The Steve Stine Podcast

What IS the GuitarZoom Academy (and can it help me)?

• Steve Stine

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Ever felt stuck in your guitar journey despite watching countless tutorials or taking sporadic lessons? Steve Stine unpacks a revolutionary approach to guitar education that's transforming how passionate players finally break through their plateaus.

The GuitarZoom Academy isn't another course or membership site—it's a dynamic learning ecosystem built on daily human connection. Unlike traditional methods where you're left alone to interpret instructions between lessons, this approach provides continuous guidance from eight experienced instructors who get to know your specific struggles, strengths, and aspirations. Through twice-daily "Open Rooms," members receive immediate feedback on their playing, answers to pressing questions, and clarity that prevents wasted practice time.

What makes this model particularly powerful is its foundation in personalized assessment. The process begins with "The Bridge"—a comprehensive evaluation of where you are and where you want to go. This leads to a tailored practice plan focused exclusively on what will move you forward fastest. No more random skill acquisition or wondering if you're working on the right things. Your dedicated "studio instructor" provides weekly check-ins to ensure accountability, while daily practice logs track your progress and highlight patterns in your development. The combination of structure and flexibility accommodates busy professionals and travelers while maintaining consistent advancement.

Ready to transform your relationship with the guitar? Whether you've been playing for decades or just starting out, this approach eliminates the isolation and confusion that holds most guitarists back. Click the link to schedule a conversation with Steve or another instructor and discover if the Academy's personalized coaching system aligns with your musical aspirations.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

Steve:

Hey, steve Stine here from Guitar Zoom Academy. I've been getting a lot of questions about what the Academy is and how it works, so I thought I would just take a little bit of time and try and explain to you how this might be beneficial for you if this is what you're looking for. So, basically, Guitar Zoom as a company, what we've been doing for many, many years is selling guitar courses you know, online video courses, that sort of thing and they've been very successful. A lot of people have bought them and it's been awesome. But if there's been one complaint with them, it's that the conversations, just like YouTube and everything like that, the conversations are one-sided. You watch something, you try and get what you can out of it, and then you go make sense of it as best you can and then maybe grab another video and keep going, but there's never any actual communication back and forth to answer the questions, to get the clarity, to get the direction all of these things and to figure out whether or not you're actually working on the right things or whether or not you're just, you know, studying random things that may not necessarily be getting you to your goals, to where you want to be. And so during COVID, you know we really started rethinking what could we do to create a human experience, an actual interactive human experience, to where you know you're talking to me, you're talking to the instructors we have here in the academy and we're actually working things out together watching you play, getting assessments of your playing, giving you direction, setting up a practice plan, telling you what you should be working on again, relative to your struggles, your goals, that sort of thing. And that's where the academy came from.

Steve:

So the academy itself isn't like a one you know weekly guitar lesson where you go see somebody on Thursdays at five o'clock or something like that. You know for 30 minutes and then you know you hope that that's enough and then you go and try and work on it for a week and then meet again and see what you come up with. That's not what this is. It isn't just watching a guitar course and you know finishing the course and getting a certificate or something like that. It's not a membership, it's nothing like that. What it really is in my eyes, the academy, the word academy it's like an ecosystem that we exist in and work with each other interactively in real time. So you're not sending an email and waiting for a response or something. We're literally just talking to each other and figuring out the solutions that are needed to get you where you want to go. So, in that kind of light, the academy is an ecosystem where we're all here, the instructors there's seven other instructors, including Bean we're all working with you.

Steve:

It's nice to have different perspectives Other, you know, because we have a number of instructors. We're all available on a daily basis, every day, to be able to talk to you in the mornings and the evenings. Whatever it is that you need, we can have these conversations. So, basically, what happens in the academy, whatever it is that you need, we can have these conversations. So, basically, what happens in the academy, the first thing that we do is what we call the bridge, and what we try and do is set up a game plan. That's what the bridge is for is figuring out what it is that you need, where it is you want to go, what your struggles are, and making a game plan from that assessment. So we get together on what we call a kickoff call. In this kickoff call, we get together, we talk about everything, try and suss out as much information as we can in the beginning.

Steve:

Now the reality is, of course, as we start working together, a month down the road, two months down the road, whatever it might be, this is going to morph organically. This is going to change. We're going to start recognizing that we need this or we need a little more of this, or we need a little more of this, or we need a little bit. You know a little less of this. This is something that happens, you know, very naturally as we work together. But the game plan in the beginning is who are you? What is it that you're trying to do? What are you struggling with? What do you ultimately wish you could do? That you've been struggling with for a long time and you know if it was a year from now and we were working together and you were like man, it's been a year and this is exactly what I wanted to be able to do.

Steve:

What live classes would best fit what you're trying to do? And making that daily practice routine. The next thing we do is set up the structure and the accountability. So, yes, you're going to be working with all eight of us here in the academy, but one of these instructors is going to become what we call your studio instructor, so that person is going to be like your guitar coach over the amount of time that you're in the academy. Their job is to be as proactive as possible, checking in with you every week, making sure that everything's going the way it needs to be going.

Steve:

We create a daily practice log for you and, yes, it's very important that you fill that out on a daily basis. Take five minutes out of your day, get in the habit of filling it out. It's very, very important for us to be able to look at the progress that you're making. Okay, on that sheet You'd be writing down, you know, this is what I'm struggling with, this is what I'm working on. This is who I talk to. This is how I'm feeling about this. I'm really frustrated with this. I had an aha moment today. Whatever, we can look at that and over time, we can see what kind of progress you're making relative to the things that you're working on when you're not with us. When you're, you know, on your own practicing. So that's that daily practice log is really, really important, and what your studio instructor does is he checks that every week. How's you know, how's Jim doing, how's Tom doing, it doesn't matter. How are things going for you and then they check in with you hey man, how are things going? Tell me about last week, tell me how things went. What's your plan for this week? And, of course, your plan this week might look a lot like last week.

Steve:

There's no magic pill to these things. Things take time, especially really good stuff. It's just we got to keep working on it to make sure that it's optimized and you're getting the. I always think of it like a foundation. Everything under here is what we really need to be focusing on to get you where you want to go. Everything outside of here might be fun it might be, you know, whatever interesting, and that's fine and that's fine. But if you have too many of those kinds of things, the problem is we lose focus on what we're actually trying to do, actually trying to do. Now.

Steve:

There are times, you know, where we're working together and we might realize that we really do need this thing and it needs to come inside the foundation. Or there's something else here that we're working on that we don't really need right now and maybe it's a good time to put it outside here. So it's not, it's not getting in the way right. So trying to make things as lean as possible so we can get to where we want to go. You know, so often people will say, well, I need more theory, or I need more triads, or I need more scales, or and that might be true, but it might not be true. It depends Is your, do your goals, does your ultimate goal match what it is that you're trying to actually work on to achieve that goal, or are there things missing? Because oftentimes we figure out that you don't know what you don't know. There might be things you don't even know that you should be working on, that you didn't even know existed, because you've been watching these videos and this never made sense to you. Right? I want to learn how to improvise musically. I want to play creatively, I want to gain my confidence in my playing and be able to play with other people. That could be maybe a primary goal of yours. So you're thinking, well, I need more theory, or need more of this, or need and again, the answer might be, yes, you do, but the answer might be let's hold off on those right now and let's try and focus more on your skill set, or let's work on your musicality, or whatever it might be. This is why we work together and so in the structure and accountability.

Steve:

The second phase of this that's the whole point is setting this all up to make sure that you've got you're doing the work. Okay, I tell people you practice on the days that you eat. I can't tell you you can practice four hours a day. I can't tell you that you need to practice 30 minutes a day. You do the best you can with what you're working on and you know what you're working on. You know why you're working on it. We can actually start seeing progress in that. Oftentimes, what happens is you get more motivated and chances are you're going to start picking that guitar up more often or keep it longer. So it isn't a matter of you got to promise me you're going to practice four hours a day. You can't make that promise At least most people can't, right but you might be able to promise that you could pick up the guitar every day, at least when you're at home. If you're someone who travels a lot, we can make game plans for you that work when you're traveling and things that you can work on to optimize your time when you're not around your guitar. It's very easy to do. We just have to have these conversations.

Steve:

The real power of this thing is the dynamic learning. So what you are going to get access to, of course, are going to be guitar courses. Okay, you don't need 400 guitar courses. What you need are the ones that best fit what your game plan is, and even have those in an order of logistics. So you know, if we're working on, if we need more work on this skill or this technique or something, okay, let's work on this. Maybe not the entire course, but maybe what we need is this thing. And then we're going to work on some improv, and then we're going to work on some theory, right, Some fretboard development, whatever it might be. You know, it could be all kinds of different things. Again, this is why we have a kickoff call. You're going to get access to the classes.

Steve:

We have classes, live classes every day of the week. So you know, there's classes on blues and soloing, and theory and technique and just all kinds of different things that we talk about every day, and you can jump into those live classes when you have time, especially the ones that, again, best match what you're trying to do. And you know, interact, be part of the community, get some education, get some motivation, learn something new. You know, ask questions, whatever it is that you need in those live classes, so they're not mandatory. You can take them when you can. All the live classes are recorded so you can always go back and watch them, you know, whenever you've got time. Some people like to listen to them, like podcasts, when they're traveling. They'll listen to them that way, and then you can always go back and talk to the instructor that taught that class and let's talk about that.

Steve:

So the big thing that brings us all together is what we call open rooms. Okay, open rooms are almost like open office hours, where six days a week we don't work. On Sundays, here I usually play in church or I'm traveling with bands or something like that, but Sundays we don't work. But six days a week, in the mornings and in the evenings we have what's called open rooms, again like open office hours.

Steve:

So what happens is there's someone like me that's sitting in a Zoom call waiting for someone like you to show up and say hey, I got a question. Hey, I need some direction on this. Hey, I'm confused by this. Hey, what would you do with this? How would you approach this? Hey, can you watch me play and tell me what it is that I'm doing here. How would I? How you know, am I struggling? Can you tell me why this doesn't feel right, towards not fast enough, and see what we can do is work with you literally on a daily basis, literally twice a day.

Steve:

We get together, we watch you, listen to you, answer your questions, get you the clarity that you need, get you unstuck that day and get you right back to work again. And if tomorrow you've got another question or you need some sort of clarity, I like to call it clarity more than questions, because sometimes you don't even know what the question is. You're like I don't understand what this is or how this works. Can you help me Right, or what's the next thing I should be doing? So getting that clarity literally on a daily basis and what happens over time is we get to know you on a very personal level, so we know where you are, we know what you're working on. Everybody here knows what you're doing. Our job is to help you get there. You know it's not to. It's not contest and ego and all these other things. I've never believed any of that stuff. Anyway, you know just my personality. I care about getting people from where they are to where they want to go, and I want to try and develop as much more, as much confidence as I can in people to get them there, because the more confidence they have, the more they're seeing that progress, the more they're going to want to play, and that's what we're talking about. That's what guitar playing is. Let's get to where we want to go.

Steve:

So, with these open rooms, the great thing is is that you're constantly interacting and you also have different instructors that you can rely upon. Maybe you develop a, you know, a particular relationship with two or three of the instructors that you really just get along to. Their personality vibes with yours. Or maybe you're working with everybody you know just whenever. It doesn't matter whatever works best for you. The nice thing about having different um instructors is you have different perspectives. You know everybody here can do lots of different things, but you know some people are better at rock or shred stuff and maybe some are better at blues and some at jazz and some at theory, and you know finger picking and acoustic and flamenco and seventies and there's just all kinds of different things. They all have different strengths in their playing and in their personalities and so once you get in here, you start recognizing that and maybe you use everybody. Maybe there's certain people that you're just kind of attached to more. Now, remember you still have this studio instructor which is checking in on you all the time.

Steve:

Our job isn't to be pushy, right, but our job is to push. To what level we push is all dependent on you. What feels comfortable to you, right? We don't want to push too hard, we don't want to not push enough. This is why we have conversations and you can say, yeah, I can take more, give me more, or it's a bit much, I need to back off a little bit, that's fine. That's why we're talking to each other. We're actually having a relationship, talking to each other, figuring these things out Okay, and then making that game plan. So the last thing I want to say about that is when there are times when you feel like, man, I really need to dive deeper into this conversation or this thing. I'm really struggling with this.

Steve:

You can actually book one-on-ones. Now we don't make them mandatory each week, because some people travel, some people. It just stresses them out to have to be, you know, on this call going well, did I practice enough? And all that kind of stuff. If you need a one-on-one, you just book it, get a hold of the instructor and say, hey, can we meet this week? Yeah, great, what day do you have open? I've got Tuesday, okay, let's book that and let's talk about whatever it is that's on your mind and boom, you're off to the races.

Steve:

I just want to give you some more insight in that the academy is not for everybody. It's for really passionate players who have struggled for however long they've been struggling with their playing and they can't get to where they want to go on their own, and maybe they've tried one-on-one lessons. Now, if the one-on-ones were successful, that's great. Then there's no reason to have a conversation. But if they haven't been successful and you feel like you're stuck, you've got some courses and whatever, but you're not able to make sense of all of this and create a cohesive, you know, path from where you are to where you want to go and you love to play and you would love to play more. That's when the academy kicks in. You know, for passionate players that really want to do this, it's time, you know, in their life they want to dedicate to getting from where they are to where they want to go.

Steve:

Whether you're a full-time business person or whether you're retired or whatever it might be, we can always find time. I mean, there's always time. It's using the time wisely, it's optimizing the things that you're actually working on, versus running in circles just trying to practice anything, hoping that all of a sudden, all this stuff is going to start making sense. That's what the Academy is for. So, anyway, thank you so much, and if you're interested, there'll be some. There'll be a link around here somewhere that you can, you know, click on and you can learn more about the Academy. You know, set up a call with me or one of the instructors and we can walk you through what everything is and and go from there. So, anyway, take care, stay positive.

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