Fingerstyle Five FAQs • A Tour Of The Membership
Published: Sun, 03/28/21
A Tour Of The Membership
Ten Questions About The Fingerstyle Five Membership:
1. How much does it cost?
The membership is $20/month. When you sign up, you'll be charged $20 for the first month, and then billed an additional $20 for each month you continue to be a member.
2. What if I don't like it / don't have the time / don't want to continue?
Your subscription is month-to-month. If you're not getting what you want or need out of it, you can just cancel before the next billing cycle and you'll be done.
3. Can I keep watching the lessons after I quit?
No. Like Netflix or Hulu (but on a drastically smaller and more culturally niche scale) your membership pays for monthly access to all of the streaming content on the site, but does not allow you to download video content. However, you can download and keep any of the tab PDFs when you leave.
4. I travel and/or do my studying in a place with little or no Wi-Fi. Can I download and take the videos with me?
Unfortunately, as above, there is not currently a download option for the membership material.
5. Do I have to be available at a certain time of day or day of the week to take the lessons?
You don't! While new lessons are typically released on Wednesday of each week, you can access and work on the lessons whenever you like. The monthly live stream usually takes place on a Thursday at 2:30pm Central (U.S.). You can submit questions in advance and the stream is archived immediately afterwards, so even if you can't attend live, you can still participate.
6. What kind of songs will I be learning?
In the past year we've done arrangements of "Sitting On Top Of The World," "St. James Infirmary," "Stagolee," "Motherless Child," Baby Please Don't Go" and "Wayfaring Stranger," plus a rag and a couple of steady bass blues that I wrote specifically for the membership. We'll be starting off in the very next lesson with "Nobody's Fault But Mine." The classic tunes are an important part of learning about arranging familar material, and the original tunes help to address specific moods and techniques the traditional material might not include. (If you've done any of my Truefire lessons, like Fingerstyle Essentials, Fingerstyle Blues Factory or Take Five: Steady Bass, you have an idea of what the originals will be like.) As a member, you'll have access to all of the past songs and the lessons that go with them.
6. Will you be covering [this Robert Johnson / Howlin' Wolf / Keb Mo song]?
When it comes to securing the rights to not only record a song but also publish sheet music for it and place it in a video context, copyright is a big, hairy, multi-headed beast. It's a beast I am making every effort to sort out, but at the moment doing copywritten material in the membership remains a work in process.
7. Will you be covering any jazz standards?
I try and present every tune at multiple levels of difficulty, and I've yet to find a way to make standards both accessible to fingerstyle newcomers and still satisfying musically. Plus, there are usually (though not always) copyright issues – see #6 above.
8. I don't know the names of the notes I'm playing, and I hear you calling out things like thirds, fifths, etc., when you teach. Do I need to know theory to do the membership?
Not necessarily. Theory helps a lot when it comes to improvising and arranging, but you can work on the fundamentals of fingerstyle technique without it. If theory is something you'd like to learn more about, I've included a theory module in the membership that starts from absolute scratch.
9. What should I already know how to do before I sign up for this?
You should be familiar with the basic idea of alternating-thumb or Travis picking, and the steady-bass style. You don't have to be great at it yet. If you can play a few Travis-picking patterns or have learned a few blues things, and you're willing to take a step-by-step approach to the mechanics of doing it better, you can work on the material in the membership. You can also take a look at the sample lessons on the registration page for an idea of how challenging the material will be.
10. I'm trying to sign up, but I can't get Paypal/Stripe/the login to work.
Drop me a line directly (just respond to this email) and I'll do what I can to sort you out!
For more answers and a guided tour of the membership site, this afternoon's live stream starts at 2:30pm Central:
A Tour Of The Membership
If you've been thinking of signing up but still have questions, hopefully this clear things up, but I'll gladly answer anything else you want to know about it in this afternoon's live stream.
If you're just patiently waiting to for me to return to the usual once-a-week email, feel free to ignore this and anything else you get from me until Thursday.
To sign up, check out sample lessons from the membership itself or re-watch the past week's lessons on Improvisation and Arranging, click below:
Membership Info and Registration
More soon,
David