Dusting off the blog for BlendKIT

A couple of years between blog posts never hurt anyone, right?

It's now week two for the Blendkit MOOC and as usual we're being asked for a posting on our reflections of the reading this week.  Rather than thinking about it in the context of my job, while reading I was wondering how my learning guitar fits into the structure that was discussed.

In many ways, I'm sort of creating my own "Blended" course- most of the content in learning is already online in the form of detailed websites and videos that cover learning guitar from step one to playing Classical Gas fluently.  Periodically, I sign up for in-person lessons with a nearby instructor.  This method lacks a central "professor", instead relying on a variety of experts such as Justin Sandercoe who all cover slightly different areas and the local instructor to tell me if I'm doing something stupid.

This probably is closest to the Concierge model- the online teachers will point out the things I don't know and then guide me through some exercises to learn the technique, then give some songs to practice with.  Once you understand the idea, it's possible to go out and find good exemplar songs to learn- "This solo is basically a set of c-minor arpeggios", and so forth.  Periodically the in-person instructor can point out specific flaws in my technique and suggest additional areas to work on.  Typically I'll go through a set of designed lessons and then spend a while simply learning music that I feel like, then return to a set of lessons to work on another specific area.  The combination of online and in-person stuff fits the Concierge model reasonably closely.

The biggest problem in my current learning is that I lack a good structure for conversation with other students at my rough level.  Forum postings are possible as an asynchronous method, but for music instant feedback from others would be valuable.  But it's difficult to find folks who are where I am- one of my coworkers invited me to play with him, but he's a semi-professional with decades of experience playing out.  I'd merely hold him back.  It's a powerful reminder of how important the face-to-face, peer-to-peer interactions in learning are; something I need to remember when I'm the guy in front of the class.