compact.school: an otherworldly approach to music

Nobody's short on music lessons. There are millions of videos out there. What people are short on is someone in the room who knows where they're at, keeps them going for fifteen minutes a day, and catches it when they start drilling the wrong thing.

So I built a school. It's called compact.school, and the pitch is right on the front door: An otherworldly approach to music.

How it works

You enroll in about two seconds. No account, no email, no password. You pick a color and you get a Resident Alien Card with your own ID on it. That's you now.

Then you start with Orientation, which is free:

• The interview. Four questions. What you play, what you want to play, how much time you've got. Your tutor reads it and teaches to it.
• Your practice station. Pick a time and a spot, check your kit (tuner, metronome, a log, a timer) and log day one.

Fifteen minutes every day beats two hours every Sunday. Your fingertips toughen up from showing up often, and what you practice sinks in between sessions, mostly while you sleep. The whole school is built around that.

A tutor on every lesson

Every lesson page has a tutor console. Ask it anything. Why the B string is the odd one out. Whether your pinky is supposed to feel like that. What song to learn first if you love the Stones. It knows what you told it in the interview, and it marks a lesson done when you finish it together.

Every lesson also has drawn fretboard diagrams you can actually read, a metronome, and "Hear it" buttons so you know what the thing is supposed to sound like before you try it. There's a tuner, a session timer and a practice log built in too. And there's a review deck: a few minutes a day of quick quizzes, timed so the stuff you're about to forget comes back right before you forget it.

Not just guitar

Guitar is where it starts, but it's a music school. We also teach producing in a DAW, with a Bitwig Certified Trainer, and synthesis: analog, digital and wavetable. Building a track from nothing, shaping a sound from a raw oscillator, knowing why a patch sounds the way it does.

What you can learn on guitar

Projects, if you want to make something:

• Learn a song. Pick a song you love and play it start to finish. Map it, loop the two hardest spots, then record a full take.
• Write a riff. Build one from the pentatonic box and power chords, then record it.

Fundamentals, if you want to know how it all works:

• Notes on the neck (free). Name any note on any string from memory.
• Dexterity. Daily drills for finger strength, accuracy and independence.
• CAGED chords. Five open shapes that tile the whole neck.
• The major scale. Build it, play it across the neck, move it to any key.
• The pentatonic scale. The five-note scale behind most riffs and solos.
• Arpeggios. Chords one note at a time, landing on the changes.

Do them in any order. Orientation and Notes on the neck are free. Everything else comes with the Vault key, $9 once, and that also gets you everything else in the Vault here on compact.band.

It's all in English and Japanese, so whichever side of the Pacific you're practicing on, you're covered.

Come get your card. compact.school