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ISBN: 1893884112
SKU / ORDER #: 4112
PUBLISHED: November 2009
AUTHOR: Bill Edwards
DVD 4.25 Hours
PRICE: $24.95 US, $29.95 Canada/International
The first upgrade to the Fretboard Logic videos in over a decade. This upgrade adds roughly ten times the musical, visual and educational content as before. Complete transcriptions are available to view online by DVDaccess link. (...and coming soon, in book form from our Catalog and Order Page.) NOTE: If your PC or OS is one of the few that won't honor the DVDaccess links, send us an email with the info on where you bought it (a copy of the reciept is acceptable) and we'll send you the link to the menu page for the tabs, notation, citations and charts.
Important Note: For security reasons, the new 2.0 DVD is region coded to Region 1 for North America ONLY. We are working on separate versions for other regions. (We appreciate your patience with us on this.)
The Philosophy Behind the Improvements - Avoiding The Common Mistakes
There are numerous potholes in the road to making an educational guitar video, but there are also two huge ditches to be avoided. On one side of the road you can ruin the experience by:
1. Teaching music that is out of date, the wrong style, or boring and inappropriate for other reasons such as not being challenging enough or worthy of performing for an audience. The corollary of this is when the study pieces all sound the same, and there is not enough variety to be of interest to the average player.
On the other side of the road you can fail by:
2. Teaching music that is interesting to watch and listen to, but is so advanced or difficult that the students give up and never really learn anything - except to copy licks. The corollary for this is when a famous player "teaches" their compositions, but sidesteps or withholds the most important and interesting aspects either protecting their trade secrets or because they lack the educational background to accurately or meaningfully discuss what they're doing.
Among the potholes are:
1. Using the video to advertise and sell stuff, instead of sticking to the business of teaching. This is schlocky and shameful, and yet it still goes on in many music ed videos.
2. Teaching by rote memorization with no comprehension of the different aspects and component parts. Yeah, you learn where to put your fingers from tab, but you don't really understand it on anything more than a superficial level. Notation shows you the notes and how long to hold them, but is not always specific about which string to play the note on, and again, doesn't explain things on a deeper level. By themselves, standard notation and especially tablature, tend to encourage rote thinking and can stifle creativity.
The Philosophy Behind the Improvements - What's Different
First, we go in stages
and the stages are further divided into steps:
1. We establish the requisite foundations before doing the applications. It's known as the "building block" learning style.
2. With each study piece, we start by setting realistic goals. This helps bring the most important things into focus.
3. Next we provide warm-up exercises which will help prepare you both mentally and physically for what's coming.
4. Each study piece is staged as well, and starts with a bare bones framework designed to be doable - even by stock beginners.
5. Then materials from different categories are incrementally added to that framework to improve it with two essential goals in mind: a. To create interest, and b. To define the style.
6. Each study piece concludes by sounding good, being style-appropriate and worthy of performing.
7. We provide variety in music styles, guitar types, arrangements and technical approaches.
8. Each study piece features both lead and rhythm guitar, or else instrumental and vocal accompaniment, with enough substance to bridge the gap between the beginner and intermediate levels.
9. Creative expression is encouraged - not stifled. We provide looped jam tracks for improvization and experimentation, plus there are on-screen suggestions regarding things to include and vary.
Link to Sample Clips Menu
Comparisons with version 1.0
While working on Video III in the series, it became apparent that the new structure, improved content, added features, etc., would render our previous videos somewhat out of date by comparison. So we went back to the drawing board and started trying to develop a completely new format which would serve as a kind of blueprint for the whole series. The result is Video I version 2.0. The first objective was to produce an application video which would give our readers fun and reliable practice regimens - a way to make stimulating use out of the things they had learned in the books. Our first version, from 10 years ago, intended to make use only of the material in Volume I. This is no longer the case. Now the video draws from all the volumes, while still being beginner-accessible, but has a richness and depth that the 1.0 version lacked due to constraints of the technology at the time. While the first video catered to guitarists interested in playing lead, and focused on the scale forms and lead patterns from Volume I, this time the video has what could be considered characteristics which are more "three-dimensional." This translates to the following categories being represented:
A. General Guitar Arrangement: 1. Lead Guitar, 2. Rhythm Guitar, 3. Instrumental, 4. Chord-Melody and 5. Vocal Accompaniment.
B. Difficulty Level: 1. Beginner, 2. Beginner-Intermediate, 3. Intermediate,
C. Guitar Type: 1. Electric, 2. Acoustic (steel strings), and 3. Acoustic (nylon strings)
D. Music Style: 1. Rock (3 different types), 2. Blues, 3. Metal, 4. Classical
E. Right Hand Style: 1. Flatpick style, 2. Fingerstyle (ie., Travis Picking or Chet Atkins Style), 3. Classical (Segovia style), 4. Nashville style (pick and fingers)
The first videos had only three separate study pieces with one focus. Video I v. 2.0 has six, which in turn, have three separate parts: Lead, Rhythm and Accompaniment - plus each study piece is 3-4 times longer than the ones in the first videos. Five pieces have separate rhythm and lead parts to master, and one piece is an instrumental. One has the rhythm part developed further into the chord-melody arrangement style. So even for beginners and intermediates, this video is addressing the needs of more and more players to have both comprehension on the different levels, as well as new and challenging music to perform.
More Content
1. Over ten times the musical, graphical and educational content and four times the raw video content (it's over four hours long)
2. Over 100 pages of transcriptions included via web link, with Citations, Tab, Standard Notation and Charts
3. Ten separate menus - a main menu and one for each title each with as many as 14 buttons each for navigation plus separate book one, preview and demo menus
4. Three kinds of rock, plus blues, metal, and classical study pieces
5. Phrase by phrase analyses with balanced emphases on constants and variables
6. Looped jam tracks with onscreen button control
7. Separate backing music for the jam tracks (for both lead AND rhythm - plus they're located in separate channels for direct user audio balance control)
8. Linked Citations - for more details and help from the books on the subjects being demonstrated and discussed
The above is a full-sized example of one of our study piece menus. These menus are divided into two halves by a neck.
The left side buttons let you navigate to the different parts of each particular study piece on the DVD itself. They work on set top DVD players by remote control, and on computers by your computer's built-in remote control simulator.
The right side buttons let you navigate to the supplemental materials online. They only work on a computer that is connected to the internet. They work by way of a program called DVD@ccess which comes installed on our disc. DVD@ccess links work on most computers and most operating systems, but not all. Unfortunately, some companies design their systems to defeat their competitors' software, making it fail intentionally. If this is the case for your system, and you are a paying customer with proof of purchase, we will provide you with a link to our Transcriptions and Citations via email. Our supplemental materials can be viewed online but not printed or downloaded. We will also offer them for sale in book form for our customers who wish to work from a printed version.
The pick arrows at the bottom move you forward and backwards from menu to menu, and the gray button to the left takes you back to the Main Menu.
Built-In Discounts
Discounts are available for people who order direct and already bought the 1.0 videos. If you bought direct, we have your info and you'll be a returning customer. (We'll look you up by name.) Otherwise, just mail or email a copy of your receipt or the 1.0 jacket insert sheet (you can just scan or copy the back cover with the barcode and address) and get $5.00 off the list.
Staged Progress
The key to doing all this without alienating players at differing skill levels, is to start each study piece from a skeleton arrangement, and flesh out something along the way that winds up being worth playing - and listening to. Each player can progress at his or her own speed and get the maximum enjoyment based on their current skill level and however much time they have to devote to each stage. But here's the real payoff: there is so much theory, so many different etudes, exercises, styles, techniques, etc., that once a student has gone through everything in Video I 2.0, and learned the fretboard, mastered all the study pieces, and passed the online tests, they will be able to realistically rate themselves as a beginner no more, and a true intermediate level guitarist. That became the ultimate goal as this video developed from concept to release. And no, this has never been attempted before in a single educational video.
Bottom Line
For the first time, the author feels the videos are just as good as the books. In some ways, even better. It has the highest value to price ratio of any single title in our catalog (with the possible exception of Fretboard Logic SE which, of course, is a discount combo.)