Peghead Nation - Monroe Style or Intermediate Bluegrass courses?

[Trader Todd]

Is anybody taking either the Monroe Style Mandolin with Mike Compton or the Intermediate Bluegrass with Sharon Gilchrist? I want to sign up for one but can't decide, there seems to be a lot of info on both. Thanks in advance for any insight. Stay healthy!

[Joe Welna]

Can’t speak to Mike Compton’s class as I haven’t taken it but Sharon’s Intermediate class was great, learned some great tunes. She’s got some good tips for playing with a relaxed left and right hand and uses double stops really effectively in her lessons. I also very much liked Reischman’s and both of Joe Walsh’s classes.
The thing about Peghead is that you can change classes really easily. You can take both the classes you mentioned, so it really comes down to deciding which one to take first.

[Gina Willis]

I think it depends on what you feel you need most right now for your level of playing (and how objectively you’re able to assess your own playing skills).
I started Monroe Mandolin at first because I felt I had enough fundamentals under my belt to understand the material and learn the tunes.
This turned out to be true, in a sense.
But After looking through Sharon’s curriculum, I discovered a lot of useful — even essential — things in her beginner and intermediate courses that I realized I could benefit from... loads of little technique tips, exercises to improve right and left hand, and an invaluable tremolo exercise that’s helping me finally start getting on the right track with that.
Also, to be frank with myself, I had to admit that while I know a good 15 to 20 tunes now, I’d be lucky to be able to play just 4 or 5 of them confidently, without error, and at decent enough tempo to be able to take a break on the spot in a moderately paced jam. So I made myself take a step back and decided to follow Sharon’s guidance: Learn 10 tunes really well first so that you can play them totally comfortable and get them up to tempo, and make that the foundation.
Also, an good number of the tunes Sharon teaches in her intermediate course are Monroe tunes, and others are tunes Monroe often played. So you will still get your Monroe fix within Sharon’s intermediate course, but with the added bonus of her outstanding teaching style where she explains and helps you build the technique needed to play them right.
No slight to Mike C. here, but I think his course presumes you already have the technique part down and are looking to expand your repertoire. He breaks each tune down well in terms of showing you WHAT to play, but he doesn’t spend as much time showing you HOW to achieve the sound and play it.

[Trader Todd]

Thanks for the feedback. I signed up for Sharon's class. I could use more of the fundamentals, I could certainly use more of the HOW to play and not WHAT to play. Thanks!

[bigskygirl]

I think you'll enjoy her classes and learn alot. Ive been on several Peghead classes and finally settled on Chad Mannings theory class. The nice thing is you can switch courses and if you add a course it’s just $10 more a month. I tried her new fretboard class and while a great class it doesn't have much content yet so I cancelled and may try it again later.

[Leester]

I really enjoyed Sharon's Intermediate course and like others learned a lot. I tried out the Monroe style course and found that I'm not really looking to play in that style. Mike's course is great if that's what you're looking for but it wasn't for me. My experiences with Peghead Nation have been very positive and I recommend them as a resource to anyone who asks.

[Mark Seale]

. I tried her new fretboard class and while a great class it doesn't have much content yet so I cancelled and may try it again later.

If I had ANY complaint with Peghead (and I really do not, it's a fantastic resource) it would be that they release new courses of study prior to having enough content. My reaction was the same as yours when the Matt Munisteri course first went live. The content itself was/is great, but there wasn't much there on launch.

[Alex Orr]

I've been taking both for over a year now. They're both very good, but for different reasons. Here are a few observations:

1. With Compton, you're learning Monroe breaks note-for-note. He may throw in a bit of theory or underlying thought behind what is being taught, but basically you're being taught the break note-for-note. Anything you're able to extrapolate from that you mostly have to do on your own. Monroe's style on vocal tunes frequently emphasizes licks over melody, which means it helps to know what chord the licks are occurring on, and Compton doesn't even include that info in the lessons or the tabs.

2. Compton's lessons on Monroe's style are the best I've found, but with that said, I think he could tighten some stuff up. The tabs are wrong...a lot. I spend a lot of time on each song beasically re-tabbing what he's actually teaching (as opposed to what appears on the pdfs) and I also spend a LOT of time re-watching the same lick over, and over, and over, and over, etc... on reduced speed to understand what he's doing. Again, I think he does a good job, but I think learning this stuff would be so much faster taking lessons directly from him so I could ask him to slow down on one spot or to break the timing down better on certain phrases. There's this odd thing where he sometimes spends a bunch of time on stuff I immediately get and then blows through a measure where I'm like, "Hey! Wait! What was that you just played?"

3. It's interesting to compare their teaching styles. Sharon just teaches better IMO. She is great about teaching a measure or two, and then playing it through very slowly several times before moving on. And then playing through the song as it exists up to that point very slowly multiple times, eventually getting to the point at the end of a lesson where she will play the whole thing through several times. It's great because it consistently helps you to build on what you have learned in the context of the whole piece of music. Sometimes Mike does that, but sometime he doesn't. Sometimes he'll teach half the break before going back and reviewing how things connect, which is a little frustrating, and he never really goes back and plays the whole thing over so you have to basically keep the practice track video and the instructional video windows both open and use them in conjunction with each other. Also, Compton frequently plays the same line differently here and there, which makes establishing a baseline version more challenging than it need be. That is never the case with Sharon.

4. I guess I'd say I have learned more from Sharon, but that also has a lot to do with the nature of the courses. I will likely never be able to just pull one of those Monroe breaks out of the hat in a jam and play it note-for-note at full speed. Honestly, I can spend a couple of months learning and practicing a break until I have it at decent (but by no means blazing) speed and if I don't revisit it regularly, I can't play it again from memory even four weeks later. That said, I do pick up licks and ideas here and there and I'd like to think it's helped me be able to increase my use of a Monroe sound in my playing at times, which is what I really wanted. Also, it's just fun to learn the breaks if you love Monroe's playing. To some degree, I spend the time putting in the work on Mike's course because I enjoy the process, even though I know the practical returns in my playing might be minimal at best. On the other hand, a lot of the stuff Sharon teaches I use, note-for-note, pretty often. To some degree it's because it's just easier - make no mistake, Monroe breaks are quite challenging to learn correctly. Sharon's stuff is just easier and more practical.

5. There is so much content in both course, which is great. Sharon seems to increasingly be teaching more obscure tunes and veering into Old-Timey territory, which doesn't interest me very much. I'd love to see her do more transcriptions of classic bluegrass mando breaks like she did with Skaggs' breaks on "Walls Of Time" and "Old Home Place" or Sam Bush's break on "Big Sandy River". Those were sooooo cool to learn, quite challenging, and she teaches them so damn well.

6. If I had to pick one, I'd go with Sharon's course, since it just has a greater diversity of useful stuff, while Compton's is obviously far more narrowly focused and applicable.

[Alex Orr]

I also have to agree with the praise for Peghead Nation. Especially when you factor in the cost, I think it's a tremendous resource and great value. I've also been taking the Artistworks bluegrass vocals course with Michael Daves which is pretty good, but much pricier. Based on the Daves course I recently signed up for their bass course with Nathan East and for the first time, I'm seeing one of these servies put out a truly underwhelming series of lessons. Maybe it will get better, but it has been so poorly done for the first ten or so lessons that you really appreciate the quality of the Peghead Nation lessons.

[FPhil]

I highly recommend the course with Joe K Walsh, he's great teacher (spend a week at a camp with him last summer) also online. His tabs are always very accurate but also his teaches style works very good online. I missed that personally with the Mike Compton class, but also with the courses from Sharon Gilchrist and John Reischman you can't go wrong.

[lowtone2]

Both. If you want to learn Monroe style, Compton is the best Monroe stylist on the planet. For $20/month, it's a huge bargain. Any of them are guaranteed to improve your playing, but Compton's course is not for beginners.

[Tempotantrum]

Keep in mind Mike's course is a journey from early Monroe all they way through Monroe's musical progression. It is helpful to keep this in mind as Monroe style playing builds on a library of licks and techniques that once learned can be helpful in most Monroe tunes (and most bluegrass for that matter - it is easy to see how Monroe is credited as the father of Bluegrass when you see the influence of his style on nearly everyone since). So I think it is easier to start at the beginning of Mike's course and be methodical about moving through the material from first to latest. I have been enrolled in that course since day one, but have also done Joe Walsh's course and Sharon's course. I can jump around in those courses much easier and learn a tune I am interested in. I really enjoy all of them but they each have a different style. As someone mentioned earlier - if you are a student of Monroe- you cannot do better than Mike. In fact, you should go to Mike's Monroe camp this year if you can - Sharon will be there again like she was a couple years ago and you can sit in classes from each of them.