I really like the new site starting to group things and organise them, but every time I want to look up something specific, I can't find a lesson - even though I'm sure it's there somewhere.
A couple of for-instances...
- Pentatonic scales - I can find a bunch of lessons on this. But I don't find an introductory video lesson explaining where this scale comes from and how to use it. I find non-video lessons explaining the theory, and I find video lessons which start "we're going to use the pentatonic scale, which I hope you already know" or zoom through "the 5 patterns" assuming you already know what is going on. I'm guessing there's a lesson in one of the earlier courses, but I can't see it
- Soloing. I know there is the blues lead course - which is great - but I'm not that into blues. If I search "solo" in the lesson archive there is only one result and that's about transcribing. If I decide I'd like to learn about how people learn to improvise guitar solos, it seems I just have to page through all the lessons until I find it. Are there not lessons on generic lead guitar in there?
- Circle of fifths... I can't believe there isn't a lesson on this. There might even be a whole series because it's so useful. But I cannot see it
Is everything geared around the idea you'd start at the very beginning and work through every lesson? If not, being able to find topics would be SO useful. For instance I just happened to click into the Intermediate Foundation course and saw "E barre", "A barre" and nearly stopped, before I saw in the detailed text that one lesson covers the major scale, the next some cool blues tricks, etc. All this gold is buried "in the small print" which makes using the site when you want a lesson on a specific thing hard work.
How cool would it be if on the Lesson Map page you had a little '+' button next to each item that would pop down a list of topics covered? Or that in the "Scales" section it doesn't just list lessons with "scale" in the title but all the lessons which cover scales. Or a kind of tagging system so a given lesson can be tagged in multiple sections (blues, lead guitar, soloing, minor pentatonic).
This is probably coming across like a big sulk but it's really not. I'm always amazed and excited seeing how much STUFF there is here. It's such a wonderful resource. But if I, as a techy guy with a fair amount of theory and guitar experience struggle, it makes me sad others must be missing out too.
This is sort of what I do for my job so if I could help in some way, I'd love to.
What do site old hands and newer members think? Any tips for finding stuff, or do you tend to work through from the start and discover everything that way? Am I just too old for this new site?!