A bit confused - advice needed!

Tangled_up_in_Blue

Tangled_up_in_Blue

Blues Newbie
Hi
I know many of you love this course and I have recently incorporated it into my daily practice. However, I think I'm losing my way regards navigating through the course.
I have worked through it up to the 4 note sequence. Griff seems to demonstrate everything at 60 bpm. I cannot see where he talks about how and when to speed things up. So, do I go through the complete course moving on when I can do the exercises at 60 bpm and then go back to the start and speed up? Or do I speed up each exercise to a certain bpm then move on to the next?
In contrast I've also been working on BSBB course and this is really clear as to the way to work through the course.
I'd appreciate some guidance from those of you that have worked through the course and found it beneficial.
 
Paleo

Paleo

Student Of The Blues
He does the entire course at 60 bpm.

You increase speed within each section by going from 8th notes to triplets to 16th notes.

Playing new patterns in 16th notes can be quite a challenge, even at 60 bpm.

(In BSBB you keep the same note values (triplets), but increase the speed my increasing the tempo.)

Near the end of the section on the Melodic patterns in Box 1, after example 27 (@11:00), he briefly discusses the importance of timing in increasing speed. :)

However he doesn't increase the speed further in this course.

Speed isn't the main focus.

In other courses he discusses "speed bursts" and "butcher it loud and proud".

I think maybe in BSBB. :unsure:
 
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sdbrit68

sdbrit68

Student Of The Blues
I have done this entire course more times than I can count. (count, see what I did there.....lol), anyways, my reason started out being that every other way I took to learn the penatonic scales, and more a little around the fretboard failed, so I tried this. (Spoiler alert, worked fantastic)

After that I started using it as a warm up, I did each exercise at one speed, and then realized, to get through warm ups a little quicker, I was doing them faster every day, so I started speeding up my metronome/

Now I use the entire course as a speed drill.......Now I can move around the neck at all speeds, so, make it what you want by defining your goal from the course
 
mountain man

mountain man

Still got the Blues!
I did the Pentatonic Mastery course several years ago and it was the key to my breaking old and perhaps bad habits. I've not done it for a while as I've been working on the 2 speed building courses as my daily warm ups. The speed building courses are more musical and there are some great riffs that once you've got them in your tool box you can pull out and play anytime. So my advise would be to make sure you have the Pentatonic Mastery firmly in your fingers and move onto other riff base courses that will make your solo's and basic play more interesting. And if you are interested in gaining speed? Move onto the speed building courses. I basically warm up with level 2 all the time. I find that level 2 is fast enough for most tunes and it allows me to gain accurate dexterity which is far more important than speed. I always do the group 4 play alongs which is kinda speedy over the level 2 stuff. :Beer:
 
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Tangled_up_in_Blue

Tangled_up_in_Blue

Blues Newbie
Thanks to Paleo, Mark & Mountain Man for your great responses. All very helpful. I am now confident of how to work through the course and get the most benefit from it going forward. Cheers guys. :thumbup:
 
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