Sarah's new lessons

[Doug Marks]

We’re not officially “rolling out” Sarah’s new lessons yet. But guess what? They’re available to anyone that reads this post. We don’t have much traffic on the forum yet…soon…. but not yet. So, to the two or three people that actually see this, here ya go. They’re online, available, just haven’t started promoting them yet. Forum membership has it’s privileges.

Metal Riffology is now 3 volumes. They’re combined in the Metal Guitar Riffs package and available individually. All six of her latest programs are in a package (formerly called Riffology Package) called Guitar Riffs and Melodic Principles. You can see all of the changes here. https://guitarlessonforum.com/sarah-spisak

Tomorrow the new video will be posted. It’s killer!

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[PaulWolfe]

Damn, Doug, this is the motivation I need right now… just wish I could afford to buy it right now…

[Doug Marks]

I was thinking about you yesterday Paul. You were talking about a lack of motivation from time to time. We all experience that. The important thing is to understand what motivates you personally. In January, at the very least, you were one of the most motivated students in the Speed and Accuracy contest. I think what helped is, the contest was based on personal improvement. And that improvement was quantifiable – the metronome doesn’t lie. You weren’t really pitted against other competitors you were pitted against self improvement. I think you should pick another personal goal. I would like to see part of that goal lead to putting a band together to jam once a week. Spending too much time alone in your practice room gets claustrophobic. It’s quite helpful to get a kick in the rear by fellow band mates.

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[PaulWolfe]

Y’know  Doug, that sounds like a good idea… and I don’t have to look far for bandmates. My wife is a drummer and my son is getting pretty good at the guitar. So in response to your suggestion, I’m going to get the garage cleaned up this weekend and I’ll set up my wife’s drums… then we can jam a couple times a week with me on guitar or bass depending on my mood.

[Anonymous]

Beware, I just purchased what I thought was all 3 volumes but it turned out to only be volume 3.
Check what’s in your cart before you press the checkout button.
Doug, I think some of your purchase buttons are not pointing to the right products.

[Doug Marks]

Problem solved. All the buttons are correct.

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Doug.
I was able to get the right product into my cart by hacking the URL.
I’m nerdy like that.
4 hours is way to long to be working on web pages. 😉

[Sarah Spisak]

Anonymous wrote:

I was able to get the right product into my cart by hacking the URL. I’m nerdy like that.

 

😀

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Doug Marks]

Anonymous wrote:

I was able to get the right product into my cart by hacking the URL.

I saw that you ordered the correct package and wondered how you had done it before I corrected the buttons. Now I know.

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[vinay]

How dare I have overlooked this! First volume is in, second is downloading, third will be downloading soon. My session for today has already been, but tomorrow I’ll give it a go. I haven’t watched the video yet, but I peeked at the tab and it seems to start right where I feel my priority is right now, right hand picking accuracy. Same advice Scott Ian gave in the video Jay linked to recently.

I also appreciate the study guide that came with it!

[barks62]

@ Paul, let us know how the band goes!!  My girlfriend is a pretty good singer and I’ve been trying for three years to get her to sing for me, but she won’t do it.  I hope yours works out!

Doug is right, NOTHING is more motivating than getting together with other musicians.  That could be some fantastic quality family time for you.  Good luck, and keep us posted!

[Sarah Spisak]

vinay wrote:

How dare I have overlooked this! First volume is in, second is downloading, third will be downloading soon. My session for today has already been, but tomorrow I’ll give it a go. I haven’t watched the video yet, but I peeked at the tab and it seems to start right where I feel my priority is right now, right hand picking accuracy. Same advice Scott Ian gave in the video Jay linked to recently. I also appreciate the study guide that came with it!

 

Hi Vinay!  I missed YOUR post… I’m supposed to get notifications and I didn’t get one on this.  🙁

Thanks for picking up a copy of the new lessons.  I hope you have a lot of fun and learn something useful!  🙂

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[vinay]

No worries, rest assured this was something I’ve been looking forward to and I’m definitely happy with what I got. I recall exercises from the first version, but somehow they just sound better in the latest revision. Maybe it is the interaction between the exercises and the backing tracks, it has just become more real music this way, hence more fun. The video (I’ve only seen the first video so far) also comes with more advice, I like that. I probably won’t complete this course before I start with the rhythm courses from DJ and Will and that mostly has to do with the fact that this course is very complete. That definitely not a bad thing, but this courses also goes through a lot of modes which I can’t exactly relate to. I do feel the mood that goes with it and the kind of music it should fit in, but is simply not always the kind of music I’m interested in. And as there is so much to learn in the music I am interested in, I might skip some bits. To become a rounded artists and especially if one wants to become a session musician this stuff definitely has to be tackled. But I started the MM courses to play the music I’ve got in my head. The same will probably go with the course Will is going to release next week, I might skip the bits on metalcore and the like and focus on the stuff I really like to learn about. That said, the majority of this new course is stuff I love and I’m definitely going to dig in :).

I was wondering though, the video comes with such cool sounding exercises with backing tracks and all and in the .gpx files I only find the guitar tracks. Have I not looked properly or are these indeed only the guitar tracks? I can imagine it would be an insane amount of work to also work out the other instruments in .gpx like you did for the complete basic course. Was well worth it. At least for me, for you at MM the success obviously depends on how many people actually bought the extension. Are you planning to release the complete .gpx files with backing tracks for this course, possibly at a surcharge. Or for me it would be equally fine if you’d release the sound tracks as sound files (.mp3 or the like). I’ve got the JamVox software which allows me to cancel bits, loop change pitch and speed so I could still effectively practice these bits like that. It would probably be easier for you than to transcribe everything in GP. If you’re willing to remix your recordings, you could actually put the guitar on the left channel and the rest of band on the right (or vice versa) so that anyone could easily cancel or boosts the rhythm guitar and play along.

Again, thanks for this great, well rounded new course!

[Sarah Spisak]

Thanks for the great post, Vinay!

Yes, there are several riffs from the original version and they sound more like actual music with full arrangements of bass and drums.  I even threw in a couple of solos and additional harmony parts.  I also extended many of those riffs to have variations because I did not have to do on-screen animated tab.

You didn’t miss anything in the GP files.  It would have taken me another year or so to put the full arrangements into those!  LOL  I was pushing myself to the limit to get this done on schedule.  When I told Doug that I wanted to shoot in the spring he said that wasn’t a good time to release a video.  I had a lot of post-production in mind… 😉  We shot in the summer and I barely finished it by mid-October.

Releasing the tracks as MP3s is a good idea.  We might do that.

As for anything that’s not to your taste, just skip it!  Or tweak the riffs that are too cheery.

🙂 Sarah

 

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[vinay]

That’s cool Sarah, don’t waste time fiddling with GP when you could actually play the guitar! Many of us probably have (free) software now to change speed from an audio file without affecting pitch anyway. So if you could possibly remix your existing recordings so that the rhythm guitar goes on one channel of the stereo mix and the rest goes on the other, it should probably be sufficient for all of us. Even if you can’t separate the two anymore, it could still work for me. Unfortunately the laptop I use with guitar practice is not powerful enough to do this with the video file. And obviously any hiccup in audio playback is not going to help when practicing rhythm guitar ;).

No worries, GP is still a great tool with the speed trainer for learning those parts initially so your efforts into creating those is not wasted by any means. It is just that once you’ve got those down, it is more fun jamming with the backline ;).

As for tweaking, yeah you already pointed out in this course how to change the feel of a particular piece with muting and such. I should definitely mess with the riffs I that aren’t my taste. Seems like an essential songwriting skill actually, changing the feel of a riff by messing with muting, timing and changing a few notes here and there.

As for the word “riff”, I never knew it came from “refrain”. I always thought it came from the words “rhythm figure” as that was how these were indicated in the tablature books I used to borrow from the library back in the days. Didn’t expect to learn this kind of stuff as well from the new course ;).

[metalj]

I think the mp3 idea sounds cool!

Jay aka the letter J

[Sarah Spisak]

vinay wrote:

The video (I’ve only seen the first video so far) also comes with more advice, I like that.

Thanks, Vinay.   Some of the video was scripted and some of it was improvised.  I do this in all three volumes, as I recall.  🙂

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Sarah Spisak]

metalj wrote:

I think the mp3 idea sounds cool!

Thanks, Jay!  We can probably manage that.  🙂

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Sarah Spisak]

vinay wrote:

As for tweaking, yeah you already pointed out in this course how to change the feel of a particular piece with muting and such. I should definitely mess with the riffs I that aren’t my taste. Seems like an essential songwriting skill actually, changing the feel of a riff by messing with muting, timing and changing a few notes here and there.

There is also a subtle theme in the new course- combining riffs.  It might be more obvious in some places, but you will probably notice little bits of riffs getting tweaked and recycled.  😉

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[vinay]

That’s cool!

 

Also, I like how part of these videos are improvised vs. entirely (and pretty clearly) scripted as it was in the previous edition. I think this works better in your case, it is more real. I suppose it would also be more fun for you, though I can imagine it can be hard talking to a bland starting camera. In class, I always try to recognize by their faces whether students get my point or not and it gets hard if you don’t get any feedback. A camera would be even worse, it doesn’t even have a face!

[Sarah Spisak]

Yes, it’s challenging to try to imagine you and anybody else who might be watching.  😉

I said once before that it’s like looking through a window into a world that does not yet exist…

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Will Flaherty]

I have to say, not having really talked on camera before shooting the MRE lesson. It’s much harder than it looks. In person or even on Skype, I can instantly come up with a ton of ways to explain or demonstrate something. In front of the camera, I kept thinking, “Ummm… Uhhh…”  Even reading my script, really made it hard to come off natural.

Then Doug did a quick demo of how he would read it… Holy crap, bow down to the master! I felt like I was watching one of his lessons! His delivery came off so natural and even exciting. It’s definitely a new skill, that I’m going to be working on much more now.

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

[Sarah Spisak]

Much like recording your music, you learn a lot from watching/listening to the performance and thinking about what you would like to change or do differently.  🙂

Metal Method Guitar Instructor

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