Hi All
I just joined today on a free month's subscription to check this site out.
My opinion pretty quickly became that this site has the content (great amount of high quality learning resources), but I think the web UI is poor and in need of a redesign. Judging by the looks of it, this site is quite old and hasn't had a redesign for a long time.
My problem with the current design is that it's too hard to find what I'm looking for. The only way to find what I'm looking for is to scroll through thousands of videos. For example I find it disappointing that I can only filter by beginner/intermediate/advanced/etc OR genre, and not both (this should be a very easy feature to implement - you just have to use both those filters on the data you already have).
I think the site should be redesigned not only to cater for this extra feature, but also more categorising, for example, when I click under Blues category in Guitar Lessons, I want to see more sub categories for ease of navigation, not just a huge pile of hundreds of videos that I have to scroll through (the sub categories "Modern" and "Traditional" don't quite cut it for me, and they don't really mean much to me either!).
Has this been discussed at all in the past?
Hello MrBen, welcome to GMC, I'm sure Kris will be along to comment he's always open to suggestions.
For now have you tried the advanced lesson search? Just click the search button on the right of the main header, you get more filters in there. If you enter something in the box above it, for instance "Clapton" you will get Clapton style lessons and further down the page you will see the advanced search but if you put nothing in the box and click the search button it takes you straight to the advanced search page.
I hope this helps.
Cheers
Stay safe
Phil
Welcome Mr Ben and thanks for trying out GMC!
Have you tested filtering out results in the search?
I think you raise some good points here, and we have actually started reorganising the lesson archive since a few months back. This is why we recently changed the structure of this page: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/video-lessons/
This is also why you can find some new sub categories (like Modern and Traditional Blues). Some are poorly populated right now but this will change as we complete the re-organisation.
Maybe he's on a mobile device Kris, it doesn't display like that on mobile you have to click the search button
Yes, on smaller mobile units the advanced options are on the bottom of the search page (scroll down)
Hey All
Thanks for the advice.
The problem with the advised approach of the advanced search is that I can't search for what I don't know exists (or even whats fell to the back of my mind).
For example, it would be great to see sub categories such as the following:
- scale-oriented things (I probably don't know the names of half the scales taught on this website so search is no good)
- chord progs/chords oriented things
- technique-oriented (i.e. how to pick, how to do harmonics, raking, bending, etc... ) (so many techniques - how could I possibly know all of them?!)
- guitarists' styles (there are hundreds of great guitarists that have fell to the back of my mind, I wouldn't know who to search)
- etc...
From a technical perspective, implementing these categories would be easy because you seem to have all your videos well-tagged. An idea could be to enumerate every tag that exists in your database to give you visibility on what exists, and then create categories (perhaps the same tag could fall into multiple categories ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) for them. You could then integrate these categories into the website front-end. Then the user would have clear visibility of your content, and won't have the home work of trawling through a massive pile of videos.
EDIT: and it would be nice to see apply filters both for the entirety of your content, and specific style categories i.e. just for blues
Hi Phil,
I think "Dive in and see where you go" is a philosophy that works for some people. Personally, I prefer more organisation than this but even still I consider myself somewhat as going with that philosophy as well, and I find it easier to dive in when I have visibility of where I can actually dive to!
You seem to already have some sort of categorisation of the sort I am talking about (however, I would argue that this list needs refining before using it in such a way as I am suggesting):
Why not integrate these categories into the web UI? It would give for a much smoother user experience as the user who knows what they want does not have to dive so deep.
I would love it if the GMC website made me a cup of coffee in the morning.
Hello again MrBen,
Just to clarify, I'm only a member, I'm not admin we are like a family here though. It would be great if you could stay around long enough to see what goes on here.
Kris is the main man, he owns GMC.
It's a huge task to undertake to retag all 3859 lessons but I know Kris and Gab (Gabriel Leopardi) are working on it at the moment so I would think they will listen to suggestions.
Can I suggest a few things to help you get the most out of GMC? (I'll assume you said "yes" )
1: Contact Gab and ask if he will mentor you. If he has places available, which I think he has, he will ask you what you can play and what your goals are. He will recommend lessons for you based on what you tell him, this will be a starting point. If you can record yourself on video, even a phone, that is great because he will watch you play his suggested lesson and see which parts of your technique need extra attention, he will then recommend lessons to work on specific things to supplement your development. He's a great teacher. I'm sure Gab can give you the structure you want in your journey.
2: Contact Todd Simpson and join his Shred Bootcamp, you don't have to pay fast, just accurately, precision over speed for every lesson and it really helps with your finger dexterity and hand coordination. You get your own thread for this.
3: Again with Todd, work through the more casual Quick Licks series. You can dive straight in with these, each lesson is a shared thread, you'll see my attempts in there. The master thread is https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=58703 with the lessons sorted in both technique covered and also a list in numerical order. If you want to collect your badges it's easier to do them in numerical order so the badge number matches the Quick Lick number.
4: Try to join in with any of the collabs, they're great for taking you out of your usual comfort zone. Sometimes Gab runs a creativity workshop series, these are great to get your mind thinking so if they pop up, have a go.
I hope I haven't bored you with all these suggestions. It would be great if you would share a bit about yourself. Maybe in a new thread in the Chill Out area, introduce yourself, tells us what music you like, favourite guitarists, what guitars you have, how long you've been playing, when you are on this planet etc.
Looking forward to seeing you around. Welcome to the family.
Stay safe
Phil
Thanks buddy, I'm sure you'll get a lot out of GMC if you just give it a few weeks
I think it's also where the forum helps so much that other members can recommend lessons or highlight lessons they've seen along their journey that suit what you are looking for.
Todd here I run the SHRED BOOTCAMP! Always open to a new Soldier! It starts off very simple and works up to crazy. Just shoot me a PM if you wanna try it
The shortcut to the master link is
http://bit.ly/twtgmc
Todd
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