Hey Justin, you keep asking for feedback so thought I would give some. I’m a beginner going through. Typical middle-age lockdown guitarist so take everything I say with grain of salt as don’t know what’s good for me.
Content
- My initial thoughts was a bit too much philosophical stuff especially for the first module, but after a week I’m seeing the value in it, so keep doing your thing!
- 1 hour practise/day is pretty steep for still a beginner course (with another hour of ‘fun’ on top of it). I appreciate this is what needs to be done to get ‘good’ at guitar, however I expect you still have a lot of people at this level who study/work full time and have this as a hobby as opposed to aiming for music school. Well-heeled about tailoring the routine, day A&B etc, but I think 30min structured + 30min ‘fun’ should probably be the baseline given Grade 2 was 30mins all-in and 2 hours is a bit of a reach for many beginners I suspect. See what others have to say.
- Keep the practise routine, it gives me so much guidance and focus with the guitar. I like your approach of prescribing exercises followed immediately by more general prescription, think it’s good balance to getting us on our own journey.
- Spotify playlist is really cool idea. Despite been a bit of a metal head, what I have enjoyed about the course is discovering new music through song recommendations. And the song I use to listen to are not necessarily the ones I enjoy playing on the guitar the most!
- Duet is awesome also. I did a one-off private lesson just to check my technique and get some external eyes on me (excellent idea if anyone else reading this and entirely online taught) and one of the discoveries was doing a play along with the teacher, I now know what people mean by push & pull! One suggestion, perhaps the song you choose for the week, do a full length play-along if copyrights allow. Playing along to the record version is cool but can be a bit busy, for example I keep playing over the Learnt to Fly 1min intro in your video as opposed to radio version of the song.
- D-shape explorer was the one ‘new’ thing that I have the least affinity with in this module, different strokes for different blokes though.
- I can feel the benefits of Finger Gym exercise already
- Tone is a great idea, I hope you package this up in a separate ‘Skills’ course as I can see myself coming back to this in the futre. I also know you have some videos on effects/pedals already.
- Ear training, finding it a bit rough, getting some f-chord vibes of just going to be a grind. However I got the first 3 songs (and failed on the last 2, wasn’t even really close). Over xmas have some down time and found out a lot of my fav bans, their guitarists learnt by ear and can already see how it’s important. But going to need a lot of inspiring words. Also had some small bugs on the hints. Also not sure if you plan on providing answers, some online tabs for
- I’ve almost finished Grade 3 of your Music Theory course, seems like right level of knowledge for this coming into this module. Can see people who have skipped straight over music theory might struggle jumping in Grade 3.
Production
- Some reasons there is a lot of shadows on your face and also seems like too much white in the balance. This might be nit-picking and we all come here for the content, however was better in the Grade 2 videos so perhaps some tweaking still required in the new studio.
- New studio looks good, my eyes just gravitate towards line in the wall under SG though!
Again I don’t know what I’m talking about, just sharing some feedback if it’s helpful or not. Hopefully not too negative or if others agree with me. Love what you are doing and checking daily for new modules to drop!
So excited about starting this Grade. Have just completed this module and am really looking forward to the next one.
The D shape explorer was a great lesson, as was the finger gym - after just 1 week I can already see some improvement.
I was rubbish at my first attempt of transcribing but will give it another go.
Totally agree with you that we don’t really listen to music in the same way as we used to. I’m going to try and do more of that too.
I started doing your course at the beginning of this year and it’s just been so good. I’m now addicted to my guitar- if I pick it up for just a few minutes it always ends up being 2 hours!
Thanks for all your work
This module came at exactly the right time for me - I finished Grade 2 about 2 months ago and was doing a pretty good job of creating my own path in preparation for the intermediate lessons, but now that the actual Grade 3 is here I look forward to fully leveraging it!
For planning purposes - how many modules do you intend to make for Grade 3, and any ETA on timing for future modules?
I have two questions that I am hoping someone can help with
how many more modules are there and how close is the next one from being posted?
What’s happened to the blues studies from the old module 3, I was enjoying gradually working my way through them. Will they be incorporated into this nee module 3, or located somewhere else?
Just saw the starting of dropping of the new grade 3 on the web sight! Super excited, and perfect timing for winter break! Thank you Justing and JG Team!
Thanks @JustinGuitar for the new platform and super duper thanks for the courses you give us. They truly do get better and better. There’s such creativity, so many options opened, ways of turning light bulbs on in brains and getting fingers dancing. Clever Justin, clever.
This announcement took me by surprise. Will check out the new content in due course.
One concern though. I completed Grade 3 a couple of months back and am now into Grade 4. I do however, refer back to lessons from Grade 3. Great revision and reinforcing some weaker areas. Plus, and perhaps more importantly, it gives me a detailed map of my pathway.Now I see all the lessons in Grade 3 have disappeared, as if I’d never done them. My completed Grade 3 is not even in my Dashboard, no bookmarks, notes etc on the lessons within it.
And what happens with those who are halfway through Grade 3, going along on their guitar journey in a structured and methodical way?
Hey slow down on the releases man, I’m only just going back through the BC then wash repeat on the IM, coz you you keep adding all these new juicy lessons that weren’t there back in the day !
Thank you for the new playground, the kids are having fun ! We tried our best to break it in test mode but hey I’m glad it survived,
I’ve not taken a look yet but my suggestion would be continue where you are for now but go see what has been added to Grade 3 and work your way through the new stuff. I am doing that with Grades 1 - 5/6 as I completed both BC and IM some years back but each contain extra lessons that will be of benefit to me. So although I am working on my current practice schedule, I put aside 10 minutes to review the updates and gradually work through each Grade that way.
I’m so thankful for the Justinguitar site and everything it has teached me.
I absolutely love the structure of the lessons so I don’t focus on one thing but instead capture all kinds of needed guitar skills, I managed to fully do the first two grades twice now and that’s where it goes wrong.
I know JG is working on grade three and there goes a lot of work into it but:
is there a timeline on when we can expect these lessons ? It’s been over a month now and I only had module 15 to work on, I am slowly falling into the bad habit of just fiddling around because of this.
If there would be no way of knowing yet when it is going online, should i start grade 4 ? Is there other stuff I should be doing instead ?
TL,DR: Grade 3 is incomplete, do I move to grade 4 or what do I do instead ?
You can keep going with Justin’s old Classic beginners course here:
If you’d like to wait for the new Grade 3 another option is to use your practice time learning new songs. Not only is it a whole lot of fun, but you’ll also discover a lot of valuable lessons doing so. As one our mods likes to always remind us: learn songs, learn songs, learn songs!
the whole grade is gonna be full of fun and interesting new things to explore - WAY better than the old one! 
)
