The perfect cheat-sheet for beginner guitarists - including mistakes to avoid, a practice plan, and essential first chords!
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I just signed up for a personalized GT lesson plan and wanted to make a suggestion for improvement of that sign up process.
After providing payment information and completing a very thorough and seemingly pertinent questionnaire, the site essentially said "OK, someone, somewhere, at some time in the future, will get you that lesson plan. Bye". I was thereafter directed to a site called "TypeForm" which seems to have absolutely nothing to do with a music student's lesson plan.
Perhaps you could get the website developers to put in a few minutes and draw up some more detailed instructions as to what the student is supposed to do after signing up.
For anyone curious about purchasing a personalized GT lesson plan, I'll report back here in this thread after I've had a chance to evaluate my own plan.
The always helpful Danie at GT Support advised me about where and when to look for the lesson plan. Please realize that I have no desperate need to obtain that plan ASAP. I ask that you simply ignore my apparent impatience and instead take your time in drawing up the best plan for me, based on the information I provided. Whether you get it to me next week, next month - doesn't matter... I'm not going anywhere and god knows I've got plenty to keep me occupied until then. Thanks!
Well, I received my personalized lesson plan from GT instructor Dave Celentano. I studied it carefully for the better part of a day, and as promised, here is my analysis.
Dave's core philosophy of learning apparently centers around students doing one lesson at a time and not deviating from that lesson in any way until it is definitively mastered. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of remaining laser focused and not allowing one's self to get distracted by other course lessons, songs, licks, scales or anything else being served up on the GT site. Inexplicably, Dave then goes on to repeatedly violate that guiding principle by laying out an agenda that requires me to work simultaneously (during the same practice session) on a mix of advanced course lessons, scales, music theory, metronome work, improvisation, backing track play alongs, and perfecting a very challenging SRV song (Mary Had a Little Lamb). Every session, every day, a frantic juggling act.
Moreover, Dave envisions me finishing the entire lesson plan in just four weeks, while working on it for 30 to 60 minutes per day. That's absolutely ludicrous. It's a maniacal recipe for crushing frustration and certain failure. I'm just blown away that a professional musician and music teacher, with 35 years of teaching experience, would impose something like this on someone with my meager skill set; something that must have been clearly elucidated by the lengthy detailed questionnaire that I completed beforehand.
And to top it all off, Dave posted my lesson plan in the form of a DOC file created on a Mac with Word 97. That's right, a word processor from 1997. Not surprisingly, I couldn't open it in with the version of Word that comes with Windows 11. I had to go to Adobe's website and use their free document converter to create a PDF version of the lesson plan. And then, Dave gave me attitude when I suggested that he start using a word processor from this century, or that he at least convert his archaic documents to PDF before posting them.
I'd post the lesson plan here for your perusal, but that would likely get me booted off the site... again. Cancel culture, baby - it's still the name of the game.
William MG
Full Access
Joined: 03/08/19
Posts: 1,969
William MG
Full Access
Joined: 03/08/19
Posts: 1,969
03/16/2025 9:13 am
Damn!!! Haha!!!
Dave is actually a super nice guy. I took some lessons with him a few years back and he helped me sort out a bridge I was working on.
If you could ever find a way to post it I'd be interested in seeing it.
I signed up with Korey Hicks a few months ago to take the Guitar in a Year course. It's 5/ month on Patreon. We are in week 11. I took this only because he is so grounded and focused and frankly after a few years I thought I needed some kind of reset to clear my mental pathways. So far I already know everything he is teaching, he literally starts from the ground up, but that's fine. I find the weekly practice schedule relaxing and refreshing - so far. But I really appreciate his calm structured demeanor.
Bill Thanks. A mental "reset". I didn't know it, but that's precisely what I've been searching for and desperately need. That's what I naively believed I could get from a personalized lesson plan. Maybe I still can, but not from Dave. Unfortunately, I don't think any other instructors draw up lesson plans for GT.
I need to keep reminding myself that it's me that's the problem. Dave told me so. He's an instructor, and we all know that instructors are never wrong. So, certainly he's in no way responsible for me wasting my time analyzing a set of contradictory directives. In fact, Dave says he's done lesson plans for thousands of students, and I'm unquestionably the first and only student to ever have a problem with him, his frenetic teaching style, or any of his stone age documents. Which apparently proves without a doubt that the problem lies with me, and only me. Right? Sure, sure - that conclusion may not be logically valid or statistically possible within any sociological paradigm, but it's still the truth. So I'm told.
Oh, and thanks for the link. I listened for a few minutes. Sounds promising!
Man, where and how do you find all these little gems tucked away and scattered across the internet?
