How Good Should You Be Before Moving On To The Next Lesson?

Aaron, when I'm working on a new tune, solo, lick, or phrase, how do I know when I have it down well enough to move on to the next lesson? Do I need to have it memorized? Do I need to be able to play it at a certain tempo? Do I completely master the lesson before moving on to the next one? So this question and other variations on this is something that I get asked all of the time. So what I want to do today, number one, is I do want to give you a very simple and easy-to-remember rule for knowing when you have a lesson down well enough to move on to the next thing. But more importantly than that, I want to show you how underlying that question, I believe, is a faulty understanding of what learning music is actually all about. So number 1, almost all of us were brought up through an education system that taught us to think about learning like this. Learn, study, take the test, pass the test, get the credit. Learn, study, take the test, pass the test, get the credit. Now, that model is fine if the goal of your education is accreditation. But the thing about it is, is this: y'all, musical development is not accreditation. Ultimately, there isn't like a final exam on Salt Creek. You don't go and get the credit if you can. Play Blackberry Blossom at 120 beats a minute. Now granted, there are schools that you can go to and get credits in this stuff, like my alma mater East Tennessee State, where you can get that. But most people watching this channel and learning this music are not going through institutions like that. So the accreditation model doesn't serve us well whenever we're learning this stuff. Now again, this Aaron, how do I know when it's time to move on to the next lesson is This is a question that I mostly get from students who have picked up one or several of my online courses, but this question is applicable for anybody learning anything, whether you're just learning through some lessons on YouTube, whether you have a teacher that you're working on. You know, you might even be using, you know, one of the old-school tab books, you know, something like Grainger's Fiddle Tunes for Guitar or something along those lines. What a lot of people think is that, hey, I need to master lesson 7 before I am able to click on lesson 8. The problem with that is that's not really how musicians develop. The course or the learning path is linear, but your development isn't. So a better question to ask whenever you're going through either an online course, a series of YouTube lessons, really any method of learning and studying the guitar, is not, have I mastered this lesson? It's, Has this material done its job in my current development? Here is what I mean by this. Many of you will remember this lesson that I shared a couple of weeks ago, um, where I mapped out a path that I see a lot of bluegrass guitar players going through. And I divide the stage into 3 stages. I call it the aspirant, the traveler, and the high flyer. I like those labels better than beginner, intermediate, advanced, because even if you're in that first level, in the aspirant level, that's a foundational bluegrass flatpicking level. It doesn't mean you're a beginner guitar player. If you're in that level, and let's say you're working on just a simple fiddle tune, you're just working on Blackberry Blossom, you know, or maybe a tune like Whiskey Before Breakfast. Okay, again, just basic simple melodies right there. The goal of that is not just to learn Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast. What that is teaching you is how to apply alternate picking to music. It is teaching you how to play a melody. It is teaching you how to stay in time. It's teaching you how to use hammer-ons and pull-offs in combination with alternate picking. It's teaching you how to memorize a tune. So what I mean by that is this: the goal is not to just complete the material The goal is to have the material develop you as a musician. That's a very important point, and I want to say it again. The goal is not to just master or learn the material. The goal is to have the material develop you as a musician. Alright, so before I get too head in the clouds and, you know, preaching down from on high, let's get into some practicality and into some brass So straight up, how do you know when you have a lesson— again, whatever it is that you're working on, whether it's a tune, a solo, if you're working on some licks and phrases— how do you know when you have it down well enough to move on? Just remember these 3 things right here. It's very simple: cleanly, in time, from memory. I'll say that again: cleanly, in time, from memory. Cleanly, in time, from memory. From memory. So going back to Blackberry Blossom, if when you play Blackberry Blossom it sounds like this— That is not clean. That is not clean. Likewise, cleanly also means with the right pick strokes. And again, I want to go back to this: if you are in those kind of first 2 flatpicking stages, which I've outlined before, I call it the aspirant Traveler. You can kind of swap those out with beginner and intermediate. You should be paying psychotic levels of detail to the pick strokes on that stuff. A lot of people do not want to hear that, but it's the truth, and it is the thing that is going to help you develop at those levels right there. So again, going back to Blackberry Blossom, don't be playing Blackberry Blossom like this. Oreo. Okay, you want a nice steady pulse of down and up strokes as 16th notes happening right there. So that's clean, that's the notes ringing out, but it's also your pick strokes falling where they need to be falling. In time, I'm gonna keep picking on Blackberry Blossom here, okay? Um, and Blackberry Blossom is a good example because the A part is really just, just a solid flow of 16th notes. Okay. If it sounds like this, that is not in time. That is not in time. Okay, so we want that steady pulse right there. And then from memory, from memory, if you are having to look at tabs Whenever you're playing something, you do not know it well enough. Period, period, period, period, period. When you're learning something, the goal is memorization. Always, always, always. So that's the 3 things. Can you play something cleanly with the right pick strokes? Can you play it in time? Again, either along with a metronome, with the strum machine, with a train beat drum track like I use— like to use, that kind of thing. Can you play it in time and can you play it from memory? So that's the main thing to remember there when you know it's time to move on. Can you play it cleanly? Can you play it in time, and can you play it from memory? If you want a bonus tip right here, record yourself playing, either video or audio, and whenever you listen back to it, if you listen back and give it at least a B-minus, that's a great way to give yourself a kind of passing grade, if you will. But the most important things there, again, cleanly, in time, and from memory. And if you've got those things reasonably well, I'd probably move on. But It's not because you're finished with it. Okay, so this is an important one here. Moving on doesn't mean that you're done. So here's what I mean. A lot of people who are either learning, you know, what I teach on this channel or learning from other guitar teachers tend to think that the way you learn a lesson is like this: learn, master, complete, next lesson. Learn, master, complete, next lesson. That's how a lot of people are thinking about that. And again, that lines up a whole lot more with the accreditation model of education that most of us have been raised in. But learning music and developing as a musician actually functions a lot more like this. And I'm going to put this graphic on the screen, and you'll notice that I don't have these in straight lines. This is in a circle, and it works a lot more like this. Learn it, get it functional, move on, revisit it, refine it, play it in new contexts, keep developing it. Okay, again, learn it, get it functional, move on, revisit it, refine it, play it in new contexts, and keep developing it. And I have this whole pattern in a circle instead of a straight line. I wanna put both of those graphics on the screen here just that way you can see them side by side here. Okay, so the way that a lot of people are thinking about this stuff, learn it, master it, complete, next lesson. Learn it, master it, complete, next lesson. That is not how musical development works. It works a whole lot more like the graphic that you see on the right-hand side of the screen. Learn it, get it functional, move on, revisit, refine it, play it in new contexts, and keep developing it. And you will do that for years. Something else that I want to bring your attention to here— notice that move on is not at the end. Here. It isn't. It's— I was gonna say it's in the middle. It's actually a little closer to the beginning. This is just a much more accurate way to represent how musical development actually works, and that the way you're gonna interact with repertoire as you progress as a guitar player. The thing about it is, is after you've played music for decades, especially if you've played professionally or semi-professionally in a bunch of different situations, you know, a of experienced musicians will actually learn things, move on, revisit them, refine them, speed them up, steal ideas from them, forget parts, relearn them, perform them, change them, create variations. I mean, it really is like that. Again, learn things, move on, revisit, refine, speed things up, steal ideas from them, forget parts, relearn them, perform them, change them, and create variations. A tune you learned this year might still be teaching you something 5 years from now. Here's a couple of examples from My own life. Whenever I first started taking guitar lessons and I learned some of my chords, one of the first tunes, um, that my guitar teacher taught me to get me started playing lead was Red Haired Boy. And he taught me just the— just the basic melody to it there and how to do it with, you know, your alternate pick strokes and all that kind of good stuff. And then a couple of years later, um, I, I heard Tony Rice play it, and, you know, he was playing it more like— You know, I knew there was that little space at the end there where I could throw in, you know, or— So that breathed some new life into Red-Haired Boy, and that kind of gave it a new dimension. And then a few years after that, you know, this was back in the day when we still bought instructional DVDs and VHS tapes, and I got David Greer's Building Powerful Bluegrass Solos on Homespun Tapes, and he opened that thing up playing a version of Red-Haired Boy like I had never heard before. Um, he would play it like— and especially on the B part, he would play it like— Just completely breathed new life and gave that tune A new dimension. Another tune that I had learned was Gold Rush. Okay. And then I had learned some of the Tony Rice stuff on there. That gave it some new life. But then I moved up here to East Tennessee and I started taking lessons from a guy named Dave Yates. And Dave loved open string floating licks, and he showed me how to play Gold Rush like this, which I've shared many times on that channel. Again, gave that tune a completely new dimension. And there are still new things that I'm learning that I am able to insert into tunes like that. So the bigger idea to take away from this is this: Repertoire stays alive because you keep developing. David Greer version of Red Haired Boy was completely different from the first version that I learned. Using open string floating licks in Gold Rush was a brand new beast from learning just the basic melody to. So I don't want you to think like, okay, I've learned Blackberry Blossom, I'm done with Blackberry Blossom. No, no, no, you're going to keep coming back to that because these tunes are going to grow with you as a player. But Aaron, what about speed? Should I have a certain tune at a certain tempo before I move on? Not necessarily, not necessarily. I would much rather you develop a really robust vocabulary and repertoire and be able to play a lot of that stuff at 80 beats per minute than I would just have you learn one version of Salt Creek and just lock yourself in your room until you're able to play it at 130 beats per minute. And if you haven't had a chance to check out this lesson right here, and I'll link to it down in the video description, where I talk about a great practice system that you can implement, um, into your daily structure. And there's 3 parts of that practice system that I talk about there. There's warm-up, there's repertoire, and there's development. So you can absolutely be expanding your repertoire while developing speed. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the same tunes. So for instance, maybe you've learned Salt Creek cleanly and time by memory at 80 beats per minute. Great, go ahead and move on to the next tune. But that doesn't mean that Salt Creek disappears. Maybe it goes into the development part of your practice. Maybe you take parts of it and you practice it at 85, 90, 100, 110 beats per minute. Meanwhile, you're actively learning another tune, expanding your repertoire and developing your repertoire at the same time. Now, I don't want you to swing too far in the other direction just because I told you that, hey, even if it's just at 80 beats per minute or even slower, if you can do it cleanly and in time by memory, you can move on. Moving on isn't permission to dabble. If you can't make it through the tune without the tab, if your timing is wonky and all over the place, if your notes are not sounding full and clean and you don't have the right pick strokes dialed in, then you need to continue to work on it. Here's what we're trying to do here. Like, over here you've got dabbling. And honestly, it sounds kind of crass, but I'll just say it— just like dicking around with stuff. A lot of people who are watching guitar content on YouTube and are buying online courses are dicking around with stuff. But anyway, there's that over here— dabbling/dicking around. And then way over here, there's perfectionism, okay? Just crazy insane perfectionism. We want to be kind of in the middle here. You do not have to have everything perfect at really fast tempos. But you do need to internalize something before moving on to the next thing. Kind of one final thought here. I want you to think like a musician and not necessarily like an undergrad. No offense to any of the undergrads out there, but a student or an undergrad kind of thinks like, am I finished with this? A musician thinks, what is this piece of music teaching me right now? Because we're not just trying to collect and complete a bunch of lessons here. We're building technique. Timing, vocabulary, repertoire. You're developing your ear, you're developing your musicality, developing confidence, and eventually your own voice. And the particular lesson that you're learning at any given time can really contribute to and help you develop several of those things at different stages in your growth. So we do want to complete lessons. It's a great thing to do. You get a great sense of accomplishment But I don't want you to confuse completing lessons with becoming a better musician. So if you find yourself either going through an online course or a series of YouTube lessons, or maybe you're even using some tabs from a book and you're wondering, can I move on to the next lesson? Uh, should I have this down at a certain BPM before moving on to the next lesson? Number one, ask yourself this question first: can I play this lesson cleanly In time and from memory. If you can do that, there's a good chance that you're ready to move on. But remember, moving forward does not mean that you're leaving the music behind. Moving on is not the end of the development process. It is a part of the development process. Ultimate goal is not to finish more lessons and get some type of accreditation. It's to become a better musician. So I really do hope that this helps you out. Again, I get this question all the time. People are like, Aaron, when do I know when it's time to move on to the next lesson, and when, you know, what should I have it up at a certain BPM. So I've done my best to answer that for you here. I hope this helps you take the pressure off. I hope it gives you a great framework. And just remember, play it cleanly, in time, from memory, move on after that. But more importantly, I hope I've shown you some bigger picture ideas here. And you'll see— and I want to bring this graphic back up on the screen here one more time. Remember, musical development is a lot more like this than it is, you know, learn, master the lesson, complete it, and move on. It's circular. And it's not linear. But as always, I want to thank you for hanging out today, and I will see you next time.