SBL Funk Accelerator

[colleya]

I'm usually almost pathologically resistant to paid for courses.  However after years of playing in rock/indie I joined a funk/soul band and felt painfully exposed.  Phrasing wasn't right, felt awkward and not in the pocket etc etc. 

 

I bit the bullet and realised that spending money on a new bass/amp/pedal wasn't magically making me a better player (still fun though) so I signed up

 

Three weeks in, I'm pretty impressed.

I like the structure that releases a section a week rather than full access to everything.  Resources, videos and backing tracks are excellent quality.  The live sessions are fun and focused.  Feels well scaled so far - lots of stuff I've seen go from root notes to 7/8 mixolydian Swedish folk fusion leaving a massive 'how the hell did they do that?' gulf in the middle.

 

Am I motivated to practice more? Yes

Is my practice more focused? Yes

Is my timing improving (probably as a result of the above)? Yes

Is my phrasing improving? Starting to

Can I do stuff I couldn't before? Yes

Could I have learned most of this stuff for free piecemeal on the Internet? Probably

Do they send waaaaay too many emails? Good lord yes

Was it expensive? It felt it, but if I break it down into 14 (the length of the course in weeks) then probably not really.

Has the rest of the band noticed? Very funny (but it's only week 3 so I still have hope)

 

If anyone else is doing the course then I'd be interested in how you're finding it.  If you're thinking about these courses then hopefully this might help a bit.

 

[walshy]

Yes, just bought the Ultimate Accelerator Pack for Black Friday so will be playing catch up on this one first. Im going to be strict and not flip flop between courses.  I think all the courses SBL run are pretty well thought out and delivered tbh. Plus any excuse to actually practice 'other stuff and styles' is more than welcomed! I agree theres a lot of free stuff out there, I just CBA to look for the right one when they seem to have the formula pretty dialled in.

Edited 14 hours ago by walshy

[colleya]

2 hours ago, walshy said:

Yes, just bought the Ultimate Accelerator Pack 

I nearly went for that myself, but it was a bit much on top of the funk accelerator in one month.

 

Would be very interested in your thoughts on the fretboard accelerator course. That would be next on my list.

[Sean]

11 hours ago, colleya said:

I nearly went for that myself, but it was a bit much on top of the funk accelerator in one month.

 

Would be very interested in your thoughts on the fretboard accelerator course. That would be next on my list.

The FBA is good, very detailed and well presented like most of the SBL material. Good workbooks and play-along tracks and the course is huge. 

 

Like a lot of the Accelerator courses it's like an expanded and more detailed version of some of Phil Mann's (and others') courses that are already in SBL. I like Phil Mann's approach to teaching and get a lot of what he's done. His theory courses are very engaging.

 

There's nothing that I've seen in FBA Accelerator that's not available elsewhere, and we can say that about most courses, but it is well presented, has loads of material etc and that's what makes it what it is. Like all this, you need to put in what I call "boot camp time", you need to sit and pump out the exercises and not skip bits.  Trust the process. 

 

I was watching one of Phil M's videos and he was talking about studying with Jeff Berlin and learning all the patterns all over the neck and it seems that's the concept the FBA is based on.