Janek Gwizdala Publishes “All The Good Stuff – How I Practice” Instructional eBook
Janek Gwizdala has a new instructional book out. All the Good Stuff – How I Practice revolves around his practice regimen, and the book is full on getting the most out of your instrument, your hands and your ears.
Gwizdala dives into more than practicing with tips on getting focused, inspiration, pacing, and finding solutions to musical problems. It’s filled with musical examples in both musical notation and tablature to get you on track.
All the Good Stuff is a downloadable package that includes an ebook with an audiobook version of Gwizdala reading the book and playing through the examples. He also includes bonus archive audio of his actual practice sessions using the same musical examples from the book.
“All The Good Stuff – How I Practice sample:
The book is available for $30, via Gwizdala’s Store.
if anyone gets this, please post a review
Love Janek and everything he does, but $30 is a bit much for a book about practice exercises. That being said, there is still a good chance I’ll pick it up….. :-)
I bought the book and I think it’s definitely way overpriced. I love Janek’s videos, but this book doesn’t meet the same quality as those IMO. I’m not saying the book is bad, but for the price I don’t feel it delivers the value. It’s only 52 pages I believe and while I’ll take a short book with a ton of content this one doesn’t quite meet my needs. It’s basically set up as a page with a description of the routine and then a musical example of the idea.
Here’s the thing summed up for me…I think Janek’s style of teaching in his videos where he shows you a concept and then kind of leaves a lot up to you works…but that same style translated to the written page doesn’t work.
I also hate that Janek decided to include tab…though I understand the commercial reasons for doing so. I’ve seen the numbers published about how much more guitar/bass instructional material sells when it has tab…but that’s a discussion for another post all together and it’s not my intention to start the tab vs. no tab argument here.
In my opinion, a book that covers similar ground but does it in a much more thorough manner is Tony Grey’s Bass Academy book. Tony’s book is much more in depth at about 300 pages, plus a DVD with him explaining many of the concepts. And you can easily find it online for less than Janek’s book. As a matter of fact, I don’t know why I bothered buying another book as Tony’s has all I need for a long, long time.
I know what does it for one person will not do it for another, so take my “review” or whatever this is with a grain of salt.
Just to be exact…I looked at Janek’s book. It is 51 pages, but only 34 of them are instruction. The last 17 pages are an appendix with all the musical examples which were already printed in the 34 pages of instruction. Not sure why he included that? I guess he didn’t want people to think they were basically paying a dollar a page. In all there are 27 musical examples…though most are meant to be expanded upon.
Tony’s book by comparison is 271 pages packed with content.
Please don’t take this as a Tony vs. Janek thing. But both books cover similar ground. I’m just stating as an owner of both books that Tony’s is way more thought out and filled with content….plus a better value.
Also, if you have ever been a member of Janek’s video site this material will not be new to you. But I can say the same for Tony’s site.
However, you can tell Janek is way better at marketing himself. For example, I think if you buy Janek’s book you will still really benefit from his site. Tony, on the other hand, I think has made his site a bit irrelevant because his book is so completely thorough. And I’m sure the real money comes from the video membership sites.
Hope this long winded post helps and it doesn’t stir up any arguments as that isn’t it’s intent. Just one persons couple of pennies.
Hi, Rob. Thanks for the insight on the two books. You ended up making me order the book from Tony Grey and based on his videos on Youtube I think I did a great deal. I am very committed and disciplined, so probably I’ll benefit a lot from this material. Your review was much more useful than the ones on Amazon :D