able to understand how I teach the guitar neck in ways that most may not have even known as possible, and in doing so, he will make an immediate association as to how knowing the notes on the neck, were absolutely essential, in accomplishing this.

(This doesn't mean that Don himself will have learned anything new or groundbreaking, or become a better player, because I cannot speak to the results that his years of prior study or schooling or lessons have had, and I'd never presume to do so.)

Don is a well versed player and with his degree in music education, I doubt he needs any help from me or what I teach, but he's picking things up for the purpose of maybe finding ways to better reach his students.  But, most students aren't like Don nor have his experience or breadth of exposure to musical education and theory.

What I mean, is, as a guy that's played as long as he has, and with his background formally in studying music, he already knew the notes, but he learned a few ideas as to ways they might be taught to his students, as he's already indicated.  Regardless, whether a person knew them to start with or learned them through us, the results will be the same, and that is, to get to what I am teaching, you cannot use it without having the notes on the neck down.

I say this, because my quest to learn the guitar, was a self taught one.  Twelve years long and I was self taught.  One discovery, lead to the next and so how it progressed, is how I teach.  I cannot understand the musical world or how learning progresses, outside of what I do today, as it seems so painfully backwards, clunky and illogical, not to mention time consuming.

So, to be honest Olly, knowing the notes on the neck would be useful for those goals, however, I only understand how to reach those goals in the context of what I teach.  I am aware that sounds horribly biased/slanted towards my approach, and I do apologize,  but I'm also stuck without a better answer - ultimately if you learn the notes on the neck and can play barre chords, or recognize the occasional note when you stop and look at it, it's going to seem terribly insignifcant.

However, for what I teach, the student can go to any note on any string and just start soloing.

The student never needs a chord book because he knows the letters that make up every chord.

Anything that you know the musical equivalent of, and know the notes on the neck, becomes knowledge that you can use quickly. 

If I know the notes of a Gm7b9 are G Bb D Ab, then I can also see where on the guitar that falls. 

If I decided to improvise to a track where the song left key, and I saw that the chord that was "outside" was F, I could chose to play on a triad tone, a 7th or even outline an extension over the chord when it came up, and by knowing the notes on the neck, say that the extended chord I wanted was a major 9 I could play a C Major Triad over it at that time, to pull out it's extended notes, and a C Maj7 arp to pull out a Lydian Maj7#11 feel over that F chord, before it came inside again.

Knowledge is power, in composition and improvisation.

Instructor

I think it's a good idea to subtly reinforce yourself as an authority figure, somewhere between the lines of the friendly next door neighbor and mother superior.  When I start out with students I try to get an idea of their personality, and initially I mirror, it in the following ways.

If they are shy, I encourage them and don't push too much, let them warm up to me.
If they are distracted easily, I am firm and unyielding, so they get used to taking instruction from me.  I've also played the "Hey you're the boss" reverse psychology card, and asked them to tell me what I should teach them.  (Of course this throws them, because how are they supposed to know what I should teach?) and it usually works, because they realize quickly that someone needs to lead, and it's not them. 
If they are outgoing, I'm friendly but firm, keeping a constant balance between the two.

One you establish this, its easier to teach.  In all cases, they have to become used to and expect to be taking instruction from me, and that I am in control of the process.  Once they get that, in one way or the other, it does go well.  Im speaking primarily with the absolute beginners.

I also find that if you dont have buy in from the parents, in that they insist that the kid do his practice and homework, you're going to have an uphill climb.  So here's the real truth, guitar lessons arent for everyone, and with kids theres only so much you can do with a kid that doesnt practice or do his homework, and where the parents are lax to non existent in reinforcing that.  You have to get them involved early.  Know this can backfire, in that the parent thinks that the child simply doesn't like you or like lessons, and fail to see that it takes a degree of discipline to learn the guitar.  Too many parents these days rarely discipline their kids at all.  Those that do, are a much better long term prospect.

Instructor

Troy Stetina's Heavy Metal Lead Guitar Volume 1 hasseveral solos that are taught using nothing but the first position Pentatonic minor scale.  Great techniques, licks and melodic ideas, there!

My bad habit, is I never play standing up.  I need to practice and play standing up.  When I teach, I teach sitting down.  Playing live everything changes orientation-wise with my instrument, and my nimble fingers arent as nimble or precise, and it down grades my playing.  Another bad habit is related to music but my life in general, and that is I tend to push myself too much and work past the point of exhaustion trying to do so much in a day.

I also rarely practice.  I wing it, because I can.  I'm not sure that's a better thing than practicing, but I have so much going on, it's very hard to get much structured practice done.

Instructor

I will be, once my site upgrades are complete.  I have a number of guest interviews ready to go up, as well as some future courses being developed as we speak.  The upgrades should be done any day now. 

Instructor

Yeah, a Dim creates a strong leading tone to the I.  A dim also makes a good Passing chord when playing by step.

For Example: Cmaj7 Dbdim Dm7 Ebdim Em7 etc...

Most of the time, I see the dim in vii0 replaced by a bVII, in practice, and this was why I was curious at the Bm sub.  Although I get why, I just would have seen it, as convergence of a C major and G major key, progression wise.

Instructor

How does EZ drummer work, is it a stand alone, or a plugin?

Olly,

It would be hard to do so, because it's the method that makes it possible.  The lessons are taught so that even someone that has never played the guitar, can learn it.  Its geared towards the absolute beginner.  Where I think it excels is in the following ways.

1.  It's made very easy to follow, and understand. 
2.  It isn't time intensive.  The approach works quickly.
3.  The learning outcomes are very hard to achieve under any other conditions

a.  The student is able to play a note on any string, and name it within a half second to two seconds.

b.  The student can locate any note on any string, eg. "Find and Play Bb on the 4th string", in about as quickly, .5 to 2 seconds.

Knowing all the notes on the neck, where you can almost immediately see them, in my opinion is the ONLY way that any serious study of music theory can be started, where application to the guitar is an objective. 

You can learn theory, but if you want to have a hell of a time trying to make use of it, make sure that you are as weak as possible with knowing the neck/where the notes are found on the guitar.

At the Academy, the Notes on the Neck is the first step to understanding the basics of Music (ss well as notes, the student learns fundamental musical principles and understands them).

I'll be honest, this course takes everyone by surprise.  Those that have played for years and stunned by how well this works, and yet it's profoundly simple.  I have developed this over hundreds of students, and its been refined hundreds of times over.   

Music is static, the rules dont change,  the notes are the notes and the locations on the fretboard are where they always are.  I am not inventing anything new, but where this program works is in how its taught, and I could count on both hands how many people have said, "Man why didn't I ever think of it?"  I think the reason that no one thought of it, is there are certain things that we've been conditioned to accept are already being taught as well as they can possibly be taught, after all, if this wasn't the case, we assume someone would have found it by now.  So we aren't challenged to look further, because we don't suspect that there are better ways.

This is where I guess I differed.  I was dissatisfied with conventional ways of doing things, and that resulted in my own search and subsequent breakthroughs, the foundation of which many years later became the teaching curricula of my Guitar Academy.

Don, is barely into the Lead portion, but without tipping my approach I am sure he would tell you that this stuff isn't found out there, in books videos, magazines.  As crazy as that might sound, it's also true.   The deeper he gets, the more he's going to realize how off the beaten path this approach goes.  Some people consider me a genius because of this.  I'm not comfortable with this.

I think I was just fortunate to be in a place where I was forced to dig out my own ways of understanding, in such a way that I uncovered an inherent logic to the guitar.

The old saying, necessity breeds invention, was definitely true in my case.  In my situation, the journey took 12 years.

Instructor

Olly,

I second the others where you can hear your Satch influences.  What I like and this isnt something that I hear often, is that your playing explores melody, something that I think is very much a staple of Joe's songs, and that I am a fan of.  Give me a melody over flash and 9 times out of 10 I'll appreciate the song more.  The  riff is pure 80's metal blues based, ala Tesla or Great White.

Why don't you go into how you are coming up with the melody?  What's happened first with this song?  Did you come up with the riff first and then "hear" the melody in your head?   

Instructor

This would work well over E Major and C#m keys.

Instructor