Huge Congrats To Our Friend - Marek Rojewski, From "zero" to hero? Options

[Darius Wave]

Hi all!

I've been going through some random lesson today to make sure I'll assign my new lesson to a proper level. At one of the lessons, out of curiosity I've launched rec takes link. It was an old lesson,same as rec takes, where I found Marek's approach.

..and

...what I have to say

...Marek - you did an excellent progress through those years! From a beginner to a shredding beast. Reasonable amount of time, honest practise and attention. Now you should definitely share your routines and attitude to practise with outher students! What would you advice them to get from the point you were, to the point you are at the moment?

Heres example of Marek's playing from 2009

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...mp;#entry371262

And here's was actually Marek is capable of these days

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...mp;#entry737653


Huge congrats man!

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[bleez]

Thats actually very awesome to see those vids side by side. Only 7-ish years between them is incredible.
Amazing job, Marek.

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[AK Rich]

Now there's a guy that truly wants it. Great progress over the years Marek! You should be proud.

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[Monica Gheorghev...]

Marek it's absolutely amazing and it's one of the students which prove that hard work and ambition are the key to become an awesome player. How I said in his topic "Five Hundred Days Plan", I always admired at him the fact that constantly he increased the level of difficulty from lessons. All his REC takes are damn good prepared which show how much work is behind each take. Also I love the fact that it's very important for him to "win" a lesson and with no doubt he is a winner I could write many things about him because I admire his work, I know each take posted by him and for me he is one of the best students from GMC and a great example for all of us.


Huge congrats Marek for all your hard work! I think you know very well my opinion about you but let me tell you again: You are an amazing player and it's always a pleasure for me to listen your takes!!!! Keep on the amazing job and don't forget that soon we will celebrate your Guitar Lord level I hardly wait to see which lessons you prepare for this

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[Mertay]

Comparing 2 videos was awesome like 2 different people, very impressive!

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[Todd Simpson]

Super CONGRATS indeed!!! You gotta earn it and MAREK, you have EARNED IT!!!


Todd

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[fzalfa]

yes it's great as Todd said :you have EARNED IT!!!

cheers

Laurent

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[Phil66]

Absolutely incredible progress, well done mate, you earned it you deserve it 100%. YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION

This should be a monthly feature where some of our oldest takes are posted with some of our recent ones, we tend to forget how limited we were back in the day. I for one think I am not progressing at all but when I watch old videos I can see that I have.

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[Wyverex]

That difference is awesome! I can only hope to have made comparable progress in seven years. Congratulations!

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[Kristofer Dahl]

YES!! Hard work pays off - your progress is nothing but spectacular! This is quite an achievement!

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[thefireball]

Pretty awesome! He had that "beginner" sound on the first one as we all do at first - and now look at him! Guitar finger tone and technique has matured indeed! Congrats! Best wishes on your guitar journey!

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[Tom51]

Wow - your progress is absolutely amazing and a great inspiration for all of us. Would be interesting to learn more about your practice over the years. YOU ROCK MAREK!

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[Ben Higgins]

Wow, I've never seen that old vid of Marek before. Before the beard! Before he drank from the cup of wisdom and gained the strength of Odin!

Well done, my friend.. it's always been a pleasure to see your progress over the years!

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[Phil66]

As I said earlier that is incredible. I'd like to know how consistent the progress was. It averages one increase in difficulty level per year. Was it pretty much like that or was Marek stuck at one level for more than a year and increase two or three levels in one year?
Also approach to practise and time spent would be nice to know.
I guess Marek is the only one who can answer so I'll wait for him to post. Unless anyone else has any insight into this amazing progress.

Once again, well done Marek, you are truly an inspiration.

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[Darius Wave]

Wow, I've never seen that old vid of Marek before. Before the beard! Before he drank from the cup of wisdom and gained the strength of Odin!

Well done, my friend.. it's always been a pleasure to see your progress over the years!

Try to imagine how surprised I was It was like someone totally different in the first take

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[Marek Rojewski]

Oh my... I log into GMC and see a topic about myself This is a great gift, I am touched and honoured by all the comments made by all of you! Many thanks to each and everyone of you

I will gladly share my "way of learning" even though I am concentrated on the multiple mistakes of my practice over the years, and "how much more I could learn if not those mistakes". GMC Instructors shared their views on how to practise many times and their ways/methods are superior to mine in every way, the only reason I didn't implement them all is laziness/stubbornness

What I did over the years + comments:

1. Choose a lesson -> from my experience it is important to make the right choice, if you choose something too easy, progress will be small, because you won't leave your comfort zone, and progress happens outside of the comfort zone. If you choose something too hard (and I think I did that mistake a few times) the learning process can be frustrating, it takes too long, the thing can become boring.

Outside of the "too easy / too hard" difference, there are of course many other things we must consider like: how much we like the lesson? how long is the lesson? what style is the lesson in? Lesson we like more are obviously more attractive for us, so practising them is easier/more pleasant. Lessons that are shorter can be learn a bit faster, so we can more frequently "achieve something" and "move on to another interesting lesson".

2. Learn the lesson
- at first I memorise the notes, it takes only 1-3 days and I can slowly play the lesson without any backingtrack or metronome. Of course there are tons of mistakes, but we must start with something.

- I still play without the metronome, just speed things up a little bit and identify what parts are hard and will need polishing.

- the "grind" begins - I set the metronome to a sloooooow speed and play the parts that are difficult for me. When the lick starts to sound okay I can gradually rise the speed. At this point I increase the BPM around 5-8 each time.

- once I reach the "lesson speed" I continue until 10-20 bpm more than the lesson requires. At this step I don't need everything to be perfect, especially at the beginning. This is a trick I learned on GMC - you shouldn't stop at the "comfort zone speed" or even "just a little bit outside of the comfort zone". It is a good idea to set the speed 10-20 bpm more that you are able to play and try to play it... You will fail more less, but this sends a message to your brain -> "you better adjust you lazy git!"

- each practice session I start slow and go to the point above. When I am content with the way I play those difficult parts, I start to play the whole lesson over the backing track. Sometimes it turns out that "connecting different licks" is more difficult than I thought and then I practice again starting slow with the metronome, but adding some "previous notes" to the licks.

- as playing the lesson fast becomes more and more natural, the phase of "starting slow and speeding things up" gets shorter (for example you can increase speed by 10-15 bpm every time, not 5-8 bpm) and the "playing over backing" phase gets longer and longer.

- if you can play the lesson well over the backingtrack you can try to record a REC take and get feedback from the Instructors. I strongly advice to do it as often as possible and don't be afraid of "not passing REC grading". Feedback and good advise are always very valuable and can speed your learning process significantly.


My mistakes over the years/what to avoid:
- no point in playing the whole lesson over and over again if you only need to improve some parts of it. I spent hours playing lessons where I could play everything except one or two licks. It is much better to just spend time with those more difficult parts and the metronome. When I played whole lessons I often didn't pay attention "to the easy parts" and failed at the hard parts. So instead of improving my playing of the hard parts, I developed bad habits on the easy parts...

- no matter which phase of learning you're in, don't think that you can split your attention. I tried to watch e-sport streams / tv series / board game tutorials while practising the guitar. I was thinking that "I already memorised the notes and now I just need to improve muscles/finger memory/speed things up by repeating". That was a big mistake, after hundreds of low quality repetitions you have a poorly / badly learned lick, and it takes another hours to make it clean again.... Really not worth it.

- always warm up. Some time ago I wrote about my "trigger finger" injury, you can check my profile to find the topic. It is really sad and stupid, but I did what most "young men" do - I heard about the possibility of injury and thought "lol old farts, this won't happen to me, I am indestructible".

- connected to the above - warming up can also be fun. I play some "boring" stuff as warm up, but also some rhythm riffing, easy metal songs, and these things from the very beginning of a practice session can make a good atmosphere/mood.

- don't think that short practice session is "not good enough". Obviously longer practise is better, but if you have only 30 minutes "that day" because of reasons, then it is much better to play for 30 minutes, than 0 minutes...


Concerning the history of my progress:

I don't remember exactly but the most important things were:

1. at one point I started learning more rhythm / riffing lessons, and to my surprise this improved both my solo and rhythm playing.

2. I started playing song covers with a friend - playing with another person teaches you how to play "on the beat", something I struggled with even after learning some lvl 6-7 lessons (well I still make those mistakes from time to time...)

3. I started playing with a band - this is partly same as playing cover with a friend, but 3-4 people make it much more difficult and rewarding than one person;) also composing your own stuff and interacting with other musicians can't be replaced by anything else.

4. the super obvious thing - all those years there were weeks/months when I played 1 hour daily/5 hours per week and when I played 3 hours daily/10-15 hours per week. The weeks/months of playing 2-3 hours per day were always the moments of my greatest rise. BUT I think that the biggest difference is between playing 1 hour a day and playing at least 1,5 hour a day. I feel 1 hour is average/slow progress, and 1,5 hour is already good progress... 30 minutes more can mean better warm up, better metronome phase (increasing less bpm per increase), and more time to play over the backing track, after the metronome phase is ended.

I don't remember if I ever "hit a wall" and couldn't improve my playing. From the beginning I believed Kris when he said that anyone can learn to play, it "just takes time". I didn't think I'll record a lvl 9 lesson after 7 years. I expected it to take the rest of my life
The only time I recall "hitting a wall" was when I tried to learn lessons that were way to difficult for me at that time - so the problem was choosing something too difficult.

Sorry if the post is too chaotic/badly written, I am really tired and sleepy, but decided to write an answer because your posts made me so happy

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[Darius Wave]

There is no chaos in your response Marek.

You put a spotlight on the most important thing evever - respect to the time we spend with guitar and effeiciency of our practise, that simply demands focus and attention.

It's all exactly how you say. Spending 1,5h per day with full focus gives much more than sitting 5h with guitar while being distracted with TV, Facebook or anything similar. Your practise through those years have been well selected and wise. That's why your progress in so impressive. I'm sure many of us know exactly how things could be done, but can bring it into real life. That a reason why you deserve additional respect - for being able to execute what you decided is important. Your self-disclipline can be a reference for many students.

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[Wyverex]

Thank you for sharing your method with us! I've recently started with a method sharing many similarities and this gives me confidence to push through with it. You're truly an inspiration.

If you choose something too hard (and I think I did that mistake a few times) the learning process can be frustrating, it takes too long, the thing can become boring.

I second that! The chief mistake I made over the past 15 years of making music was to always skip the simple, "boring" stuff and directly go to the "cool" stuff. What I always ended up with was something half-baked that never felt quite right because I was missing the fundamentals.
Now I've systematically cut away everything that's too advanced for me and concentrate on the basics again. Making a "simple" thing sound great is IMHO where true progress lies. (A thing I've yet to accomplish)

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This post has been edited by Wyverex: Oct 31 2016, 09:02 AM

[Phil66]

Thanks Marek,

Your reply was very well put. I do many of the things you do but I will be taking note of everything you said.

Thank you for your inspiration.

Cheers

Phil

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[PosterBoy]

That púts my 34 years of playing guitar to shame. Well done such great progress and obviously consistent focused practice

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