About halfway through our beta rollout things keep getting added. This week we had our first Student Review with a look at Jimi40 and his kids playing Althea, by The Grateful Dead. He asked specifically about improving his leads and I had a few suggestions that could be useful to anybody working on accompanying others.

We are also rolling out new Forum features in a couple days that I am excited about. Particularly a new Recommend A Lesson section. I am re-inviting everybody to help us plan for future lessons. I have still been choosing songs from the original TG site, and this week’s lessons were both taken from there.

Operator by Jim Croce has been in the top ten for about 10 years, and now it is live in our reincarnation, and Mike Nesmith’s Joanne, a personal favorite of mine, came through the same channel.

We have been inundated with requests for new Artist Packs lately. This we we put together a 5-Pack of Nick Drake tunes as well as a Beatles Electric 5-Pack full of riff and blues based songs. Those lessons were all done by Max Rich. It makes a great addition to our already extensive library of Beatles Packs.

Next week’s lessons are both playable by beginners, although anybody who plays country or folk rock songs will enjoy Miranda Lambert’s Dead Flowers and Lesley Duncan’s Love Song. Of course, most of us became familiar with Love Song when Elton John covered it on Tumbleweed Connection.

And coming soon on the Pack front: A 5-Pack from Adele, our Intos, Riffs & Licks (IRL) 16-Pack of bits and pieces of classic rockers, an electric 5-Pack of Michael Jackson’s hits, a set of Elton John’s, including Love Song obviously, and two or three 5-Packs from our Crosby, Stills & Nash archives.

Stay tuned as things are changing fast!

Neil