Welcome to the Guitarmonk Guitar Methodology and the CRP Program

I’m Kapil Srivastava, a professional guitarist, Guitar Author, and a mentor for now 15+ years.

For the last 18 years, I have been working and contributing in music in diversified industries including Bollywood, Advertisements, Live Concerts, Publishing, Productions etc.

Today I am going to assist you with -

• Guitar Education perspective and its growth pillars
• Why Guitar learning fails, the right approach and the difference
• Philosophy and value system of Guitarmonk Guitar Programs

To be successful in guitar domain is never easy when the industry itself is so amateur or cluttered in all respects and thus there are a lot’s of aspects or traps or ‘rut holes’ that leads to failures of many budding professionals, guitar hobbyists in achieving their dreams of life.

Before I start to assist you with Guitar learning point, I will miss to counsel you honestly if I don’t share with you, some of my own hardcore guitar experiences of my life.

My first shocking experience was when I faced that my own mentor who taught me ‘how to play guitar’ left guitar industry forever (the instability factor), and the other is when I discovered how organizing and right learning (right approach) of 1 year took a guitar learner, a multitude times higher in caliber and career, than a guitarist already playing/teaching (so called playing/teaching) for 20 years (20+ years’ experience is of what professional use?).

Key words to note here are – Passion, Body of Knowledge, Objective/Direction, and its Execution.

Now these two experiences are enough as a challenge to act as a turning key and the eye openers of my career, the whole philosophy of Guitarmonk emerged from the same gaps. It’s tough to move a single step when you are faced with a shocking situation watching your own mentor/role model, opening a shop to live stably. One cannot think to move a single step ahead in guitar learning, unless there is a right answer for this situation. Today I am thankful to life that life shown me such accidents/experiences, which indeed at such time were truly severe and demotivating but if I have not faced them, I would have never opened my eyes and be at such position or such playing achievement which I am today.

I worked/introspect/learnt about two things i.e. 1) Stability of Guitarist and how to achieve it 2) the learning and Growth Map of Guitar Education

Beside above two I also overcame the emotional trap (3^rd one), the thought process that hinders guitar growth.

Now beside above 3 points, I also want to share you my 4^th music experience, choosing right platform - the choice and availability of right industry platform

After winning state award as in year 2007 and authoring 5 Books in Guitar, I started working/making music/performing for many labels/productions as HMV, T-Series, Doordarshan etc. i.e. diversified industries/projects including the Bollywood and I realized that they are never guitar industry areas.

In some experiences, the best platforms are deteriorating platforms, they distract you, the best ones are the most unstable and time waste platforms whom you sacrifice a lots of your time/opportunity cost but they can’t feed your bread and butter. They are rather traps and should have to be used cautiously.

At Guitarmonk, our career empowerment programs worked hard to bridge the last element as well.

Today, apart from enjoying playing and teaching guitar, my task is to connect my skills, experience and homework in helping high-in-demand professionals, budding artists/talents, as well as “hobbyists” in make them achieve what they actually want to achieve in their life through Guitar or Music.

POINT A (where you are)——-(Time Duration)——>POINT B (where you want to be)

To get the person from where they are (POINT A) to where they want to be (POINT B) in the most effective way

The whole perspective and direction changes for your goal when you find out –

1. Teacher is just one component out of your various components of learning (@ guitarmonk we have 20+ value components and teacher is just one of them). So if your education system doesn’t have all other values, learning is a misdirection/mis-achievement or there could stay a big gap.
2. To Begin with an End in Mind – If you can’t see the end point of yourself or if a teacher can’t see the POINT B of student, they won’t achieve the result in the end or say result is by fluke. And mere seeing result is not enough, the process of development towards Point B is the key – one should be able to verbalize/define it too. Some students don’t see this POINT B but it’s always hidden in seed form, it is their inspiration to join guitar, be it inner satisfaction or time pass, it is still something and let’s do it the best way indeed, POINT B surely comes out and they always cherish it once known and once they have achieved it. It’s a success. Most guitar learners at Guitarmonk are overwhelmed because they make their dreams here only. Right counseling not only helps them in Guitar but also in their other academic/professional spheres of life.
3. It’s not something outside but inside that makes you succeed – It’s not the restriction of your Guitar hands; it’s the motivation that comes from within i.e. when you feel that you are mentally and physically freer, clear, and stronger and then only you do it. You should also connect to those factors, motivations that moves up your guitar playing
4. Clarity of Objective – Students learning since 5 years come to me and they say that they can’t move up or grow any more but at same level since last 2 years, I ask them where they want to move and why? Where the movement will take you and in how much time? And what are the various movements/building blocks of a guitarist/musician in learning? As there are several levels/questions comes in a learning process –

1. Composing my own song
2. Able to transcribe any song by just listening be it any language, genre
3. Able to play pieces in any song even if you have not heard the song
4. Able to Running fingers fast like anything
5. Able to give chords to any tune,
6. Able to make track and background arrangement
7. Able to sing with song
8. Able to perform and design your performance
9. Able to design a solo concert for 1 hour, 2 hour, 3 hour etc.
10. Able to stand up on a professional platform and earn from it
11. Able to feel motivated and thus having your success that is still not yet picked by you or known to you
12. Or Make my album etc.

One of my students came to me and said that he practices 3 hours/day and still unable to speed up his hand. Now this is another fact, practice is no substitute of growth anyhow. I gave him a lesson that is to be done for only 10 minutes/day for a week only (infact doing it more than 10 minutes is not required or rather detrimental) and just in a week time, he found that he was much ahead in improvement than he was trying for a year and it’s a success.

Now another point, right practice and approach is more useful to Guitar growth. Wrong practice is a time-waste and also a negative learning.

The whole perspective is changed when we are able to receive success the way we want to and as soon as we start having it or feeling it, we get confident and sure that we will achieve what we aspire for and there is no compromise anyhow. This is the time when there is an automatic passion, motivation through you.

I know how restrictions or lack of development can be demotivating, when we are not growing musically, the way we would like it to… or if you feel you don’t sound as good, or don’t feel as confident as you wish.

I also know how incredibly charismatic you become when your music has an individuality, character, feel, and more captivating.

Music Growth is a process that involves much more than a mere mentor or a mere lesson or a so called tune book, and these alone are not even 5% of that whole process. You can collect 50,000 tunes that can keep you engaged for 100+ years and you are only working 5% of whole growth process. There you see that musicianship is far away. The musicianship will not come that way, so note it it’s the musicianship that matters in the end. You need not to hear any famous composers say A.R. Rehman, Yanni etc. but you can adapt anyone or any musical piece whenever you hear it and this is the real development. So the real development takes much more than that.

In CRP education methods all these education gaps are bridged. I am deliberately there to pick and bridge them for you so as to ensure your success on your kind permission. These are the check points, something you should never miss in music learning and this is why we made CRP, COP programs, because through them comes no compromise in all those factors to achieve what we want to achieve. They are designed to include your success and your ROTI (Return of Time Investment).

Musical growth is a fun and joy – You know if you want to grow guitar in time, you shouldn’t think that you will keep doing it as a duty for 1 year above without achieving any successes every week/month and without any intrinsic motivation. Success is not you pick guitar as a duty and feel you are doing hard work for it, it’s rather that you start loving it so much that you can’t leave guitar or resist guitar. You are into a real love affair.

The Passion – The passion is your driving force and you have to catch that passion first in your guitar. This passion comes via a right platform where there is no failing points, loose learning, lack of commitment, teacher gaps, content gaps, lack of counseling/motivation, or growth chart gaps for the student. This is why CRP is a commitment and it is also essential to make it this way so that people from all walks of life, and all parts of the world, could experience similar transformations as my personal students have achieved via a process model. It’s also important to understand that I cannot go at every student home privately or be available forever.

At Guitarmonk, this system is not a lecture or tune book for you but an  experiential learning where you become a creator/composer and you develop yourself as your own mentor. 

You have to be here to experience that

Love and Regards

Kapil Srivastava

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