Hey Guys and welcome to our MTP thread ,

I hope everyone is OK with me paired up with you guys, if not please let me know! I think everyone has followed already (at least briefly) how the 1st phase of the MTP was done, and hopefully you will have also seen how I progressed with Ben during this first 1 1/2 months.

What I would like to do, is to give you all an assignment for each week (first one will be starting later this week), giving you some homework. In addition to this, I would like to give you some exercises and/or theory to study during the week. The week will be completed with an upload to show me your progress on the assignment.

The first couple of assignments will be focussing on some of the basics, in order for me to assess what your current weak / strong spots are and to further develop the assignments more in line with what you all need.

My plan is to move ahead as a group if possible through the assignments (Ben is a couple of weeks ahead, but hopefully we can catch up ). If for some reasons that is not working, I will continue with a more personal approach. The assignments will be posted in seperate threads on this subforum. Please upload your takes of it in your own upload thread, which is pinned

As a start, I would like to ask all of you (Ben, ignore this please if you want, as you have been going over this already more or less), to answer the following questions:

1) Could you give me a brief background on yourself (name, age, how long you play, your main influences, type of music you like)?

2) Could you give me an idea how far your theory knowledge is developed (which scales do you know, what shapes, modes, chords etc etc)?

3) Please list all lessons from GMC which you already completed succesfully?

4) What are your main weaknesses currently, which need extra attention according to yourself?

5) How much time are you willing to (can you) spend on guitar practicing per day?

6) What are your main goals to be achieved in music?

Thanks for answering these questions, and I am looking forward to start working with you

Cheers
Roger

Hey Velvet Roger

To answer the questions first

1. My full name is Isac Lundqvist i will be 21 in a month and i have played guitar for almost exactually 2 years now. My favorit type of music is metal(Heavy, Power ,Death, Black,) and some of my favorite bands are, Stratovarius, Hammerfall, Children of bodom, Heavenly, Blind Guardian, Rhapsody, Avenged Sevenfold, Symphony X, Firewind and alot more.....

2. My theory knowledge isent the best.... I know the minor and major pentatonic scale and i also know all the modes(Know the postitions and can play them fluently in A minor)

3. I dont know exactually all teh lessons i have mastered but i have mastered many of Lians lessons and also some of Muris(Phrygian beginner, Lydian Beginner, Mixolydian beginner, Beginner solo in d,) but i really feel i can improve on all theese lessons

4. My vibrato is still pretty weak but it has improved alot latelly. The same goes for my legato especially pull offs. Playing other music style besides metal, I am not so good at blues, jazz, country, and so on

You forgott to write 5

6. If i want to i can play 10 hours per day but i usually play between 2-4 hours per day.... If i feel like playing more i do that.

7. My main goal is to be able to play good metal rythm and solo, and also try and check out some other music styles aswell......

Thats all i think

Thanks Isac,

I watched several video's of you already and am looking forward working with you

Let's wait until the others are in as well and then we get started.

Hey guys! Great to see everyone else you have Roger!!

Hey how's it going Velvet Roger. I'm happy to be working with you and getting some direction for my playing!

Ok, on to the Questions:

1) My name's Lee, I'm 27 and have been playing for 7 years. My main influences starting off were Slash, Pink Floyd (David Gilmour), Peter Frampton, The Eagles (Joe Walsh) etc.. As I got further into playing I stumbled upon Vai, Satriani, Yngwie, Buckethead, et al. I like all sorts of music except maybe not so much country, but I especially like Blues Rock, Psychadelic Rock, Jam Bands, Hard Rock, even some Metal.

2) My grasp of theory isn't the greatest and is a little embarassing giving the length of time I've been playing. I mostly stick to Minor and Pentatonic scales (perhaps too much ) but I also know the Major scale. I know the note names on the 'E' string and usually just find out what key a song is in and play "in the box" based off of that.

3) I haven't played that many. I know Trond's Pinch Harmonics lesson and Muris' Phrygian beginner, but could stand to improve on both.

4) As I mentioned in #2, my theory is lacking. I'd like to someday be able to "see" all the notes of a given scale or mode as I'm playing them and be able to play all up and down the neck. Technique wise I think I'm decent in a lot of areas, but haven't done much with sweeping or tapping.

5) I work full time, but I should be able to put in at least 2 hours in the evenings and a little more over weekends. This is actually a weird week for me though. This Friday I'll be getting a cortisone shot in my back as I injured myself a while back and have a herniated disc. The doc says I should be good as new by Sunday and I certainly hope so. I just wanted to let you know I might be getting off to a slower start here.

6) My main goal is to feel confident enough in my talents to look for or start a local bar band. I've been dreaming about playing in front of people for a long time and would love to make that happen in the next few years.


If you have any other questions or anything just let me know. I look forward to working with you.



Hey thanks man. I look forward to watching you and the others' progress as we go along here. Cheers!

Roger,

This has been an insane week and a half at work...but I have this friday, saturday and sunday off, so I will be getting the latest video up as soon as I can!

Ben

Thanks for all the answers Lee, really looking forward working with you.

Hopefully Complete Newbie will respond soon, so we can start rocking

As a start, already mentioned, I would primarily focus on the items listed in the already provided Syllabus. These exercises/lessons may give you the feeling like 'hmmm, I already know that' but it is extremely important to get the basics right and gives me also a better picture on what actually needs improvement as well.

Please take a look at the Syllabus here, and let me know whether you have already been doing any of those lessons mentioned and what your judgement is currently on your ability to play those lessons.
We can also choose different lessons than those mentioned to get starting, depending on your current level of playing.

Based on those responses we can then decide how to move forward with the MTP in this group:

a. Completely centralized: everybody is doing the same lessons/exercises throughout the week

b. Partly centralized: some exercises will be given to all of you every week to work on. video lessons will be chosen either in pairs or individually, based on interests, individual needs.

Thanks for your reponses guys

I would like to finalize our structure by this week Friday, so we can start right away after that. And please remember, you only get out of this program what you actually putting in yourself. I can give you guidance, any help needed etc etc, but in the end you have to really be the driving motion for your own improvement .

EDIT 1:



Don't worry Ben, we need to make up some time to catch up with you anyways

But seriously, it's fine to do this by the weekend. It's probably even wise to continue a bit longer on the lesson at the actually try to work on the patterns Muris is playing there (the 'thirds' moving up/down the neck) as a next step. You will certainly see not so long from now, that nowing these patterns really improve your fretboard knowledge, scale knowledge and therefore your ability to improvise and participate in collabs

EDIT 2:

One additional question that popped up in my mind is:

As part of the MTP I would like to schedule a fixed 1/2 hour - 1 hour chat session in our GMC chatroom 2 during the weekend in which any of you, who has questions, can freely ask them instantly.

Can you please indicate which of the following 4 options would suit you?

Saturday evening 21:00u
Saturday evening 22:00u
Sunday evening 21:00u
Sunday evening 22:00u

Many thanks guys!
Roger

After looking at the syballus i feel that the week one excercice is something i need to work on.....

Week two rythm and timing is the one thing i fell i can do best

week three is something i really need to improve

week four lesson is something i can do at lover speeds and working on gettting it up to speed....

as for the chat time i can do almost any night after 10

Supersize, I'm not even gonna ask you to explain what "lover speeds" means. Sorry Roger, couldn't resist.

Hahaha, sounds like the perfect speed to me though

Hi Roger,

I haven't been online for a couple of weeks, sorry.

Work as taken a lot of my time recently, so haven't been practicing or getting online.

I am a complete beginner. I picked up the guitar in October, and have started following Kris' beginner MTP.

I am 42 years of age and I supose my main influences/likes are older heavy metal (ACDC/Black Sabbath/Deep purple) and so on, however, my main goal is to be able to get a tune out of a guitar that someone will recognise HaHa, so being able to play the guitar is my main goal.

My theory isn't great, I have viewed/tried the pentatonic video but that's about it I'm afraid.

I have uploaded the smoke on the water and the strumming videos but both still need work on my timimg.

I can spend probably about 2hrs a day practacing after work.

Hope this helps

Eric

Thanks Eric for your reply. Good to have you onboard as well.

I will start with your individual assignment later today or tomorrow (depending on work).

Barenaked Ninja, could you please answer the following question, so I can start with individual assignments for you?



And probably you already noticed it, but I have put up the 1st group exercise, and gave superize it's 1st individual assignment (Ben is still busy with his current one ).

You can call me Lee . I wish I had picked a better name when I signed up!

Looking over the syllabus I think I could tackle a lesson from each week. Like you said it's best not to miss anything so I don't mind doing things I think I have nailed down because you might see something I'm not seeing. I'm up for anything though, just let me know!

Like I said earlier, tomorrow I'm getting my back taken care of so I might be out of commission for a day or two. I'll have to let you know after the fact.

As for the chat, Saturday night's work best for me. What would 21:00u be in United States Eastern time?

Take care!
Lee

Hey Lee, thanks for the reply.

Why not start then at the beginning with the Syllabus and if things are 'easy' we can quickly go to the next lessons towards a bit more complicated stuff. I will put the individual assignment up in a second.

Don't worry about being a couple of days out of comission, those things always happen unfortunately

21:00 CET time is equivalent to 3 PM EST. First chat session is planned though for Sunday 22:00 CET, or 4 PM EST. If it's unconvenient, we can always have a chat at some other time during the weekend (am awake quite long on Saturdays ).

Just wanted to greet everyone in this group. So what's up everybody? I will be able to make the chat tomorrow (sunday). 4pm eastern time sounds good for me, at least for this sunday it is.

Hey how's it going? I totally forgot about the chat yesterday.. oops

Don't worry about it

Hows your lesson going?

Pretty good. I've played it over a time or two. I hope to have something up by Thursday night!

Great, looking forward to it