Hey there! Im CJ! Any Guitar Tricks Veterans?

I recently got Guitar Tricks in August, and I love it! I'm now on Acoustic Chapter 2!

I started playing guitar in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and I was really just going on and off. I learned all the basic chords and everything with this cheap acoustic guitar, and practice was mainly just looking up a new song to learn. This didn't really last very long.

3 years later I decided I should start playing again and got Guitar Tricks. I figured I need some actual structure to build my skills.

So far I've really learned a lot of new skills like strumming in 3/4, alternate picking, fingerstyle picking patterns, power chords, and I learned how to properly fret to polish up my chords.

I'm kind of curious, have any of you or anybody you know completed the whole learning path fully? What'd you do after?

Hey CJ, I'm assuming that you already completed both "Guitar Fundamentals" Level 1 & 2, and have now started in on Level 1 of [Advanced] "Acoustic" in the Experienced track. Clearly, you should continue working through Level 1, then move on to Level 2 and finish that. Those two tasks should keep you busy for weeks, if not months. Once you finished "Acoustics" Level 2, I suggest that you go back and repeat both "Acoustic" levels again because virtually everyone will miss a lot on their first time around.

At the very least, it's common for students to find themselves unable play the lesson material at full speed - specifically the lessons where students play along with the instructors, followed by playing them alone to the accompanying backing tracks. It's a major undertaking to work your speed up to match the rate at which instructors play, because all of them are professional musicians with decades of playing and teaching experience under their belts. Don't get hung up on a single lesson, trying fruitlessly to match the speed of the instructors. Speed will come later. For now, it's important to keep moving through the tutorials. Otherwise you'll get frustrated and perhaps just quit.

So, it makes sense to circle back and redo the courses in order to confirm that your right and left hand techniques are correct and clean, and that you understand all of the music theory and concepts taught therein. That way, you are much less likely to unknowingly develop bad habits that will be very difficult to undo later on. You don't need to redo everything on your subsequent passes through - just those things that you had difficulty with during your first time through the courses. The same holds true for the advanced "Acoustic" levels. When you finish level 1 & 2, circle back and do those advance lessons a second time or more.

Throughout this cyclical process, you'll need to internalize various scale patterns, learn more chords, and memorize the entire fretboard. This in itself is a major undertaking.

After completing all of that you might want to dive into doing the other advanced courses (Rock, Blues, Country) to further your repertoire of techniques and concepts, even if you're not necessarily interested in those genres of music. While all of this is going on, you can and should go to the Songs Library and start learning and playing entire songs (easy ones first). This is not only fun, but also accelerates ear training and gives you a chance to master chord changes and strumming techniques.

That should keep you busy for quite a while.

Note that the above travel guide for your education reflects only one way of getting the most out of the lessons. In this case it's the method that works best for me and makes the most sense to me. Others in here will undoubtedly provide you with alternative methods of tackling the curriculum that are equally legitimate and effective for a certain subset of students. In the end, you just have to figure out what works best for you. And remember that there's no universally right way of doing things. The important thing is that you dive in and start learning ASAP.

Sascha