Questions for blimer’s

Andrea, I have no experience of BLIM, like you and Stuart, I’m asking questions to find out about the course.

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I know, I tagged you too, because you are asking good questions and you are sharing helpful ideas and that also adds to the clarification. It’s good to see, that others also have similar thoughts about the if, how and when :wink:.

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Well when you’ve sorted the if’s, what’s, why’s and when’s, maybe you’ll be joining the #BurnsBlues study group! There’s only me in it so far! :flushed_face:

(Never understood the hashtag thing):man_shrugging:t2:

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Not sure if you’ve seen this topic, worth a read if you haven’t and worth a revisit if you have

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The BLIM Community also need to be encouraged to come out of the little village and become engaged in the wider JGC. So for any regulars that sign up, please bear this in mind, when meeting folks from the “outside world”.

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I am part of both BLIM classes and also involved in two study groups and a few formal and informal BLIM WA chats. It seems to me, apart from your initial level, that the critical factor for happiness and progress with BLIM is your involvement. You already got this advice, but I just want to repeat it. Form/join study groups, comment and ask questions in community, post videos, provide feedback to others, get involved in challenges. All of that will motivate you more to immerse yourself into Blues and you will see progress. Richard, Dave and Justin are doing excellent job in providing feedback, but you will see number of other BLIMers giving very useful advice.

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At least that’s not required to match the criteria to learn blues in BLIM :joy:!

Thanks for the offer :rofl:. I don’t know, where you are in your journey, but I’m currently on the first Blues studies of Grade 4, so it’ll take me some time until I consider participating in BLIM. So I should first join the camp of #Andrea’sLongWayToBlim maybe? :laughing:

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48 comments down, not sure who will read this.

Like @brianlarsen indicated existed, and @MollyT shared, I’m another that didn’t like BLIM.

Most of what you read about BLIM on the community is overwhelmingly positive, and I think that’s because those that didn’t enjoy it aren’t about to go and start a thread about it. Because we like Justin and how we’ve benefited from his work.

I dropped out about 2 months in halfway through consuming the Unit 2 videos (there was a short Unit 0).

BLIM is a quality course, with some excellent content and of a high quality, as you’ve seen with Justin’s other work. It’s a similar quality to his free stuff (which rivals any top quality paid courses I’ve seen).

As far as skills - yes, you’d need your electric skills up to grade 4/5 level in the Justin grades. You wouldn’t want to be going into BLIM unfamiliar with playing electric or bends, you would struggle. My skills going into BLIM were OK for what was required (although there were some very good players in there, many much better than me).

Why didn’t I like it, in the end?

Time commitment. I think the recommendation was 3 x 30 minute sessions per week at the time. I don’t think that’s enough. Unit 2 (when I dropped out) has almost 3 1/2 hours of video lessons. Unit 3 has about 4 hours. That’s over 2 weeks of a month to just get through the video - assuming you don’t pause, replay, play along. Add lots of practice time. 3 x 30 minute sessions is not enough. IMHO 1 hour, 6 days a week is probably more realistic as a minimum. I didn’t have enough time and got behind very quickly.

It’s probably to do with how I consume guitar tutorial videos too. I pause them a lot, play along with the video, and then want to practice the new technique before moving onto the next video. So it takes even longer to get through content. I’ve never binge watched learning content and then practiced it all together. I don’t learn well that way (nor do I have the attention span tbh).

Solely focusing on blues. I’m not a blues diehard, although I like blues based modern rock. But I like to play my acoustic and rock songs, etc - I decided I didn’t want to just play blues for months given what time I have to play. Ties in with above. Playing blues sounded great. Not playing other stuff: not so great.

I didn’t like group learning online. Yes, this is a me thing, not a BLIM thing. It’s a huge group - 650 or 750 I think someone said? and a very busy dedicated forum area. The benefit of BLIM is supposed to be doing it as a group, rather than self paced videos like other content. Enough people had the time to get through all the videos in the first day they were released, and start putting out their own videos - I just couldn’t keep up with the content of the course, let alone the group learning on the community. There was so much activity on the community from BLIM I actually couldn’t keep up with the “normal” community threads here either, as they were all mixed in!

You can see how this thread has exploded just in the last day - well, that’s what BLIM was like, but with loads of threads and way more people. With that many people there’s not a real possibility to get quality personal feedback. Some people got it, I noticed early on - seemed random though.

So for me, I tried to keep up a bit as I was falling further and further behind in Unit 1, then Unit 2 dropped in the second month and I couldn’t even get through all the videos and first practices before Unit 3 dropped. So I gave up. Group learning online does not work for me, I much prefer self paced learning if it’s from videos, it turns out. I didn’t realise that beforehand. And BLIM is pretty expensive compared to other options if you’re going to treat it like a standard pre-recorded video course and not immerse yourself.

So, BLIM - high quality course, great content, many people really loved it. It wasn’t for me though.

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I did the G4 Blues Studies module a while ago alongside G3 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I should go back and brush up on it.
I’m currently in the G4 Blues Lead Essentials and again, thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve been away from guitar quite a lot lately so I’m not as far on as I hoped but I think I know enough to go for Blim.
Lead is where I want to go, so I don’t have the worries that others have about dropping other things for 6 months.
I aren’t planning to advance any further pre Blim, better to polish up what I’ve already learned.

@jkahn Well I read it. :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:
A very honest and detailed assessment, JK, and needed on this thread for balance.
It hasn’t clouded my own decision though. You’ve given everyone further insight into what to expect from the course. Thank you!

@Stuartw
Stuart, where are you??
You started this thread and it’s developed into a good un.
What are you thinking about it now?

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I see many great points being made here. For me, BLIM was a great experience, but my one note of caution to prospective students would be to be ready and willing to expect a fast pacing.

If you’re coming into the course having done very little blues previously, then the amount of new material in each month’s lesson drop will feel quite large. I think the recommended minimum (was it 3 hrs per week?, can’t remember) is a bit too optimistic. Of course if your aim is just to study the course for the rest of your life, this is not an issue, but if you want to keep up with the lessons as they drop, it could be a struggle if you can’t dedicate more time to it.

I was lucky in that I’d done a fair amount of blues previously, plus I’m retired so had the time to spend on it. Even then though, I didn’t spend much time learning the standards each month - I concentrated on the lick medleys because my goal was to learn more blues licks.

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There are way fewer people in BLIM 2. I didn’t check every single post, but it looks to me that feedback is provided to every single video, by Richard and/or Dave and/or Justin. I believe Justin took every video from Challenge posts and provided feedback in YT sessions. As an example, for my challenge 1 and challenge 2 videos, I got feedback from both Richard and Dave in the community and then from Justin in the live YT session.

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313 registered according to the users list.

@Stuartw After reading through all the answers to your Questions and knowing the struggles you have with hearing I honestly don’t think Blim will be your best choose to spend money on.
I’d suggest you do some private lessons with Richard. He will be able to give you feed back in real time and help you more than advanced per-recorded lessons.

@jkahn gave you the most honest answer I think anyone could have about the pace, work load and trying to keep up.

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Yes, compared to 764 registered in BLIM1.

Both will include the JGT members and as I spotted some of the web tech team, Ben etc, likely around 15 max.

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I’m still here and reading all the responses/comments. Thanks to all those that did respond, although it would have been good to get a response from @JGAdmin to my payment options query! I did email @FannyJustinGuitar about this as well.

Having read all these I think that Rick’s post probably sums it up.

So I don’t think that I will be progressing BLIM at this point, (and may be never), not just due to my hearing (which is getting worse) but the level of time/commitment required. To see people, who I know are way better than me, struggle then that tells you something.

Glad I started the post and hope that it has helped the non Blimmers.

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Good to hear you’ve been mulling over the comments, Stuart.
I agree, Rick’s post sums up your situation. The suggestion for private lessons is a good one. A teacher will be better placed to determine what you can and can’t hear and help you understand what it is that you are hearing. Hopefully, everything will then start to make more sense.
Just my thoughts….it’s your call.

This thread will certainly help those of us considering Blim.
Great comments and insights from all the Blimmers. I don’t see them as positive or negative. We aren’t trying to sell the course here, we’re trying to determine whether the course is right for us, be it now or in the future.

We are all now better informed.
Good stuff!

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Also to add I think that the BLIM course ‘waiting list’ at the JG site is not working. Before I decided not to progress I did try to add myself to the waiting list but never got the return email to validate the request. Seems like this is broken.

It was working on 11th May when I joined the waiting list.

Hey @Stuartw!

Just saw your message in our general Customer Support inbox, sorry for the delay! Our support team has been quite busy lately. If you ever want to reach me directly, feel free to email fanny@justinguitar.com. :blush:

I’ll be sending you more details about the BLIM Class 3 pricing - we do offer flexible payment plans so we can definitely work something out for you!

Here’s the FAQ for BLIM if you’d like to check it out: BLIM FAQ

Blues Immersion offers a 30-day refund policy so if you give the course a try and feel it’s not right for you, you’ll get a refund no problem. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Fanny

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Who is Dave?

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