Sorry, I never recieved any notification from you or I would have responded immediately to this. No doubt you sent it. Don't know what happened.

From your post, I don't understand your intentions so I can only express mine to you.

If I wanted to teach using tablature I would provide it myself. As the teacher it is my protected choice on how I want to market my instruction without having others infringe upon that choice.

As a student you did the right thing by tabbing it out for (yourself only) and I urge all students to do the same. Here's why? By doing that you commit the information to memory the same as I do, when I learn new songs or solos by charting them. All music schools insist on students charting/tabbing out their lessons for the same reason. Alan, learning to play music through the information I teach is hard work, which is why I expect students to work as hard as you did until they find a personal way to begin to store this information in their memory banks. Hopefully your hard work will eventually pay off on the bandstand with some improvisational originality and I will be a proud and successful instructor.

My courses are not about song arrangements. They deal with information that should be stored mentally so the player can become their own musician.

Because of the depth of content, I leave it open to the student to sift through everything just the same as I would if I were giving them a personal lesson. They can write it down or if these were the old days, they would set the needle back down until it's worn out, as I did until I learned it. But they need to "personally" do whatever it takes to get the lesson accomplished.

Although the times have changed, and there are now many shortcuts available for many various song arrangements because of more teachers willing to share their arrangements, the path to becoming an improvisational musician and applying the knowledge of that methodology is still as time consuming as it was when I first started playing, which was long before there was tablature.

If your intent is to help someone else I promise you this; those that will not commit this knowledge to memory doing their own leg work will be the ones who never learn how to apply that knowledge into their playing.

The musicianship I teach is what I know about playing music and the instrument and it did not come easy. I have spent countless hours charting things down. Spending many hours working reduntantly on a short phrase until I never had to be reminded of "How does that chord, scale, or lick work?" This is the only way to get there.

Alan, If your intent is to sell and I don't assume it is, then you should know that my name and materials are protected.

I apologize to all if any of this offends anyone. And I appreciate Alan's honesty of being upfront with what he hoped to do. I believe he is a good man and will respect my wish, which is to leave my courses as they are.

My courses are for the serious student who wants to learn how to create their own style and ideas on steel guitar.
I believe providing tablature is not the way to capture this knowledge. Writing it down like the student taking notes in a classroom is how the student will best retain the information.

I respect your wishes and keep them to myself, so sorry to all the people who email me for copies.

I am disapointed that you never received the pack I sent to you via your site ordering system as it contained a 2 CDs of you and Jeff playing live at Gerry's show in Newbury, the tabs an order and cheque for the 2 C6 courses and your Xmas CD. I think I put some photos in there too. I posted them out on 22/10/04 to Stigitar Records. That the postal system for you though I have just received a mandolin that should have taken 3-5 days it actually took 7 weeks. I will re-order the courses in a week or so. Thanks again for the reply.

Best Regards
Alan.
www.alancook.net