Student Success Case Study: Paul W
In 2019 Paul signed up for a free lesson with us. He had realized after 2 years of watching videos on the internet that he needed some guidance.
In his first free lesson he learned about practicing concepts that are very effective for producing noticeable results. He was also taught some really cool quick wins that I as a teacher, personally enjoy teaching, as I love seeing the “aha” moments.
For example, in the first lesson we covered why some notes sound great over chords, and some sound terrible(hint: if you play a G note over a G chord it sounds good and like you know what you are doing… more on this later)
When he started, he could barely play any songs, he knew his basic chords, barre chords and the pentatonic scales – but he struggled to apply the scales in a real context.
And despite reading about music theory and watching videos about it on the internet – he couldn’t apply it.
And to be clear that means – he didn’t know it. 
On top of this he had arthrosis, which made it hard for him to play some of the chords.
He had a dream of being able to improvise over a blues 12 without effort, playing and jamming blues with other people, but also understand how music really works, and he wanted to play guitar live with a band one day.
But he had realized couldn’t achieve this on his own.
My teaching approach involves providing a structured practice schedule that covers all the essential skills required, tailored to the student’s time constraints.
In a nutshell:
- Minimum of four exercises that targets different core skills on the guitar, 2 minutes each.
- Exactly HOW to practice these exercises, and for how long – no guesswork for the student.
- Providing backingtracks for the exercises that sounds like a song and a reference tempo, This so it feels inspiring to practice
Paul had at least 60 minutes a day to practice and was highly motivated to do so.
He followed the road map I laid out for him which in a nutshell is:
Content first lesson, then training the following 2 weeks before introducing new material. This approach aimed to prevent overwhelm and ensure that each lesson built upon the previous one.
Paul’s first lesson and first 2 weeks of training looked like this:
- Notes on the fretboard – 5 minutes
- Application of the Pentatonic Scale 1 – 10 minutes
- Improvisational Training With Chord Tones – 10 minutes
- 5 Blues Licks Isolation Training– 10 minutes
- 5 Blues Licks Application Training – 5 minutes
- Essential Rhythm 1 – 5 minutes
- Song of choice – 10 minutes
The following 6 months he learned trained a variety of things:
- Expression techniques to make notes sound more colorful
- All the notes over the entire fretboard and how to use this knowledge in real time playing over music
- Mastery of all the pentatonic scales, how to use them in different keys(I actually created a track specifically for him, a 12 bar blues that every time it starts over it changes to a different key going through all 12 different keys)
- A variety of blues licks,
- Seamless transitions between rhythm and lead playing in a 12-bar blues
- How to jam with others using prerecorded backing tracks in different tempos,
- Making chord changes a lot cleaner.
- How to find chords across the entire neck and how to use them as arpeggios when improvising
The results he got from being dedicated to practice is truly amazing and inspiering and I must say that for me as a teacher I felt very, very proud of him.
It’s always so humbeling witnessing my guitar system and methodology helping students to fulfill their dreams…
Paul can now improvise and jam over a blues 12, but what is even better is that he preformed on live blues jam session playing 3 songs with a full band..
which when I heard about it actually brought a tear to my eye because I knew how much this meant to him.
Also Paul can navigate the entire fretboard, he can play a variety of songs like Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”, Gary Moore – “Still Got The Blues”, Jimi Hendrix “Hey Joe”, Eric Clapton – “Wonderful tonight”
To me he is such an inspiring person, how awesome isn’t it that he at the age of 66 decided to start to play guitar after wanting to do so his WHOLE LIFE.
Not only did he choose to begin lessons, but he also followed through by practicing with the structure he got from us to achieve everything he had dreamed of! Paul is not a super human, he is just a regular guy who wanted to learn to play guitar, he didn’t invest insane amounts of time into practice, he just did what was necissary.
You can also reach your dreams, just like Paul did by getting a structure and individual roadmap & personal assistance from us based on what you want to be able to play by checking out “Total Guitar Mastery Training ” (it’s free) – the very same concepts that Paul learned in his lessons with us and that got him real results.