Skip to content
Notifications
Clear all

Video tutorials?

17 Posts
8 Users
0 Likes
713 Views
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

Are there any plans in the pipeline for Guitarnoise to feature a few tutorial videos - maybe by having a Youtube Channel? Apologies if there are already some here but I haven't found them.

I recently did a quick Google around the guitar sites and lessons that are available on the internet now. It looked as if there's been a strong move towards having an array of visual content, with either a Youtube Channel, and/or videos on their own sites, plus photos to illustrate various details.

“Beginner's Video” does seem to be a powerfully attractive combination of words. In a relatively short time, the GN Hear Here forum thread with that name has grown to over 60 pages containing over 900 replies, and has gathered well over 25,000 views. Typing the words beginner video and guitar into Google returned around 4.5 million hits.

I'm pretty new to the idea of learning from videos, so I asked here what others felt about them.

Videos - Do you like learning from them?

The response seemed to be very much in favour.

Anything planned along those lines? Is getting hold of suitable content a problem? Many other sites seem to fund it all using a combination of ad revenue, that helps with continuing to provide some worthwhile free content, but then also offering additional paid material. Combinations of time based tutorial subscriptions, pay per lesson video, instructional DVDs, and so on seem almost the norm now. We all love the free stuff, but willingness to pay for additional quality visual instruction is clearly growing too.

Or is is it just the preferred option to keep Guitarnoise relatively low key?

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 16/05/2009 2:23 am
(@musenfreund)
Posts: 5108
Illustrious Member
 

We do have a couple of Video Lessons.

Well we all shine on--like the moon and the stars and the sun.
-- John Lennon

 
Posted : 16/05/2009 12:27 pm
(@dan-t)
Posts: 5044
Illustrious Member
 

Great suggestion Chris, and very good points you have. I'm all for videos myself. :D
I think the main reason is, (and correct me if I'm wrong), is that most of the other guitar sites that have video lessons, (and I only visit a few like vanderbilly.com, bobby crispy's site on youtube, and planetalk's site, but it's been awhile), is that the site owners are also guitar players and guitar teachers. They know it's a lot easier to teach with videos because if you're teaching someone in person, you show them how to play what you're trying to teach them. Tabs & Podcasts are all fine & good, but a bit dated compared to what others are doing on the net. No disrespect to Paul, but since I don't see any quality lessons from him, or have ever heard him play guitar, I don't think he fits into the guitar player/teacher category, which is all fine & good, but I think you tend to loose track a little as to what your site users want.
That said, I noticed in the recent news letter, that there will be a video lesson from Jamie Andreas who owns guitar principles coming to GN. (On a side note, in the news letter Jamie is referred to as "she", but I remember Jamie being on GN a long time ago, and Jamie is a guy.) So maybe we're off to a new frontier. 8)

"The only way I know that guarantees no mistakes is not to play and that's simply not an option". David Hodge

 
Posted : 16/05/2009 1:56 pm
(@davidhodge)
Posts: 4472
Member
 

Jamie is now a she and has been for close to five years, I think. We've done this discussion before, so no need to go through it all here.

I'm not sure many will agree with me, but one reason that there are more video sites than text sites is that most text lessons are incredibly lacking. There are any number of guitar teachers out there but that does not mean that they translate well into the written language.

But we all started at the same place on the Internet. First things were primarily text based and then sound was added and finally vision. As technology has improved, so has the guitar teacher's ability to adapt.

You might remember (ages ago) that it took us a while to get to the point where we were doing MP3s. Why? Primarily because it took me the better part of a year to save up money for quality recording equipment.

I know that a lot of people like the video lessons but I also think that people, like guitar teachers, often want both the easy way of getting through a lesson (reading text and musical notation and tab and then applying it to playing is a pain, no?) and also the illusion of immediacy that video lessons provide. The Internet has done a terrific job of making people buy into the "instant gratification" philosophy of life. We have no patience for a website that takes five seconds to load, so why would we want to sit and read something?

But part of the problem is that this illusion of a lesson is still just an illusion. So are text lessons, for that matter. None of this compares to a good lesson, one on one, with a good, live teacher. As a student, you are still chained into whatever happens in the video, audio or text lesson. There is no way you can stop it and ask "what about..." and get an answer.

The main reason I do text lessons is because it works easiest with my own private schedule. As it stands, it takes a good eight hours to put together a decent text for a song lesson, with audio and writing out all the music myself, that will try to encompass much more than most other text, audio or video lessons than you will find elsewhere. So being able to snatch thirty minutes to an hour here and there during the course of a typical week is a lot easier than finding eight hours at a stretch.

Also, and this may seem moot to some but it's vital to me, with the recent updates Paul has made to Guitar Noise, I can now just go back into the text lesson files and make corrections or add ideas whenever I can. If there are mistakes in notation, I have to re-write all that, but for general text issues, editing need only take a few moments.

More important that either of those points, though, is about what we try to do with our lessons here at Guitar Noise. When you say "they know it's a lot easier to teach with videos because if you're teaching someone in person, you show them how to play what you're trying to teach them" you also should know from reading (that dreaded word again) any of our lessons that I don't want to "show" anybody anything. I want them to be able to use their brains and develop their skills and to think for themselves in order to become better guitarists and musicians. Just showing someone something isn't teaching. And, judging from the emails we still get on a daily basis concerning older lessons (some without audio files), most people get that and also appreciate that.

I spend a lot of time discussing learning methods with other teachers. In today's society, not surprisingly, we're making everyone out to be "audio" learners or "visual" learners and while it is certainly true that we all have our preferred means of learning, none of us exclusively one type of learner or another. This is easy to forget because, again, we let the Internet dictate the terms to us. Did anyone, for instance, learn to drive a car by simply reading? No. How about by watching videos? No. It required using all of our skill sets. Most learning does. But we like to think that we can only learn from one sort because it makes learning easier for us. No one wants learning to be hard, but the fact is that some aspects are always going to be harder than others and that all of us are going to run into areas where we'd learn better by applying all of our learning tools than just relying on one.

As for Tabs & Podcasts being (dare a say more than) a bit dated compared to what others are doing on the net, yes that is spot on. But again I have to say that it has to be about what's being taught first and then let the technology help you. Not the other way around.

To do the sort of lessons we do at Guitar Noise as one video lesson, at least it seems to me, would mean at least a half hour video. That's a half hour less than I provide for the same sort of thing in my group adult classes at the Berkshire Community College, but there I'm taking interaction into account.

And I think that I'd owe it to both Paul and Guitar Noise to come up with something a lot better than sitting at my computer with a single camera.

And, as mentioned more times here than I care to think, I'm not the guitarist that people seem to think I am. I make a lot of mistakes and need to re-record things more than you'd suspect. And that's just to get some of the examples that are posted here. None of which, by the way, I'm ever happy with. I think we're all in that same boat, though! :wink:

So, video, plus still writing out the music and tab notation, plus covering all the little things I'm sure I'm going to miss in the video in some kind of text.

Plus - and this is also very important (to me at least) - what about royalties to the songwriters / performers / publishers? We get away with not doing any of that here (and let's not mince words, we do and that has been something hanging on my own conscience for almost ten years now) but I'm not sure that it's going to be that easy to lie under the radar with a big video presence. I could be totally wrong about this and will be more than happy to be so, but it strikes me that most other teachers don't even give a thought about this. Except Workshop Live, who went and purchased rights from Warner Brothers for their catalogue. Workshop Live, by the way, had the benefit of getting close to a million dollars in government funds (local western Massachusetts government) to set up shop.

Now, please don't take this to mean that (a) we won't ever do video or (b) that we don't like it. Paul and I have been discussing for quite a while now, the idea of live webcam lessons. A half-hour or (probably more likely) hour lesson done via some video chat-room type of system.

We're also trying to work out ways of putting together Guitar Noise books and DVDs, but we want to do this right so it's going to mean sinking money into good equipment as well as copyright fees. None of this is going to happen overnight. At least, not until I win the lottery and give up my private students. First, I don't play the lottery, so odds are absolutely nil. :wink: But even if I did, I'd still keep my students first. My livelihood is teaching music, after all.

So let's continue to discuss this, hopefully in terms of practical matters as well as the "wouldn't it be great if..." train of thought. After all, Guitar Noise's lessons are currently considered among the best on the Internet, we owe it to ourselves to make certain that, wherever we go from here, we maintain the quality we've come to expect from ourselves.

Okay, back to finishing off Buckets of Rain for me...

Peace

 
Posted : 16/05/2009 2:44 pm
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

So let's continue to discuss this, hopefully in terms of practical matters as well as the "wouldn't it be great if..." train of thought.

Hi David,

Thanks for the long and thoughtful response. I'll try to keep this to practical considerations.

I don't know if you had time to read through the thread that I linked to, where GN members voiced their thoughts about video instruction, but the clear preference was for a combination of video and printed support material. It's not really a matter of choosing between one or the other.

Long unbroken video-only lessons would be as unappealing to me as dense screeds of text. I think most would feel that way. Students will need to view and review the material, not just go through once. Trying to locate the precise point in a video, and arrange to loop just the needed section is a major pain, and quite unnecessary.

Smaller videos can be treated like paragraphs or discrete topics and shot individually, just as you do so well with your audio clips. As a student, I would really like to see something along the lines of a performance (or part performance) of the lesson piece, plus a breakdown of each relevant aspect (with clear fingering shown). An overall video might have any number of small 'scenes' which can also be provided as separate files so that the relevant aspect can be looped for further study, alongside the matching printed material.
No one wants learning to be hard, but the fact is that some aspects are always going to be harder than others and that all of us are going to run into areas where we'd learn better by applying all of our learning tools than just relying on one.

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. Instruction that relies only on text or audio misses out on the undeniable benefits of a visual demonstration. There is absolutely no question about that. But using only video is clearly not ideal either. Fortunately, there is no reason at all not to use them in combination. The best packages offer all the usual printable scores, tabs, etc supported by video clips that illustrate the points.

I haven't been to Kirk Lorange's site for a while, but I just nipped back and he seems to have made huge strides since I last looked. Here's an example, grabbed at random, that shows the sort of thing that he's doing now.

Beginner lesson

The free videos take a while to get past the messages to the lesson, but you get the chat, the pictures, videos at a manageable size, and clear written text and Tabs that you can print out if you want to. Sometimes he does notation too. He apparently also supplies midi and Guitar Pro files if you buy the full version. I don't know what others feel - but to me that's as close to Beginners Nirvana as I'm going to get. In that example he also cunningly manages to teach you not just some techniques, but also a song that you might already know, without being too overt about it.

That all looks pretty slick - and it's doubtless not cheap or easy to jump right into at that level - but he started in a much more basic and modest way and has rapidly improved his presentations over the last couple of years.

Or here's a guy just doing it all for free and asking for Paypal donations.

Mark Easley at 'Goldhat'

He goes for doing in it all in one shot. However, he still keeps the videos reasonably short. He also doesn't provide any written support material (apart from the work involved, he might feel that it would really be pushing his luck just too far with the copyright issues?) but I didn't have much trouble working out what I needed to know and writing it out for myself. Ideally, I'd like to see slightly better views of his hands, and have a way of looping specific sections - but maybe I could do the editing and looping myself if I got hold of the right software?

I did his lesson for While My Guitar gently Weeps and was able to make good progress on the basic song pretty quickly. I particularly liked that he gave us a simpler version that didn't take too long to get sounding reasonably OK, but he also demonstrated some fancier fingering to take it to another level. I don't use that pattern, so I couldn't just play it because he told us what he was doing, and I'm still working on that aspect, as well as polishing the other version. Win/win situation there.....

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 17/05/2009 2:14 am
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

J
We're also trying to work out ways of putting together Guitar Noise books and DVDs, but we want to do this right so it's going to mean sinking money into good equipment as well as copyright fees. None of this is going to happen overnight. At least, not until I win the lottery and give up my private students. First, I don't play the lottery, so odds are absolutely nil. :wink: But even if I did, I'd still keep my students first. My livelihood is teaching music, after all.

Have you done any costing on the equipment?

It does seem possible now to make and edit good videos with relatively inexpensive gear - much as decent home recording can be done at a fraction of the price of commercial studios. Often, the undoubted cost of putting in the hours to learn how to use the equipment in a reasonably professional way is actually higher than the the money you have to spend on a bit of gear.

If money for equipment was the main issue then I'd be happy to donate to that cause. I don't currently have any methods of paying online or overseas, but after just viewing Kirk's site (and some good ones for piano) I'm going to have to rectify that situation anyway.

My guess is that the copyright issue is also manageable without going the whole hog and spending ridiculous money you'd probably struggle to ever recoup. I'm firmly anti-piracy, but something along the lines of Kirk suggesting that you could use some of the techniques that were just demonstrated to play a particular song (or several) seems fair enough. The internet is where many people hear about their music now (even for an old fart like me, I hear about new bands pretty much exclusively via the net). If I like what I hear and see (e.g. via Youtube) then I'm likely to go and buy a CD (which I regularly do) or pay for a downloadable track online (which I currently don't, because I use neither a credit card nor an ipod - but many do).

Presenting lessons 'in the manner of' without directly ripping off lyrics and arrangements seems feasible. If it were me, I'd also provide direct links to somewhere that a paid download of the suggested songs could be bought. That would be enough to satisfy my conscience anyway. It would also seem beneficial to all concerned. The student could buy a track for reference and apply their new skills to it, the copyright holder gets a good chance of a sale, and the lesson provider can motivate the student with one or more possible end goals.

There are great many skills, styles, progressions, etc that can be readily applied to many songs. Whilst copyright holders might object to having a single song blatantly used, I don't think they'd be so likely to go after somebody who was demonstrating wider skills, and then saying something along the lines of "Songs that use this aspect include A,B,C,D,E,F etc (click to buy them here and listen...) and then explain in a bit more detail what else you need to add to get one song or the other. One of my keyboards has a built in set of music that can help the beginner. They have titles like "Great Fire Balls, Woods of Norway, Troubled Water, Knife Mack..." etc. I don't think that anybody has too much doubt where they might take whatever skills they learn from using those... :mrgreen:

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 17/05/2009 3:02 am
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

So let's continue to discuss this, hopefully in terms of practical matters...

I'm all for that. But, not all that surprisingly, the discussion seems to have stopped cold.

Could it have something to do with the large blocks of text now hanging above me as a I type? :wink:

There's not really all that many words there, are there? The posts are shorter than the articles and lessons here, and this discussion would take only a few minutes if we were face to face. I've also spread my input over a couple of days. But I've no doubt that some of the potential readers have taken one look at all that text and disappeared again.

Yet it's clearly a topic that's worth pursuing - sites that were in their infancy, or didn't exist when Guitarnoise started, seem to be doing a booming trade now and have business models that appear to be paying. Audio-visual content is invariably part of the mix, as is having some desirable products to sell. GN seems to be getting overtaken.

Here's a quick example, taken at the same time earlier today:

Guitarnoise: 7 other members online and 21 guests. However three of them were Googlebot and two other non- human bots.

Site B: 49 members (who all seemed to be humans, including two GN members, other than me) and 431 visitors.

Site B has a thriving forum, free lessons plus more detailed downloadable audiovisual lessons for sale with additional printable support material, DVDs, and even a 'gear shop'. I didn't see any threads cajoling people to click on the ads to help keep the site viable.

Sites C to Z are also out there and mostly following similar paths. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Paul is posting threads trying to cajole us into clicking on the (mostly unappealing) ads to keep the site viable. It doesn't look encouraging...

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 2:05 am
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

Hi Paul,

From another recent thread:
Recently we were pretty surprised to see how many people read the lesson on Hey There Delilah. If you check the home page it's more popular than things like Comfortably Numb.

Quite possibly that's because Comfortably Numb was released thirty years ago - well before most of the current crop of guitar beginners were born.

It's the equivalent of somebody my age looking for something written in the 20s or 30s - it happens, but it's not really where most of the action is now.

This is exactly the point that I'm trying to make here - apparently without much success - about video instruction. It's where the action now is on the internet. It's also an integral part of the on-line business models that are apparently making money for those who implement them successfully.

Every time I add another paragraph of unadorned text to my posts online I know that it will cost me a few lost readers. I'm sure that much the same happens with text only lessons. Furthermore, it doesn't matter how good the site content is - if the indexing is unclear, the text displayed in a format that's not very comfortable on the eye, and the subject matter looks a touch on the old side then many of the punters take a quick look and then depart. Over the past few years I've regularly recommended Guitarnoise to members of other forums who've asked me if I knew of a good guitar site. Not one has ever shown up here and started posting. If I ask why, I get a version of “Well it was OK, but...” and then one or all of the comments in the previous sentence.

If my comments are unwelcome then I'm more than happy to stop wasting my time typing them out. I have no personal complaint about what's here - after all I read whole books for pleasure (I have 2000 -3000 in the house) plus I can read music, tab, chord sheets etc. and I have a wide choice elsewhere now to buy lessons. The GN format is not a problem for me. It's just that if it now looks less attractive to me than it used to, compared to what else is available, then you can bet that I'm not alone.

I am also assuming that when people ask for suggestions they do actually want them - not just dressed up polite applause. I may not be that much of a guitar player currently, but I'm certainly not too dusty at business organisation. :) I was able to pretty much retire before I reached 50, and I'm not expecting to be standing in any welfare lines any time soon. A key part of success was that I listened to what the market was asking for, looked for what it might want even when it wasn't asking for it, checked what the competition was doing and how well it was working, and then sought to either satisfy an existing demand that bit better than the others, or else create a new demand. Standard stuff really.

Is there any sort of future plan or strategy for GN, or is to be more of the same? All the best with it either way.

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 2:16 am
(@davidhodge)
Posts: 4472
Member
 

Chris, my apologies for not contributiing to the conversation this past day. Unfortunately, I've been busy today with other matters and didn't mean to make it seem that I was uninterested in the discussion.

But you're right in that it does seem to be just you and I, right now. So it goes, I guess.

You continue to make valid points, but I'm not sure what a lot of them have to do with video lessons. When you talk about sites doing "booming trade," what, exactly, does that mean? That the visitor count is higher than ours? You can't base a total visitor count on just the forums alone. We get somewhere between five and fifteen million hits a month on this website. They're not all coming to the forums. Most of them are going straight to the homepage and the various lessons. The forums is actually a very small percentage of the Guitar Noise readership.

Do you have actual sales figures for "Site B?" How much it costs to run and how much profit they are making? According to most reports I've read, and I have to admit it's been about a year since I've read any, very few places (guitar tutorial or otherwise) on the Internet are actually making more than it takes to stay online.

More important, should we run Guitar Noise as a business? Paul has never really done that. That's kind of obvious, no? This is not meant to be a profit center but rather a volunteer-run community. You keep talking about business models, but if Paul isn't approaching Guitar Noise as a business, that argument isn't going to fly.

I understand and appreciate that you are trying to make a suggestion that will make this website better. And I also hope that we can somehow and some way make your suggestion of video lessons a reality. But, as I said, it will probably take time, if for no other reason than it's going to take me time to put everything together.

By the way, if you'd prefer, we can always just PM each other about this and save everyone else the trouble of sifting through "huge blocks of text." :wink:

Peace

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 2:52 am
(@chris-c)
Posts: 3454
Famed Member
Topic starter
 

Thanks David, that explains a lot. :)

No, I certainly don't have sales figures for other sites. My impressions are based entirely on the fact that they steadily continue to expand both in content and sophistication of presentation, which presumably has to be paid for. I can't believe that such professional looking setups are all funded by altruistic enthusiasts or optimistic bankers. But of course, that could be wrong.

More important, should we run Guitar Noise as a business? Paul has never really done that. That's kind of obvious, no? This is not meant to be a profit center but rather a volunteer-run community. You keep talking about business models, but if Paul isn't approaching Guitar Noise as a business, that argument isn't going to fly.

Clearly I've misread something. My bad. My (mis)understanding - from reading Paul's posts - was that he was now working full time on the site and was concerned that it wasn't making any money. He did make a strong appeal for us all to click on ads to increase his revenue.

My point about audio-visual based materials is that they are a saleable item, and that other sites are clearly selling them. Some of the members here are buying them elsewhere, and I'm about to join the trend. So there must surely be a market to sell them here too. However, if Paul isn't really interested in making a profit then it's all rather irrelevant.

I also hadn't appreciated that you are the only person who is in potentially line to produce the material anyway.

Thanks for reading and explaining the position. I'll shut up now. :mrgreen:

Cheers,

Chris

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 3:38 am
(@bluezoldy)
Posts: 329
Reputable Member
 

I been doing two side-by-side guitar training courses so this might add something to the discussion.

Learn & Master Guitar - this is a 20 DVD, 10 CD and written manual course. It also has a forum and a bonus downloadable extras manual as well as the one the one that comes in the box (the DVDs, CDs and manual are delivered to you door). It costs US$149-00. The videos and printed material are high quality and worth every cent.

http://www.learnandmaster.com/guitar/

JamPlay.com - this a fully-online video instruction site with a bunch on instructors covering basic, advanced and genre instruction. It too has a forum and usually daily live video/chat instruction (the instructor has a webcam which shows up in the chatroom) and answers/demonstrates for a couple of hours. This site has a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription. There is a small/basic amount of written material attached to each lesson that can be downloaded and printed at home.

Now they are both fine courses but L&MG is winning out as my preferred one at the moment simply because it has the printed manual which corresponds completely (ie has the complete lessons, tabs, music, chords etc) with each lesson.

JamPlay is by far the best when it comes to the videos because there are so many and they are continually adding new lessons; it's a brilliant concept and I love it. However, I find the lack of printed accompanying material frustrating. Having to go back and re-watch videos is playing havoc with my ISPs download quota.

I am fully convinced that you do need a combined video/print medium.

Then there is justinguitar.com which works on a combined pay/free system. You watch free videos and there are also downloadable PDFs for each lesson. There are also a whole swag of lesson products (DVDs etc that you can buy - purchase of these supports the free part of the site. You can also support the site with PayPal donations). Also supported by a forum.

One last thing, I have a large collection of guitar books many of which DVDs as well as CD with backing tracks. There's no way I would buy any more that don't have these as it makes the whole learning thing come together to be able to see what's being talked about in the book. It makes my older books with these aids museum pieces.

I'm 60 so I'm supposed to be Luddite when it comes to the modern age of electronics, video etc., but I can assure you video instruction delivered via the net, preferably with accompanying PDFs, is the future (at least until we get to the brain implant stage!).

♪♫ Ron ♪♫

http://www.myspace.com/bluemountainsblues

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 5:43 am
(@paulhackett)
Posts: 794
Prominent Member Admin
 

I guess I could jump in and try to keep things brief. David's right as usual. Guitar Noise isn't a business as much as it's a labor of love. It's always nice to make more money and be successful but it's not the driving force behind the site.

For now I think David and I have gotten really good at doing what we do. It kind of makes us wonder if we'd be able to make video lessons that are also as good. I'm filmmaker of sorts and that means I'd expect a pretty high standard for video lessons. David sitting in front of a webcam isn't going to cut it for me. We've been doing this long enough to care a great deal about what we put our names on.

You've raised a lot of good points, Chris. We certainly don't want to be left behind and I think one day we will have more video content. For now it's the usual things holding us up: commitments, geography, and time. David and I both have a lot of other things going on outside GN and new projects seem to take us a long time to get off the ground.

Guitar Noises Newsletter

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 10:25 am
(@dan-t)
Posts: 5044
Illustrious Member
 

But you're right in that it does seem to be just you and I, right now. So it goes, I guess.

Maybe that's because everyone else knows that their opinions are going to be met with some form of hostility just like mine was? :roll:
More important, should we run Guitar Noise as a business? Paul has never really done that. That's kind of obvious, no? This is not meant to be a profit center but rather a volunteer-run community. You keep talking about business models, but if Paul isn't approaching Guitar Noise as a business, that argument isn't going to fly.

Clearly I've misread something. My bad. My (mis)understanding - from reading Paul's posts - was that he was now working full time on the site and was concerned that it wasn't making any money. He did make a strong appeal for us all to click on ads to increase his revenue.

Chris is exactly right! Paul has stated that his "job" is Guitar Noise, and he needed to make more money for things like "rent & keeping the lights on."

I'm sensing a lot of hostility on your part David, and maybe that's because you are expected to carry the weight of the lessons on GN, but I'm guessing don't reap any of the monetary rewards from the site since Paul is the site owner? Chris has made some very valid points and a well meant suggestion to the site.

"The only way I know that guarantees no mistakes is not to play and that's simply not an option". David Hodge

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 10:32 am
(@paulhackett)
Posts: 794
Prominent Member Admin
 

I wonder if you guys are getting on the wrong track here. David and I are the best of friends and I'm absolutely certain there's no strain in our working relationship.

Video lessons and advertising are unrelated topics. We don't do video lessons because we don't have the time. We do advertising because it pays the rent and keeps the lights on. And many of those video sites that are doing a booming trade come to us to advertise their wares because we have the exact audience they are looking for.

Now I'm getting defensive and I don't want to be. Sometimes the suggestions catch us off guard because we work long hours to do something that no other site is doing - and as soon as it comes out someone says "Why don't you do this next?" If you haven't noticed, we're really careful about what we put out and there's a lot of preparation that goes into everything. We may not warm to every suggestion right away because we already have dozens of plates in the air.

And that doesn't mean we don't like you or your ideas.

Now I'm going to take a chill pill.

Guitar Noises Newsletter

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 11:27 am
(@davidhodge)
Posts: 4472
Member
 

And I apologize, too, for any seeming hostility on my part. It was not my intent, as writing and putting things together for Guitar Noise has been the biggest and best part of my life for almost ten years now.

From the start, none of this has been about money for me. Since my move to Massachusetts and the decision to teach full time, it's all been about time and how much I can find in order to contribute. And while I do get frustrated on occasion that other parts of my life have to come first, I truly enjoy being able to contribute something to Guitar Noise when I can.

Paul is without a doubt one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life and, if anything, I'm a bit jealous that he is a better manager of his time than I am! :wink:

And he's also right in that I, too, a'm probably being defensive for absolutely no reason and that's why I'm coming across as hostile. And video lessons are, as has been stated by everyone in this thread, a good idea. We all get that. And we will do our best to work toward having good quality videos. But it is going to take time, because time is what we need in order to do it well and in a manner befitting Guitar Noise.

Again, my full apologies to anyone who thought I was being hostile to them with my responses.

Be seeing you on the boards.

Peace

 
Posted : 18/05/2009 11:53 am
Page 1 / 2