Way back when, I did a couple of terms of the Morley College "Electric Guitar: Improvers" evening class. Although at the time the material was a bit too challenging for me, I benefited greatly from the structure and also from playing in a group setting. My practice was directed and inspired. My playing improved exponentially.
In the end I quit going mid-way through the third term because the teacher was replaced and the new guy's lecturing style just didn't work for me. That's not to malign him at all, it's just that I found I stopped improving. If anything I ended up going backwards and rather than look forward to class I started to dread going. Not a good learning environment.
While I've wanted to go back, and even tried once (made it through one class), the same guy's been there ever since.
As part of the Fillmore Five Project I started looking into alternatives... too late, as it turned out. All the courses for Spring 2008 have started already. Determined as I am right now I asked myself:
"Can I jump in the middle?"
I found one class that will actually let me join half-way, but what with being busy this weekend and then having a trip to Amsterdam planned the following, I'll only get to go to 5 of the 9 sessions. I've asked them whether I can get a reduced pro-rata price. Cheeky, I know, but if I pay full price it'd be about equal money to get the same number of lessons from a personal tutor. We'll see what happens. The course is primarily for acoustic guitar, which isn't ideal (poor Red), but it's a great chance to practice networking, plus it'd help me get over some of my issues surrounging playing music with other people.
Of course, I may also be jumping in on the learning curve at a point that's too steep. My classmates may already be too far ahead of me. I'm torn: my heart says I should just go for it but my head says I might be able to spend my time and money better. Hopefully this dilemma isn't the start of my resolve cracking... nope... not today!
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