Customer Reviews

Accelerate Your Guitar Playing DVD

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tomo Fujita is not only an excellent player, but also a superb teacher (Berklee).
The DVD starts off with Tomo playing for approximately 3 and a half minutes, and then introducing himself and the DVD, as well as his gear. He then proceeds to show how to use a metronome in terms of emphasizing the 2 and 4 beats, like a snare drum, and briefly explains some basics on holding the guitar, picking, etc.
At around 6 minutes, we begin with exercise 1.

The DVD is divided into 4 sections, and demonstrations by professor Fujita.
The 4 exercise sections are also included in an accompanying booklet (around 80 pages).
Section 1: Fingering and picking exercises.
Section 2: Understanding the fretboard intervals and ear training.
Section 3: Rhythm, muting, and sight reading.
Section 4: Blues changes and one chord grooves.

The exercises should give the student an idea of what to practice (i.e., maintaining the fretting fingers close to the fingerboard, reducing the distance the pick travels, using dynamics, etc.). They are useful to illustrate what to do and how to do it. The DVD provides a clear view of both the right and left hands. With this information, the student can (and should) expand on these exercises. For example, by doing them in different strings or by doing them all across the fretboard. The accompanying booklet also provides many tips on how to practice, as well as the purpose of the exercise and ways to practice the exercise.
Section 1 ends before 11 minutes, but it has sufficient material to keep you practicing for weeks!

This brings my "preliminary" review to an end. While I have watched the whole DVD, I'm still in the first section of exercises. I've been playing for 19 years and have greatly benefited from this DVD. I wish I had something like this when I was starting out.
I am familiar with most of the material included, or variations of it. I'm focusing more on the first section, and probably will go quicker through section 3 for example, since I have done many of those sight reading exercises in the past.
Tomo puts everything in a well organized, easy to use package, and each student can focus more or less of their time and effort in the specific areas they need to improve upon.

Maybe I'll update the review later on, but for now I wanted to HIGHLY recommend this DVD, given that there are no other reviews yet. I've purchased DVDs that I've sold after watching them once. This one is definitely a keeper, destined to be watched again and again.

Thank you Tomo!

This DVD is jam-packed with useful exercises and demonstrations of how to practice to improve your technique, ear, and rhythm playing. Fujita is an excellent player and he shows just how much great music one guitarist alone can make through his demonstrations of different styles.

The DVD booklet has transcriptions of just about everything Fujita plays, but even with the transcriptions it will take most people a lot of repeated viewing and listening to get the subtleties of his playing in the different style demonstrations.

If you are looking for hand-holding, this DVD is not for you. For the more advanced player that is willing to put in the work of listening and thinking for himself, this DVD is a great value.

This book is very good if you are wanting to work on the foundations of your playing. It has a lot of finger excercises and rudiment type drills.

I was looking for something that I could use right away, and impliment into my playing and did not really feel like I found it here. If you have the time and dedication I'm sure the instruction can help, but if you don't want to go back to the basics than I would look elsewhere.

I was looking for maybe some new rhythms or approaches to lead playing, maybe some new insight into my approach, but got more of an elementary feel.

It's kind of like the difference between learning how to read the basic notes vs giving some ideas on how to put them together. The instruction has merit, but if you have been playing for a long time and want a little more meat than milk, I would say it's not here.

this is excellent. tomo is really passionate about music, you can tell if you've seen him in action before. he taught john mayer before he became "john mayer". if you feel your playing is too sloppy, slow, or just want to learn some cool funk/r&b/blues style playing, then this is the dvd for you. ex 3 and 19 were the most beneficial to me. he teaches you simple enough stuff to improve your playing you wish you came across earlier when you picked up the guitar. he is also has "more accelerate your guitar playing" which i will be picking up soon. check him out on youtube if you haven't and/or buy his cd "right place right time". it'll funk you up, good son.

The production on this DVD is not that fantastic, in the sense that what you get is brief segments of Tomo showing you the practices, and then you have to do them. So it's pretty straightforward and basic. And you get a little book that shows you the exercises also.

However, I do think these exercises are very well thought-through and very helpful if applied systematically. I have been doing this for about a month now, and see a rapid improvement in my technique, in terms of basic cleanness and accuracy of picking and fretting, as well as muscle development and coordination. If these are things you're interested in developing, I would highly recommend it. If you're looking for blazing licks, etc., right from the start, then go elsewhere!

I would highly recommend this. There is material here to keep you busy for a long time (6 months, a year?). If you do the exercises, unless you're already a pro, it will definitely improve your technique. Tomo is also a real stand up guy -- no doubt about it. It's good to support such a great instructor and selfless musician.

This is a really good DVD. To the former poster : try to follow the exercises as slow as possible..you will see the benefits soon!! maybe you wanted some theory..there are other DVD's out there .This will give good technique in short time.
Give a chance to this DVD,try to learn from it and don't have a negative reaction without digging into it...all your questions about the chords is in the accompanying book.
And the most important thing: enjoy it!

This is one of the best guitar playing instructions I have ever had. Mr. Tomo suggests us to play guitar not looking at the neck but play the guitar just listening your own sound and play as you sing a song. That is his basic philosophy of playing, and this DVD is the first step to train yourself to play along with the philosophy.

I dont think I can top the detailed review left for this dvd nor will I go into all the details. This is truly a great dvd for practicing and is motivational in the way it is set up. Mr Fujita goes over some practice material, then at the end does a jam. It is great that he goes into blues, r and b, funk, jazz, bebop. The only annoying thing is it seems like the metronome he is using which is set to go off on 2 and 4 to simulate a snare drum is very loud. Unknown if this is intentional or a mixing problem but otherwise this is a good dvd as are most of the accelerate your playing tapes.

I've played guitar for several decades and during that time have played in bands and studied with various teachers. I bought this DVD because there is always more to learn... but not from this DVD!

While Tomo is obviously a talented player, his teaching skills are nil. He explains nothing. His style is just "do what I do". He uses a wide range of chords and shows you none of them. He uses some advanced picking and strumming techniques and again doesn't show you how to do them. He uses some great jazz chord progressions and again fails to mention any theory behind them.

While I'm skilled enough to be able to painstakingly figure out SOME of the things he's doing, I can just as easily listen to any record and eventually figure out what's being played there as well. I was hoping to get a better understanding of some of the theories behind what he's doing, but there's none of that here on this DVD.

I own several other instructional guitar DVD's and they are heads and tails better than this one! Frankly, I'm shocked that he's a teacher at Berkley School of Music! If you want a DVD of a competent rhythm guitar player strumming a lot of chords in a blues/jazz/funk style, then I guess you might like this DVD.

I absolutely hate this DVD. This guy explains nothing.
Maybe it's because he doesn't seem to even speak English very well.
Get ready for one annoying mediocre sequence after another,
where you will learn nothing. No chords are even identified onscreen.

You will do far better to just get a performance DVD of any player that you like
and attempt to copy their music and style,
instead of watching this guy bob up and down to an annoying metronome.

I resent the people who caused me to waste my money,
by giving this useless DVD rave reviews.
Friends of the author perhaps?