Hey music makers!
Last week, I promised to show you my meta-learning maps. Here they are.
I spent roughly 8-10 hours per instrument mapping out the entire curriculum. Going over the lessons, skills, and concepts.
It was absolutely worth the effort.
Meta-learning is transforming this experiment from “I hope this works” to “I have a plan.”
What I actually learned
I can see the entire structure now. All 42 lesson-days in Late Beginner, all the Intermediate grades, and exactly which skills matter most for songwriting demos.
Instead of following the courses and hoping for the best, I know where I’m going.
I can skip entire lessons or treat them as a review. For example, I teach the Nashville Number System in my Harmony GPS course. Meta-learning revealed that both the guitar and bass courses spend multiple lessons explaining it, along with other harmony concepts I already know.
That’s 3-4 weeks I can skip and reinvest into strumming drills and groove work.
I found a number of places where skills transfer between instruments. Guitar power chords and bass box shapes are the same thing. Scales on both instruments use the same patterns. And learning the 4-string bass teaches me most of the guitar fretboard layout (5/6 strings).
Learning one accelerates the other. The meta-learning map made these connections visible.
I knew I wasn’t a beginner on either instrument. The mapping showed I’m a late beginner with specific gaps in beginner-level fundamentals. Identifying which beginner lessons I actually need helped me adjust the training plan and save time.
Here’s what the guitar skill map looks like
Guitar Skill Map (Sample)
Rhythm & Strumming (High Priority for Songwriting)
Clean down-up patterns: Current bottleneck
Percussive strumming: Not started (adds texture to demos)
16th-note syncopation: Not started
Chords (High Priority)
Power chords: In progress, same as bass box shapes
Bar chords: In progress. I know a handful, just haven’t committed them to memory due to inconsistent practice. My hands can play them without too much fatigue. Estimate 8-10 weeks to fluency.
7th chord shapes: Started, already know the theory
CAGED system: Not started
Lead (Lower Priority for Demos)
Pentatonic scales: Some exposure from bass work
Hammer-on/Pull-offs: Started
Double stops: Not started
Key Insight: I need to complete Late Beginner plus selected beginner lessons for specific bottlenecks. I’ll focus on Late Beginner and only loop back to beginner material when I hit a gap. If I practice efficiently, I might have time for intermediate material. Estimated completion: still targeting July.
How this changed my practice sessions
Meta-learning didn’t just tell me what to practice. It showed me how to structure every single session.
I’m going to experiment with some 45-minute practice sessions that look like this:
5 minutes: Bottleneck drill (guitar strumming or bass speed work)
25 minutes: Course lesson and exercises5 minutes: Transfer exercise (mapping the same concept on the other instrument)10 minutes: Play my own music using today’s skill
And the last 10 minutes will be critical. The session ends with the actual thing I’m trying to get better at: creating my own songs on the instrument. It’s what Scott Young calls the “Directness” principle.
Instead of getting stuck on exercises, I’ll be creating actual music. In small doses.
This keeps me from becoming “good at exercises but bad at music.”
Here’s an example: I learn percussive strumming technique on guitar, then immediately try adding it to a chorus I’m working on. It will probably sound terrible at first, but I’ll hear how it could work. That’s directness in action.
On bass, I’m integrating parts of a second course into that 5-minute transfer block. Some modules provide exercises on major and minor triads. This fills the biggest gap in the main course: systematic fretboard navigation. The rest of the second course can wait.
If I could tell Week 0 Melvin one thing
Do this before you start.
Sometimes momentum matters, but if you can, don’t wait 5 weeks like I did.
Spend 8-10 hours mapping the territory. It feels like a lot of time upfront, but it saves weeks on the back end.
You’ll move faster because you’re moving strategically instead of randomly.
Scott Young calls this the 10% rule.
Spend roughly 10% of your project time on meta-learning. For a 6-month challenge, that’s about 18 hours total. I’m halfway there on metalearning, and it’s already making a big impact.
If you want to try meta-learning on your own projects, here are the three questions Scott Young recommends asking yourself:
1. Why am I learning this?
2. What exactly do I need to learn?
3. How will I learn it? Spend serious time on question 2, that’s where the skill map comes from.
Next week, I’ll share how the first sessions using this new roadmap actually went. Whether the plan survived in contact with reality.
Quick question for: Have you ever started learning something and realized halfway through that you needed a better plan? What did you do?
Hit reply. I’m curious how you’ve handled this.
P.S. Still interested in the Harmony Vault. Check it out.
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