Hi JAMsauce!! I'm the least qualified to address this from some perspectives. But I have a positive attitude, am curious with a quest for knowledge also down to Earth, not afraid to make a mistake and I have initiative--and that alone is what it takes to learn.

Don't feel like a fraud. When you reach Black Belt in a martial art, it doesn't mean you've mastered anything except the ability to learn. That alone qualifies one to teach younger students as having learned how to learn is in itself a skill. These forums right here have got to be the most underutilized resource on the internet I have ever seen by the way. You have direct access to an actual master here and that stuff takes awhile to soak in.

This is the real world though. I remember a friend's Dad telling me when I first started with the guitar in 1988 that Angus Young and George Thorogood had to put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. If George wanted to go get a gallon of milk, he had to jump in his car and turn the key, or walk.

Lately I've had my interest in guitar playing rekindled. After I played a few years, I fell off a ladder and broke my arm and it was a real setback physically I know I won't get over. I have often considered switching to a left handed player because sometimes you think out of the box to get around obstacles. For the next 25 years I never took practicing seriously again until now. Still through my twenties I played as much as I could.

Back then, I went into the guitar store on a Saturday morning and the store owner Jim saw me walk in and goes,"Well you're an answer to prayer. Justin the guitar teacher has the flu I just found out with no time to notify students and they are already showing. Would you give these guys lessons for about three hours and I'll buy your strings, pay you Justin's half and the store's half for filling in."

I thought, "Haha I'm an answer to prayer?? I'm your worst nightmare but what the hell."

It was a three story building and the upper tier was the studio. There was a 17 year old sitting up there waiting. I'd grabbed a nice Hamer from downstairs and went up to sit in. The kid was a little backward. He was sitting there in a Dokken t-shirt practicing when the Saints Go Marching in. He was already ahead of me on theory. But I immediately saw he was working through the Mel Bay stuff with no attention to the having fun aspect; not playing stuff he enjoyed. It is called playing music after all. So we spent the half hour doing dive bombs and working on some Judas Priest licks. He told me for his whole year it was his best lesson ever. Same thing pretty much went for the next six lessons; dive bombs, pick slides, Judas Priest, AC-DC. It's all I know how to do and it is what those kids wanted to try. I knew the regular instructor Justin was a Kiss and Black Sabbath fanatic, but he wasn't making the connection.

We had a blast and I made $75 bucks cash in three hours and two sets of Dean Markleys. I never gave guitar lessons again, but I was the one getting the lesson anyhow. I knew right then I would have to do the only thing I want to do in the first place to stay ahead of it--and that would be to practice guitar constantly. A teacher is only a highly-skilled student. Are you a highly skilled student, JAMsauce?? Then I say you are not a fraud.

Keith

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Quote: pebberbrown wrote in post #4

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Take a diminished scale and map it out all over the neck. Can you do that?

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Quote: pebberbrown wrote in post #4

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The guitar will teach you if you map out all the notes/scales and chords. Voice leading done in a visual manner then applied to physical playing. The guitar will teach you all that if you map it out on your own. Then you have to practice what you mapped out. This is what the meaning of that statement means.

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