I just want everyone to know that I have been playing (sucking) at guitar for 20 years, I decided to actually learn last year and about 6 months ago I started listening to these lessons, I have been grinding away, listening to them over and over until I understand, last night I was able to jam with a friend along with songs I'd never heard before. I never thought that would ever be a reachable goal for me and if so I figured it would take at least another decade. Scotty is the real deal and I have so much thanks to give to him. You are one of the biggest influences on my life Mr. West, thank you. Ymmv I listen to two to three a day for the past 3 months at least and I'm only up to this lesson, practice every day.
I wish every subject had a spokesperson with this much reverence for all those details that matter so much but can only be appreciated within a larger context. The order of these lessons lets our brains connect dots between different information, all on its own, without us consciously asking it to. That experience creates real comprehension. And it seems to enable this seemingly miraculous ability to "self-teach." To sit down with just yourself and a a guitar and to somehow learn a completely new musical concepts or pattern before you stand up without any external lesson. It might be a first-principles reasoning thing, where if you know the fundamental constraints of a system, you can start to infer with great probability how certain other things will behave without anyone having telling you. It lets you start to discover the instrument on your own. It's really cool, and it really affects how you relate to a subject-in this case, guitar and music. It's quite a gift. I finally understand in my body that suggestion that the greatest guitar teacher is the guitar itself. Thank you, Scotty.
I know these lessons are more or less inclined to the American pop culture or Jazz and Rock. But at least in Mexican "Sierreño" and "Campirano" music they use a lot of open strings for on their scales/solos and 'arreglos' and they sound good.
It works if the note is in the key. But for the most part you want your lowest note to be your root note. So if you're in the key of C you may not want to play an open E.
Yes use all the opinions available to you. When first learning classical guitar, the student starts with their fingers on the first 4 frets (1st position), just as Scotty showed early on when explaining why the guitar is tuned in 4ths. This allows us to play all notes from the low E on the 6th string to the G# on the 1st string without shifting the index finger. Many scales played in 1st position will include open strings. It is more apparent on classical and acoustic guitars than electric, but still noticeable, that the open strings have a slightly different quality (timbre) and trying to get an even tonality across a scale is one of the tasks given to beginners learning this way. Later on, it can be interesting to accentuate this difference after learning to control it.
