Jamie Humphries

Harm

Experienced
Since the axe took away the fun of buying gear I started to buy instructional dvds now and then. Beside the fact that some are uninteresting or simply rechewing standard ideas Jamie is really annoying me. He always has disclaimers like “something like this”or “the artist will never play it the same live either”. He also wasn’t able to play a lot of his own examples correctly. He is supposedly the van halen expert,...well I watched the dvd and I am sure he isn’t. I’m sure he is a good guitarist, but his fellow instructors at Lick library are way better. Sorry for the rant, but a dvd just came in and apparently I forgot to check who the instructor was.
Harm
 
I've always used original artists' recordings as my main instructional tool. Any clown can make a video. Great instructional videos are hard to find. This guy sounds like Emmett Kelly, Ronald McDonald, and Bozo wrapped up in one.
 
Never had a problem with the notes he play, but he rambles way too much. He could talk for 10 mins before he hits the first note.
 
Overall I think Jamie's great - loves to teach and puts together tons of material.

I know what you mean about him "ballparking" some riffs and phrases - I've caught that as well. It doesn't bother me too often as I find he usually does that to things that aren't worth the time for most people to surgically analyze and digging into the 8 variations of the verse rhythm figure would lengthen the video unnecessarily. Overall I've found his stuff to be quite accurate, but he may skip over some of the minor variations to keep things moving.

If you do want to get down to the granular level, it's probably best to do it yourself - slow the recordings way down and learn them by ear on your own. As an example, I was checking out an EVH run at 25% speed the other day and still couldn't exactly tell what was happening. In a case like that, it's usually best to get the overall vibe down and not worry with getting it 100%. At that point you're chasing something that the original artist wouldn't play the same each time. EVH would tell us to play our own thing anyway. Best to understand the vibe and phrasing and not get hung up on the last 5%. But to each his own - I'm definitely a member of both approaches at times ;).

There are tons of bozos with video lessons out there, and Jamie is definitely NOT a bozo. For any of the Lick Library (or similar) guys, it's not an easy job. They usually get an assignment to do a video, have a few days to prep sometimes hours of material, and then go in the video studio where they may knock out multiple projects over a long day or two. It's a business and needs to get done quickly. A better fit for you may be a YouTube guy that is doing it for fun/minor revenue who may be able to spend days/weeks putting together a video on a single song and get all the details you're looking for.

But I understand the pain - it's usually impossible to know before you buy a video if it's going to go to the level of detail you want. It's frustrating when it doesn't match up with your expectations - definitely happened to me a few times.
 
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