{"id":754,"date":"2021-08-17T20:03:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T00:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/?p=754"},"modified":"2021-08-17T20:03:10","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T00:03:10","slug":"active-melody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/2021\/08\/17\/active-melody\/","title":{"rendered":"Active Melody"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much to my surprise and amazement, I’ve found an online guitar instruction site that has actually improved my guitar playing!\u00a0 That site is ActiveMelody.com<\/a>.\u00a0 I have toyed with a number of sites, and found many of them helpful, but none quite seemed to fit my style.<\/p>\n

One site I visited often was the Blues Guitar Institute<\/a>.\u00a0 It has some terrific content, but I was put off by its $14.99\/month ($99.99 annual) fee.\u00a0 Some terrific free sites, such as JustinGuitar<\/a> and Marty Schwartz’s<\/a> lessons are great for quick lessons, but many of these sites are focused on learning songs.\u00a0 I wanted something with a little more structure (but not TOO much), and then I found Brian Sherrill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Brian

Brian Sherrill of activemelody.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Brian doesn’t promote himself.\u00a0 In fact, I didn’t know his last name until I did some searching online.\u00a0 Which is kind of cool, because at ActiveMelody, it’s just Brian and his lessons.<\/p>\n

Key to his approach is that Brian explains the “why” of certain guitar playing.\u00a0 Yes, it’s music theory, but he downplays that aspect, choosing instead to show how to play.\u00a0 The when and why part of it fall in place gradually.<\/p>\n

At first, I was reluctant to pay ($89.00 annually).\u00a0 There is a forum on the site, and I joined to nose around a bit and investigate.\u00a0 One of the posters there made the observation that the annual charge was roughly what one would pay for a single in-person lesson with a tutor.\u00a0 Since I’d done that not long ago, I had to admit he had a point, so I signed up.<\/p>\n

One of the best decisions I’ve made.\u00a0 After a year of COVID lockdowns, it felt nice to get some structure to my playing.\u00a0 Since I’ve been able to work from home, which means I can grab a guitar any time and spend a few minutes practicing, having lessons to practice has been a great help.<\/p>\n

Membership also provides me access to tablature (TAB) downloads, jam tracks and “part two” of lessons when available.\u00a0 The PDF downloads have been a terrific aide, and I’m only now beginning to take advantage of the jam tracks.\u00a0 Well worth the $89!<\/p>\n

Brian doesn’t know (and likely doesn’t care) that I’m posting this.\u00a0 But I’m quite happy with activemelody.com and confess to being a satisfied customer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much to my surprise and amazement, I’ve found an online guitar instruction site that has actually improved my guitar playing!\u00a0 That site is ActiveMelody.com.\u00a0 I have toyed with a number of sites, and found many of them helpful, but none … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guitar","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfna.org\/rfo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}