DJ,

I hear ya, my friend. It's often terrifying to think that you're missing something very important that's going to cause you to veer off the path and end up stranded and stalled. Ironically, it's the fear itself that has driven me off a constructive music learning path... time and time and time again. The short answer to your question is that at this point in your learning, you do not need to know much about scales, or keys, or moving them up and down the neck. Eventually you will, but that time is not now. As evidenced by the posted pics in this thread, you've obviously discovered Anders' affinity for a particular pentatonic shape on a specific part of the neck. That's all you're going to need to know for quite some time.

For me, learning music online has never been a linear process where each new lesson dovetails neatly into the next. It's more like putting together a giant tabletop jigsaw puzzle. I know what it's supposed to look like when it's finished, but my attempts at getting there has involved creating multiple small islands of pieces (of knowledge and technique) that fit together. But they're scattered all over the table, like a jigsaw puzzle in progress. That's the world I've created by ping-ponging all over the internet, just as you have. I have no clear understanding of how to connect all of those islands, other than to keep enlarging them until they eventually come together. But for now, I'm sticking to the script here at GT (by far the biggest section of my puzzle). I've come to realize that in order to reliably improve my music related knowledge and skills, I have to have faith in this GT process, and to trust the instructors here to guide me toward the promised land. I still do some ping-ponging, but remain vigilant for anything that's going to pull me off-track from my work on GT.

You are clearly highly motivated to learn music. That's a rare commodity in here. Don't screw that up by allowing yourself to get overwhelmed due to obsessing over what you think you are supposed to know. Just work with one puzzle piece at a time for now by continuing the Core Learning System and coming to this forum to ask questions when you get confused or lost. Chris and Anders are the Lewis and Clark of this new world expedition, and I'm confident that they won't steer us wrong.

On last thing. You don't need to understand 100% of any given lesson before moving on to the next one. Study the whole tree, grab the low hanging fruit, then move on. That's because, if you're smart about it, you'll circle around at some time and do the course over again... and maybe again after that - until you DO understand 100% of the material. I've done some of these courses 3 to 4 times. Some of the music theory lessons I revisit on a regular basis.

Hopefully these obtuse remarks make some sense.

Sascha