Took a lesson with Daniel Donato

I took a lesson with Daniel Donato today. What a nice guy. Very down to earth, patient, easy to understand; just a great all around teacher.

He gave me a ton of ideas to work on, explained his approach to pentatonics, exercises to help with speed (at my request), interesting discussion of double stops.

I booked two more lessons with him, one a month. If you're looking for a teacher or a tune-up, I highly recommend him.

 

I'm not sure. Each state has it's own rules.

 

I paid $100 for an hour and it was a full hour. I know he's booking for the next three months.

 

Sure, I made a joke about Johnny Hiland saying he was fine with me taping his sessions, but don't post it to youtube and Daniel said, post it anywhere you want!

One exercise was to take a scale (I use a major scale with the flat 7) and play four note patterns, a, b, c, d; then b, c, d, e; c, d, e, f; etc. up and down across all the strings.

The other thing was double picking three note arpeggios, for example "c" on the d string 8th fret, "e" on the g string 7th fret; "g" on the b string 6h fret; c- up stroke, down stoke, e - up stroke, down stoke, g - up stroke, down stoke. Then "b", "d", "g" on the d, g, b strings, then a b triad, then a f triad built the same way.

When playing these, you want to practice an economy of motion, not moving back and forth or up and down any more than necessary.

I will say that I knew what my problem was going into the lesson and I've been working on it for a while. I watched the Troy Grady cracking the code videos, which packs 5 minutes of information into about 2 mind numbing hours.

He also has some really interesting exercises for opening up the fretboard with major and minor pentatonics. It will take a while to see how the speed excersizes work out but even after just three days I can tell you that I'm more comfortable on the fretboard than I ever have been before. Nothing earthshaking, just a way I haven't looked at things before.

I can tell you that you'll definitely get your money's worth!

 

Yes. The price is good, but the value is even better. He gave me a list of things that I can start using immediately.

 

I talked to him about that, because I have it. It's about 7 years old. It's good, but I got more out of the lesson.

 

Yes, because it happens so rarely.

 

Good luck! The only good thing about the plague is that with so many world class musicians out of work, we mere mortals can finally get lessons from them.