Answers To Questions About The Membership

Registration has been brisk over at The Fingerstyle Five, so if you're already in, this may be mostly irrelevant. But if you've been watching the videos and wondering if the new membership is for you, here are answers to some of the questions I've been hearing the most over the past day and a half:

I want to register, but I can't find the link. What's up with that?
First things first: if you're that hot to trot, here you go –

Register Now

As far as what's up with that – I wanted to make sure everyone knew what they were getting into before signing up, so I programmed the registration button to hold off until I'd finished explaining everything. I didn't realize, however, that people might watch the whole video, then come back later to sign up and not be able to. So I'll make the registration button more readily available on the page, and now you've got it up above anyway.

How long will I be able to watch each lesson?
The lessons will be available to stream for as long as you're a member.

What happens if I get busy or can't work on things for a week or two?
We'll be taking on a different tune each month, so just because you missed learning, say, the December song doesn't mean you won't understand what's going on in January. The tunes are important, but they're part of the bigger picture, which is your ongoing improvement and accumulation of skills and understanding.

Can you slow down the videos?
Yes! You can make them up to 50% slower

What's the level of the material compared to your Truefire lessons?
The basic version of each song will be comparable to, say, something late in the Fingerstyle Handbooks. The more advanced version will be like something later in the Fingerstyle Blues Factory.

I'm still working on basic Travis picking / I have a hard time getting my thumb to stop alternating and just play steady bass. Can I do this material?
Right hand coordination is key, but working on tunes is as good a way as any to develop it, if you're willing to take the time to work step by step and build your groove from the ground up. If you missed, it, check out the Horizontal 3-Step lesson I put out a couple of weeks ago. If it makes sense and seems like something you could tackle, you should be ok in the membership.

The Horizontal 3-Step

What does it include?
Ok, amazingly, no one's really asked me this, but I didn't actually post it anywhere, I just laid it out in the Fingerstyle Five video yesterday, so here's what to expect each month:

• Two one-chorus versions of a blues or blues-based tune: a basic setting of the bass and melody, with perhaps a few chords or intervals to fill things out, and a more arranged version with some combination of bass lines, chord substitutions and/or melodic embellishments.
• Exercises in right hand coordination and finding voicings, based on the key and groove of the current song
• A "behind the scenes" discussions of that month's arrangement – how I chose the song, the key, the voicings and so on, and suggestions for how to develop the song further
• Exercises to develop improvisation skills on the current song
• An ongoing private membership forum in which to post your own versions of the songs, ask and answer questions about the material, and get to know your fellow students.

Hey! You didn't answer my question!
Dang it! Well, just drop me a line and I'll do my best to get you sorted out.

More soon,

David