Hey Friend,
I first learned about exponential learning from my former mentor and guitar coach, Tom Hess.
If you’re not familiar with him, he’s a pro from the Chicago area that has recorded and toured with Rhapsody of Fire and other bands in the Neo-classical metal genre.
Incredible guitarist and businessman. He’s also built one of the largest guitar instruction businesses in the world.
Linear vs Exponential
Most traditional music instruction is based on linear progression. This is where you are taught in a very consecutive manner.
Kind of like the old song about the bones in the body… "Dem Bones”
Toe bone connected to the foot bone Foot bone connected to the heel bone Heel bone connected to the ankle bone Ankle bone connected to the shin bone And so on…
But learning is messy…
In fact, nothing ever seems to progress in a straight line - there’s always dips and curves, and sometimes you have to back track.
Exponential learning is more about working on exposing you to different skills early in the lessons. This approach rounds out the skill building so you learn more, faster.
Over the course of weeks, the instructor introduces different skills to the student.
For example, the first week might involve working on a scale and learning the notes. The next week could be learning a couple open chords.
Then in the the third week, the instructor goes back to notes, but shows how these notes create the chords you learned the previous week.
And it goes like this, moving between melody, harmony and rhythm so you learn how each component affects the others, rather than isolating each topic.
It might seem like you’d get overwhelmed with changing the areas of focus so often, but that’s not the case.
Each discipline compliments the others, and you’re exercising the various skills continuously, rather than spending weeks on just one skill area.
This way, each skill you work on builds your ability to do the other skills.
That means you move a lot faster towards your musical goals because you can DO more and see results.
Music starts making more sense early on.
Downtime
I’m flying out later today for a pre-holiday family visit up north. My mom already has her list of “chores” for me, but other than that, the main reason is to just hang out and spend some time with my dad.
I’m sure he’ll recognize me somewhat, but the days of working on projects together are long gone.
While he’s never been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, his mom had it, and Dad behaves the same as I remember Grandma…
Anyhoo, he still smiles, and that’s what I’ll hold on to.
Catch y’all later...
Peace~
Dave
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