Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced?, How does the rating work for you? Options

[Andrew Cockburn]

I discussed this with Kris today, and I thought it would be fun to start a thread and see what others think ...

Of course, it's all Muris' fault

If anyone asked me, I would say I am an intermediate player - of course, we have observed before on GMC that no one ever admits to being advanced - they become intermediate after a year or two and stay that way forever even though they get better and better. Even Pavel calls himself intermediate So after playing for 30 years (some of them good years with progress, a lot of them bad years before I came to GMC) there are some things I can play well, and a lot that I can't. I am a very unbalanced player, being mostly self taught. My theory and musical understanding skills are good, I play legato reasonably well, and my phrasing is competent, but my alt-picking is slow, my sweeping is virtually non-existent and I can barely tap.

When Muris came out with his intermediate Bb Lesson, I was amazed at the musicality of it, it sounded so breathtaking, but was labeled intermediate. There are a lot of techniques on there that I haven't mastered yet, but I was up for the challenge, maybe I could play it after months of practice.

So, I decided to get my feet wet by learning the beginner Bb lesson - again, intensely musical, but a lot easier to play. I'm intermediate, right? Should be able to pick it up in half an hour or so right? Noooooo! A lot of the stuff on that lesson IS very basic, the alt picking is fairly slow, no hard bends, only 16th sweep picking not even 16th triplets, but for me, the sweeps were very hard.

I started slow, and persevered. The basic mechanics of sweeping I have down, thanks to Pavel's amazing sweeping lessons, but I suck speed-wise, but actually this lesson was inspiring to me as I started out at 50bpm and worked up to 72bpm (full speed), but it took me about a week to get there. Now I play this lesson as a warm up, and I am still working on the phrasing - Muris phrasing is exquisite, and actually to get that right and play it cleanly is hardest of all, but I am enjoying that part

So all of this got me thinking - if someone who has played guitar fairly seriously for 30 years can't play a beginner level GMC lesson without trouble, what does that mean? Am I a pathetic guitarist? I hope not ... I know I have gaps in my abilities but I can certainly play.

Are the levels whacked? Maybe a little, but that reflects just how hard it is to grade a lessons difficulty - When Muris says a lesson is easy, both he and Steve Vai could probably play it easily, the rest of us might have problems!

It also depends on what you have practiced and the style of it. If it was a blues, or Gilmour style lesson, I would probably have mastered it in 30 minutes and would not have been writing this, but because of the sweeping it gave me problems - maybe that just reflects the fact that as far as sweeping goes, I AM a beginner. I know for sure I will be working on the intermediate lesson for the foreseeable future, and may never get to the advanced lesson.

Be that as it may, I raised this point for a reason, it just took me a while to get to it - how do other GMC:ers feel about the levels? Do they fairly represent your abilities, do you have big gaps like me? Is there a way we can improve the rating system? What do you guys think?

BTW, Kris is doing an awesome job even having such a cool rating system on the site, I am not criticizing, just wondering how it works out for others. And Muris is a guitar god, and plays a lot how I would like to play but he thought of it first!

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