Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Hi Tomo/Guys, I subscribed to this guitar wisdom in hopes of gaining similar proficiency to those students that Tomo usually jams with on his Youtube page. I love how his students are really fluent in chord tone soloing as well as mixing very tasteful bebop/jazz phrasing.

I already have a solid background of pentatonic soloing as I mainly analyzed a lot of John Mayer's solos on his Gravity and Trio Albums, so I am looking to develop something more nuanced than that.

Which series/lessons do you think will teach me to get to that same proficiency as Tomo's students in his jams?

Hey! Just some thoughts -- I can't speak directly to the proficiency of the Berklee students and their syllabus, but I can say I'm having great success with Tomos take a step back and don't worry about it approach. There are all these great nuggets of information contained in the lessons in places unexpected. When I stopped worrying about it and just taking the lessons, jumping around, I found myself really progressing...I'm in my second month. I just started to get into the jazz standards and those have been immensely helpful. Just taking it slow and really Learning the material vs memorizing. I went through the beginner series even though I wouldn't consider myself beginner necessarily, and there were so many helpful technical tips to help build a strong base --- all those little details add up, things I hadn't considered before. I haven't looked at tab or chord charts at all -- and although I do have a musical background and am familiar with number system, it has been incredibly rewarding spending so much time with triads and solfege. In the process of learning vertical and horizontal triads I've had several "AHA" moments, and really surprised myself with what I could then do jamming along to some backing tracks.

This lesson is for getting started:
QAP02 How to Learn with Guitar Wisdom

I find it helpful to watch more than I can practice. For example, I’m dedicating some of my practice time to the Jazz Standards series. I watched all 20 videos, but practice is focused on a single song.

Here is Tomo's comment:

"Thanks so much for subscribing to my Guitar Wisdom. Don't worry about a specific lesson or series of lessons. I recommend that my Berklee students take this approach:

1) Practice with a dry, clean tone. No reverb and no effects.
2) Use a metronome.
3) Do not use any backing tracks from YouTube.
4) Record yourself a few times each week, to review your playing.
5) Focus on your foundation: (a) Chromatic fingering exercise - 1212 and so on; (b) R 3 7 Swing Groove; (c) Shuffle Bass Line.

"Analyzing songs is good! Always analyze the chords and intervals, not scale shapes!

"Please check out this lesson as a reference: John Mayer Gravity Concept Lesson."