It’s difficult to say, I’d say 4 years playing seriously with the intention of actually being good at the instrument. I took one year of guitar classes when I was a little kid (around 17 years ago), after that, I pretty much left the guitar and didn’t come back to it until my last year of university (2014).

At the beginning I was playing just for fun but once I was out of college (2015) that was when I realized that I really wanted to be good at the instrument and I started to practice more seriously. I discovered Jamie’s guitar class four years later in 2019.

It was a two steps forward one step backward type of thing. I could see progress but everything was pretty random. I knew that I was doing some things correctly and other things incorrectly but I didn’t know what those things were.

I was certainly bad at identifying problems and fixing them so I just continued with a lot of holes in my playing. About confidence, again, it was a random thing. Sometimes I felt I was making progress other times I just felt stuck.

After I pick up the guitar again in 2014/2015, I started learning with YouTube and other online resources. Justin Guitar was a big one that I used when I started out.

When I wanted to jump to electric stuff I also used the Metal Method by Doug Marks. Around 2018 I discovered Pebber Brown’s instructional materials and I also did a bit of those. I feel that I took away something from all of those courses. I learned the common chord shapes with Justin.

Started playing my first electric songs with the Metal Method and finally began to understand music theory with Pebber’s lessons. Of course, I also felt that I learned all of this in a very superficial manner and I didn’t consider my technique to be any good.

It is actually way more demanding and it made me realize how difficult the guitar really is as an instrument. It’s so easy to suck at it without even realizing it. But it has allowed me to have this laser focus on my technique.

In the past, when I had a technical problem, my plan was to just keep playing it hoping that eventually, it would sound good. Now I know that doesn’t work (or it can work but if it does, it would be mere luck).

The best thing to do is to stop and analyze in the most focused way what you are doing and how your body is reacting to it. Paying attention to my shoulders, my biceps, my non-moving fingers was a completely new thing that Jamie allowed me to discover and it’s quite essential because a lot of times that’s the source of the problem.