You've got the positions. You've got some theory. What you're missing is the language — and that's exactly what the next 26 weeks build.
Your full 26-week roadmap is below
Keep scrolling — we walk through the fix, the week-by-week plan, and the student who started exactly where you are.
You scored in the Vocabulary Stage range. That puts you past the foundation. Most students who land here have been playing seriously for years — they've put in the work, they know their positions, they can move through chord changes.
But there's a gap that opens up at exactly this stage. You can play, but you can't quite say anything yet. Improvising sounds like the same shapes recycled. Real harmony — secondary dominants, voice leading, jazz language — feels close but never quite lands. The four licks problem isn't a beginner's problem. It's a vocabulary problem.
That's the gap the middle of the 26-Week — weeks 11 through 22 — was specifically built to close.
I see this stage every cohort. Tell me which of these feel familiar.
If three or more landed, you're in the right place. Most players never get past this stage. The ones who do build vocabulary, intentionally.
The first wall in adult guitar is "I can't play." Most students get past it.
The second wall is harder. It's the one between "I can play" and "I can say something." Between mechanical correctness and music. Between knowing your positions and owning them.
This wall isn't about practicing more. You've practiced plenty. It's about three things you probably haven't been given:
Vocabulary. Real vocabulary — voice leading, chord-tone soloing, secondary dominants, the sounds that make jazz, lofi, and modern blues feel possible. Not "patterns to memorize." The actual harmonic and melodic language.
Eyes on your playing. Someone watching you and telling you exactly what to fix. Not a song teacher — a foundation teacher. The thing your private lessons probably don't do.
A reason to push. Most plateaus break with accountability. With a small group of equally serious players who are also working on this. With a deadline.
The 26-Week is structured around all three.
You're going to skip the parts you already have.
The first ten weeks are review for you — fundamentals, scales, positions. You'll go through them at your own pace, mostly to lock in the small gaps.
But the real work for you starts at week 11. That's where the vocabulary begins.
Triads and their inversions. Real soloing — building lines from a single phrase. Then a full blues solo, top to bottom. Then real harmony — secondary dominants, voice leading, the moves that make jazz feel like jazz instead of "scale exercises over chord changes." The 7th chord family. Lofi shapes. The blues, deeper.
You'll film yourself weekly. I'll watch every video. I'll tell you what's working and what to fix. Every two weeks you'll get on a Zoom call with the cohort — 10 students, not 100, half of them doctors, the rest senior professionals — and we'll review playing together.
30–60 minutes a day, six days a week.
By week 22, you'll have the vocabulary. By week 26, you'll have the voice.
For someone at the Vocabulary Stage, the first 10 weeks are review and small-gap repair. Pace yourself through them — they're already in your hands, mostly. The real arc starts at week 11.
The major scale in 5 positions. The pentatonic in 5 positions. Intervals across the neck. You probably know most of this. Use these weeks to spot-check your floor — you'll find one or two surprising gaps, and we'll fix them.
The moment chord shapes stop being shapes and start being music. Closed-position triads, open triads, inversions in context, voice leading. This is where most players have a real breakthrough.
You'll build solos by manipulating a single phrase. Add a note. Change a rhythm. Omit, repeat, contrast. Then a full blues solo, top to bottom — the structural anatomy of an actual statement, not a scale run.
Secondary dominants. Tonic, subdominant, dominant motion. Common tones. Chord-tone soloing. The "zoom in / zoom out" framework that lets you actually navigate a chord change instead of running scales over it. This is the section that fixes the four-licks problem.
A refresh, deeper. Subdivisions, phrasing, the time inside your playing. The week your scales stop being scales.
1-color songs. Beautiful shapes. Finger-picking loops. The harmonic palette of modern jazz guitar.
F7, Fm7, Fmaj7, Fm7b5. The shapes every jazz tune is built on. Real voice leading. Real jazz vocabulary, applied.
Past the pentatonic box. Past the boxes. Real blues phrasing — the ear of a player, not a student.
The synthesis. Everything you've built, applied. The week the gap between what you hear and what you play finally closes.
“I just play in a couple of bands. So I play a lot of guitar, but I just feel like I haven't had accountability for what I've been trying to do. I'll watch a lot of videos and try to incorporate things into my playing — but I really wanted to get some sort of discipline, dedicated time where I'm focusing on stuff and getting feedback and sticking with stuff. Rather than just saying 'okay, I'm going to play triads today,' and then play it and be done.”
Eric had the technical chops when he came in. He had bands. He had the time. What he didn't have was someone watching him play and telling him what to keep, what to fix, and what was next. Six months later, he's a different player — not because he learned more techniques, but because someone was finally pointing at the right things. If you came in saying "I haven't had accountability," you're in good company.
Rotem is an internationally-touring jazz guitarist based in New York City. After 20 years on stages from Blue Note to North Sea, and five albums praised by The New York Times and DownBeat, he's spent the last few years building one thing: a 26-week curriculum for the adult guitarist who has been playing on and off for years and is finally ready to do it the right way. Half of his last cohort were doctors. The other half were career professionals giving themselves permission to take this seriously.
Same program. Same access. Same results. Just choose how you'd like to pay.
$1,197 over 26 weeks = $46 per week — less than a single private guitar lesson.
Live group mentorship calls run every other Wednesdayfor the full 26 weeks. Replays are posted in the student area for anyone who can't make it live.
Show up to the first live call. Do the first module. Submit your first video for feedback. If after 14 days you don't feel this is exactly what you needed to break through your plateau — email me at [email protected] for a complete refund. No forms, no hoops, no questions asked.
Six months are going to pass either way. You can spend them recycling the same four licks — or you can spend them building the language that lets you finally play what you've been hearing in your head. 10 spots per cohort. When they're gone, the doors close until the next one.