I am very interested in the Blues Immersion course but have a couple of questions that I haven’t been able to find the answers to on the website or in this forum. I would be very grateful if folks that have already taken the course could chime in about those questions and also for any general impressions that had from the course.
The FAQ says " You’ll also have the chance to submit your assignments and receive personalized feedback from Justin and trusted Approved Teachers like Richard Coles." How is that feedback provided? Do you upload your playing and receive and email? A video? Any more insight into the feedback process would be very helpful.
Video recordings are posted to the BLIM community section of the forum as per the normal method of posting videos in the community (e.g. uploaded to YouTube and link posted). Feedback on recordings posted on the topic thread by other students and approved teacher Richard Coles. Artists essays are also posted on the BLIM community sections for feedback of other students. Occasionally Justin will share feedback on a few student recordings and artist essays. Opportunities are also provided to submit recordings for live Q&A classes where Justin will select a few to review and provide feedback live.
The playlists are provided via Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, YouTube Music and Amazon Music.
The course is a really great course and if you like the blues you would have a fantastic learning experience.
I’ve enjoyed learning together with other like-minded people. The course is very well structured. Each month has presented me with fresh challenges. It has progressively developed my knowledge and playing at an accelerated rate in comparison to working through the blues grades on the main course. It can be a very challenging course but like everything, you get what you put into it. It’s a course where at the end you will still be referring back to the lessons and spending many months developing and consolidating everything you’ve learned and the course gives you the tools to do so. The best bit to me was the time spent learning with my classmates, which will continue as we work on consolidation at the end of this final unit.
If you are willing to put the hours in, it is well worth it but check the playing level criteria required. You will build a solid Blues foundation that you can continue to consolidate and develop after the 6 months is up. Justin commented recently that the course contents are enough to take someone to a professional level and though I am too old to go down that road, I could not disagree. Learnt more and accelerated my learning ability more in the last 5 and a bit months than the previous 5 years ! So yep well worth it.
The amount of content in the class was higher than I expected. The presentation was higher quality than I expected. The second class should have a cleaner experience. Class 1 helped identify problems and most were cleaned up.
Some things I recommend:
be active in the forum discussions - reading as well as asking questions
be sure to set aside good practice time. Use the first unit as a model for the remainder of the units.
set aside time to listen to ALL the class videos and the several passes through the play lists - even the songs you are not fond of.
If you can, plan to post videos. Some folks got direct attention from Justin during one of his live sessions that seemed useful for them.
My plan now is to work my way through the course again at my own speed - probably be about 1/2 the pace or a little slower. I skipped the history and only gave a little thought to the theory parts. I needed more time to apply the theory to the fretboard, so I knew I’d need to come back to that. I still suffer from poor accuracy fretting and picking, but it did improve a lot during the class.
Justin suggests 3 x 30 minute sessions plus the one offs (e.g. transcribing). I found it to be full time BLIM. I would have struggled making the most of the course and keeping up with the cohort limiting myself to the suggested practice schedule.
It’s definitely full time blim. But, I took a month off BLIM to work on my Christmas songs, but in the end, it does not matter, I will just finish the course on february It’s a lifetime journey.
Hi @Enffest and welcome to the community.
It’s worth popping over here where the discussion may cover similar ground … and check the link within post 1 to the other community topic.
It is probably full time BLIM or close to it. I dropped my Grade 4 studies totally as well as most song practice outside BLIM. I found I am a bit rusty on the old stuff, but I also have a lot more to work on now. I have at least one of the two “blues standards” songs from each unit that I can play from ‘fairly well’ to ‘play sections but with pauses’. I don’t think anything suffered in my regular routine other than timeline and some physical stuff from being stupid - i really should have not pushed so hard on a couple things trying to keep up.
Being full-time BLIM was not a big deal. Most of what was put on hold was really just switching from Grade 4 to BLIM. I don’t see it as stopping anything, just shifting to a different course plan.
Bear in mind that the suggested timeslots e.g. “5 min” means 5 minutes of focused practice, you will inevitably need time in between the focused slots, so as a rule of thumb for say, 30 minutes of focused practice, set aside a full hour.
Just wanted to say thanks again to everyone! I took the plunge today and enrolled. Hope I’ll be able to stay motivated and dedicate enough practice time. Excited to get started. Thank you!
If you put enough time in, BLIM will improve your overall playing in terms of mechanics which will be useful for any other genre of music. I wouldn’t go heavily on non-BLIM practice for 6 months, your BLIM practice will be heavy enough.
It’s a lifetime journey.
The best thing about it is that there is no rush or stress, you can do it at your own pace and revisit it at the end 