Hello from Birmingham...England

[Chris Wiggin]

Hello guys, 

Pleased to be part of this community. I joined up last week and am already pleased with progress but I'll get to that later.

First off, I'm a 62 year old guy and as the title says from Birmingham (UK) which is kind of cool because I believe Breakthrough Guitar are based in Birmingham (AL), but I could be wrong.

Having listened to Jonathon's story mine is very similar (as I'm sure it is for many of you).

I picked up guitar in my early teens, formed a band at school that played a few gigs (badly). Went to art college, formed another band but switched to bass (because my mate was better on guitar than me) and played a couple more gigs.

Through that whole period I never actually learned to play guitar or bass properly, just the few chords and riffs I needed to play the songs in our set.

Anyway I left college and started a family early and life got in the way but about twenty years or so ago I decided I'd pick up guitar again and learn it properly!!

I bought a ton of books and videos (and quite a few guitars, because nothing is going to make you sound better than a new guitar, right?), but I would continually get frustrated at never seeming to progress and I couldn't even get lost in myself noodling because I'd get annoyed that I just played the same riffs or licks all the time.  My problem with a lot of the courses is not that they immerse you in a lot off 'stuff' to learn like scales - I haven't got a problem with that, but I have an extremely poor memory so even if I learn a scale to the point where I think I've nailed it, I've lost it within a week if I can't apply it to playing every day. Many courses don't allow you to do that, they just move you on to the next scale.

With lockdown and everything that's been going on over the last two years I decided to make a concerted effort at playing again but actually picked up the bass. I found a great course online called BassBuzz by Josh Fossgreen who actually structures his course in a very similar way to Breakthrough Guitar in that almost instantly he has you playing along to backing tracks. I can thoroughly recommend Josh to anyone also thinking off delving into Bass. Ultimately though I found myself looking at my large collection of unplayed guitars thinking I really need to get back into six string. I love bass and although I know you can jam along to backing tracks just as easily, for me bass is a band environment instrument, not so much fun as guitar if you are just a bedroom rocker!!

So I dug out my log-in details to a certain well known online Blues Guitar course and got back into guitar again. Now that course (I won't name it as I suppose it's a direct competitor) is great, and very detailed with all the stuff  Jonathon would probably say we don't need to know and sure enough progress is slow. But I'm still plugging away with it because blues is my first love.

However....

Breakthrough Guitar popped up on my Facebook feed a little over a week ago, and (unusually for me) I watched the whole video through to the end. If I have one criticism of Breakthrough Guitar it is that the sales video is the sort of formulaic sales pitch that would normally have me clicking the close window button within a minute but I left it running whilst I had a shower and came back to the end of the video and thought "Well Hell, I don't believe for one minute this guy has found an AHA moment that is going to transform my playing but for $27 (or whatever it was) let's just see what it's all about. Of course by this time I was suckered in and when I got to the payment page I found myself saying yes to the other courses as well. 

Anyway that was just over a week ago and I started the course with a lot of skepticism. Sure enough there was no great reveal or secret that I never knew. I certainly knew position 1 of the mayor scale (Well I did after Jonathon reminded me about it) but there WAS a big AHA moment because almost right away Jonathon said, OK know you know the scale go and find some YouTube videos and play along to it. And I'm kind of confused because normally a course would want me to learn all the notes on the scale and how to read it in music, and all the other positions on the neck and I'm thinking "can I do this already"  and of course the answer is "Yes I can". So within a week I've gone from noodling the same old riffs to pulling up loads of backing tracks on YouTube and having fun. Of course my phrasing is still limited but I'm no longer a sceptic and I'm looking forward to delving into Jonathon's other courses and building my skill level.

Anyway if you're still with me, thanks for getting this far. Maybe you've had similar experiences to me, I'd love to hear them, and look forward to being a part of this community.

 

[Glenn Gay]

First of all, welcome to the forum @Chris Wiggin. Your story is so much like mine it's incredible 😲 So happy you are enjoying your experience here with Breakthrough Guitar, and glad you decided to join this forum. As it grows in members, you will begin to see a place to go to get first hand advice on pretty well any topic or issue regarding guitars and music.

PS - my mom - God Rest her soul, was born in Birmingham, England. She came to Nova Scotia when she was just 2 years old. She was the one and only child from her original dad who was killed in the war back in 1917. She was born there in 1915 as a war bride, her mom re-married and moved to Nova Scotia, Canada where there family grew to 12 siblings. She was the only one born of the original dad.

She had a brother, 1 of the twins, die in the second world war. Anyway, sorry to dampen the mood here...lol Great to have you on board with us pal.

All the best 

Glenn 🤘