Paolo Taras

I am simply enthusiastic about this course: Complete Chord Mastery is clear, exhaustive, perfectly balanced between theory and practice, full of examples, explanations, references to authors, usages, types of music and styles. Never the term “complete” has been more apt to identify the contents you get in the course.

I started studying the guitar long ago when I was a teenager but I soon gave up and for the rest of my life I haven’t gone any further than repeating few cowboy chords copied from song scores and strummed down with no understanding. Music Theory and composition had remained a totally mysterious initiate endeavour until in my present old age, a happy pensioner, I decided it was time to come to terms with what had seemed to be an insurmountable achievement.

I began searching for the right path on the Web, I bought renowned manuals and started a couple of wrong courses with no results until I came across Tommaso’s video on the CAGE system. I was struck by the cogency of his arguments, the economy of the approach and the immediate results when I tried out his suggestions on the fretboard.

You see, out there one finds some interesting stuff but, by and large, either you get people who know music but can’t teach, or people that can teach but don’t know the guitar; most of them come from the piano and you find that out when they get in trouble with theory concepts and turn to the white and black keys of the piano keyboard in order “to be more clear”.

On the contrary Tommaso teaches you guitar music theory and he sticks to it throughout the whole course; after the very first lesson of the course you have not only learned the basic triads chords on all strings but you realize that the fretboard is all you need to keep track of notes, sequences and positions.

In a word, no messing around switching from fretboard to keyboard and backwards. Tommaso is a great teacher, he knows what a learner needs and he helps people become autonomous and responsible for their learning. At last I had found a true guitar music theory course.

Another invaluable merit of the course is that it never requires the execution of senseless and repetitive exercises. Lessons are in sequence, of course, and there is a progressive logic in them but at the same time they are learning “cells”, each of them; I have gone throughout the whole course but now I often go back and pick one session at random, and watch and listen again to get some new inspiration, grasp a hint I had missed or simply corroborate myself by consolidating my knowledge.

Video lessons deal with subtleties and contain tips that one may miss the first time he/she encounters them; videos are clear but dense of stimuli.

And more, the other courses I have come across have plenty of things to learn by heart such as shapes, harmonic circles and the like; I felt confused and disheartened while with Complete Chord Mastery I’ve become aware of my possibilities and my deficiencies, I learned to choose my way, at my pace, with my personal solutions.

Now I know what Tommaso means when he says that once you’ve mastered the fretboard you are set free from shape constrains because you find by yourself the ones that fit you best.

At last the guitar has become my docile friend, I almost have no awe of it: I grab it, sit down and play and feel at ease. Now I understand what I’m doing at last! I hum a melody and go along harmonizing, hear my mistakes, look for new solutions, change fret, key, sequence, introduce a dissonant chord, put a Sus chord or an Add one to get the proper effect. Now I know what chord inversions are, how to use them and why. I still can’t believe that’s me who’s playing.

Complete Chord Mastery course has changed my way of approaching the guitar and of living Music.