Ding! “Another obnoxious Breakthrough Guitar email in my inbox.
Snake oil salesman!”
Boyd promises to teach you the seven feelings on your guitar. Only seven notes…I haven’t played myself? Doubtful. Sounds too good to be true. Anyone tried it? I can get this joker out of my inbox or my head. Does he have what I’ve been missing?
Short answer yes and no. Although, he has applied a theory; he didn’t invent it. Boyd does have a piece of what many guitarists will find helpful.
Look at the major pros of the marketing and method of Breakthrough Guitar.
(Don’t worry I have another post for the cons linked below)
Pros
In our blog Reinventing you and Writing too…we attempt to get you the best professional and personal development on the planet. One of the best things you can do for your down time is find a creative outlet. Breakthrough Guitar had a product that promised to be that for our readers. I was very hopeful for many reasons.
Compelling Story
Intermediate guitarists and their struggle are forefront in Breakthrough Guitar’s founder, Jonathan Boyd’s spotlight.
Boyd tells this compelling story. He shows an industry that has fallen from serving those hungry to play guitar.
As an intermediate guitarist he paints my help sign with dramatic colors and resonance. Hell yes, I’ve been struggling for years. And of course, I want relief.
Boyd has those problem areas of the intermediate guitarist memorized and ignited with channeled emotion. Overall, these guitarists lack the ability to play solo on guitar because they lack knowledge and confidence. The fear that they will strike the wrong note is crippling them. And it tells them there is something not right about what they have been taught through lessons or various forms media.
Mystical Pull
There is a moment in a guitarist’s life where he begins hearing the sound of guitar notes and chords in his head. And then, he moves to the guitar to make the music echoing in his head match the music he makes on guitar…that’s the disconnect…the two don’t ever match for guitar players. And this dissonance is what frustrates people learning to play guitar.
Boyd calls that ‘the music in you’. And he assumes that he is the one who can make this match up occur. If you only memorize and apply the method, Boyd teaches you, you will be able to express yourself through guitar. And your hours of frustration will turn into hours of pleasure. All because you sound…good.
This pull of desire of self-expression has been in man for ages. Thus, Boyd is promising he can teach you how to sing with your guitar.
As a student of guitar, I feel the frustration most when I cannot find that ending tone to end an improvisational riff. The missing home tone makes your practice seem incomplete.
Search for Resolution
But in the fifteen years off and on I’ve played guitar I’ve heard the notes I want to play but never have been able to find them. That’s because the guitars open strings almost complete the wave of sound in your head.
Boyd’s calls this complete group of sounds from home tone to end tone and back to home tone…the feelings of guitar. Boyd’s Guitar Lightbulb Moment (free guitar class) gives you the ear to hear that nine tone note run.
When, I hear this run of notes it pulls from within me this deep sense of peace. And because of that I feel I’ll always have a guitar in my room.
Pain points Pinpoint Image Problem
So, demonstrating the frustrations of intermediate play…. Boyd turns them into pain points.
No book can help you
Anyone remember Mel Bay? How about the Art of Rock Guitar? These books teach method, not self-expression. They teach scales, chords, and theory, but they don’t teach mindset.
Private Guitar Lessons
Boyd attacks the expense of one-on-one instruction. Then, he attacks kill and drill notes and scale practice. Boyd calls this, playing patterns without feeling.
Music Theory Confusion
Boyd also looks at guitar being taught in the university setting. These theories again are necessary to play music as an artform. But for someone who wants to use the guitar as a means of self-expression, they’re over-kill.
Vast YouTube Guitar Catalog
There are so many ways to play guitar. Some creators deliver videos, but they teach you how to play specific popular songs.
And those tabs without a context of how they fit into the whole neck alignment are overwhelming. I can make it through a video and I’m on the cusp of getting a song down and still, it’s not quite musical.
Feeling like music
“The guitar wants to play, and it needs you to be the voice.” You’re going to sing with the sounding of guitar strings becoming your musical notes, Boyd advised.
Boyd’s again reinforcing that all guitar tones he teaches line up with the notes you would not only naturally sing but hear in music and in your head. He says he will teach you how to make music, not feel this mechanical hitting of notes.
So, the guitar becomes a mode of self-expression, not a technical instrument. Once you as a novice guitarist learn how to close the tonal loop in your head, you’re off and shifting the method into your muscle memory.
Attack of the Scales
Your musical ear hears melodic resolution when Boyd shows you the seven feelings of guitar. These seven feelings are just the major scale repeated up and down the neck of the guitar. In later lessons if you buy in, he will teach you more scales as systems.
I remember playing my guitar by ear and hearing a broken echo of these notes ring out. But I also recall, never being able to find the home tone and the octave higher that completes the circle. It was so frustrating. And that drew me in, at first, to listen to Boyd’s presentation.
Boyd paints the picture of intermediate guitarists as they have heard the mystical music (I learned this as the Greek music of the spheres) and don’t realize the music is inside them. Very spiritual presentation.
“What do you want to do with your guitar?” Boyd asks in his survey after you sign up. The intermediate guitarist’s answer after Boyd’s demonstration? Let it become my voice.
The image of the guitar becoming your voice is powerful. And it’s a perfect set up for Boyd’s skill as a motivational coach to kick into high gear.
Boyd’s Strengths
Super Coach
Boyd is a blessed motivational speaker. He understands how to coach his conversion in the marketing cycle. In this way, he has you ready to shell out cash to be a better guitarist each time he asks for you to envision yourself as a musician.
Yet, Boyd also knows how to coach his students like a skilled navigator of a ship. Boyd asks you to picture yourself as an accomplished guitarist in specific detail. And he uses this image to guide you through your every step of the process. Now, he will use that picture of you jamming under the spotlight as you forever reference point.
“Keep that picture with you ever time you feel like giving up,” Boyd advises with classic visualization magic.
Struggle is Made Real
A magnetism pulls at the struggling guitarist as Boyd’s retells his experiences with former guitar students who have shared their aha moments with him. You identify with the trials, and you want that same result.
You can almost feel your fingers running down the neck in step with tempo and melodic expression freely in any key.
The image of moving freely up and down the neck? Intoxicating.
The image of someone who can pick up the guitar and play along with whatever music is on in the room? In any key? Anywhere on the neck? Liberty.
Then, when Boyd gives you the opportunity to jam along with what little you know. Well, he hooks you in as an intermediate guitar student who wants-to-be a pro guitarist.
In his marketing, this is his service’s conversion moment.
Impactful Music Teacher
Boyd is a gifted teacher in that he knows how to use storytelling to drive home his main points. Stories and analogies not only sell, but they also teach.
And Boyd has honed them down to a precise art. For example, I remember one time watching one of Boyd’s Q and As on YouTube.
In it, he gave a taste of how he would teach as he described the sunny day feel of an intermediate guitarist. Boyd described the relief that comes when guitarist close the tonal cycle in their head. And he hinted at the feeling of finding the same exact same notes you sing on the guitar. He calls that a sunny day moment.
Then, Boyd explains the hook. He asks, what if the reward of those sunny days came more and more often? You’d want to play more, wouldn’t you? So, this technique is powerful, persuasive copywriting; it’s your ‘not my fault’ gold.
And students eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. This is what creates a cultish Boyd following as Reddit users call them.
Smaller steps
Although, Pillitiere’s, the inventor of the method similar to what Boyd calls his own, is amazing, it’s so much information given out so fast.
As educator, Rich Allen says, too much, too fast, won’t last!
Boyd knows this. So, when he gives this free lesson out, he paces it so that the guitarist is ready to move right on his cue. Intermediate guitar students trust Boyd will teach them only what they need to know when the time is ripe.
Those small steps help the intermediate guitarist to build skills at a slow, yet manageable pace. And that lends them to self-study courses.
Jam Sessions
Boyd teaches you how to improvise in small two, three, four, and five note runs. It’s this idea of giving you just enough to get you going in the right direction and then showing you, he’s got something more to show you behind the curtain.
The funnel is stacked full of these jam sessions, and it is that part of the experience of learning through improvisation that makes guitar so fun and full of life. Boyd seems to be the master at this technique. But this improv tip is read straight out of Pillitiere’s notes.
Emotional buzzwords
What Pillitiere calls modes, Boyd breaks them down into notes and calls them feelings. For example, compare Boyd’s Guitar Grid 101 vs. Pillitiere’s Building the Better Guitar Scale.
Which course would you want to sign up for, the Discovery of the Seven Feelings on Guitar: Your way to True Self Expression or Build a Better Guitar Scale? The latter sounds like an engineer cut out of all romance from guitar.
The 101 course sounds like all you need to know. And the grid label tells you the whole pattern is going to be revealed.
Powerful marketing messages
Reluctant Hero Claimed
Boyd plays a magical part as the reluctant hero in the product’s messaging. He is only selling you this opportunity because there’s nothing else out there that is set up for intermediate guitar struggles.
Dream State Triggered
Boyd’s visualization of the better you, the one who can play solos on guitar has a mystique to it. He uses the icons of glorified rock stars as society’s guitar gods of their craft. The smoke, the lights, the beat, the glam, the grunge. All those pictures in someone’s mind are highly potent in the collective imagination.
Boyd’s in Love
He loves guitar and teaching guitar
Boyd can not fake his love for guitar. Or his conversion experience of the power of the Grid’s revelation in his life. Boyd’s infatuation with rock stars and their romantic glory, with a musician’s worth as the elixir of life is contagious.
Boyd combines stories, analogies and simple task by task instruction techniques to appeal to many audiences.
True Money Back Guarantee
Guitarist ‘Tire Kickers’ it’s true. For one full year you don’t like it, you get your money back. But it takes quite a bit of time to get them to listen to you. And I would suggest you play the program through and give it an honest chance. But for the sake of this post, I did ask and did get my money back. Although, it was a PayPal purchase.
Sum It Up
Jonathan Boyd’s Breakthrough Guitar has powerful marketing messages. Breakthrough marketing is everywhere on the net.
- Boyd is skilled coach and guitar teacher.
- Boyd identifies as the reluctant hero which is an appealing image.
- Boyd paints himself as you next step on your journey to find the sunny days of guitar playing.
But that’s his set up. He’s ability to string would-be students along and your other options to learn the same method are coming up in the next post.
If this was helpful, please like it, and share.
Feel free to add any comments, questions, you below the post.
Until the next time, be your top-shelf you.
Get this kind of quality info in your inbox every month? Sign up and get as a bonus gift (a $7.99 value) your own free limited edition of the Ultimate YouTube Channel Set Up Guide while they’re available for download.
For the Next 9 cons in the Gut Honest Review of the Marketing Machine and Method of Breakthrough Guitar, click here.
Thanks for reading.