I’ve been listening to a lot of Aerosmith lately, hence the title. But I find it to be suiting, because lately I’ve been hearing this question for about the past 7 or 8 months: “Jayme, where have you been?”

The short answer? Pretty much everywhere. The long answer? Well, I accepted an M.D. position at Real Life Church in Valencia, CA, I’ve been producing and recording various records and videos, I was on tour for the summer, I’ve been taking every local bar/club/casual gig that came my way to make it through a financially difficult year… I’ll stop there because I realize that it either sounds like I’m bragging (I’d never gloat about being so busy that my head is about to burst!) or I’m complaining (believe me, I am ever so thankful to be blessed having enough work available to keep my head above water, food on the table and the lights on). But if you haven’t seen or heard much from me this past year, this would be why. I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

O ya, and I wrote a new book. Well, technically it’s only “part” book. Actually, I wouldn’t even describe it as being “part” book because that sort of infers that maybe it’s too small to be considered a book – believe me, it’s full book. It’s as book as it gets (well, 220 pages worth of book, I suppose). It’s also “part” vid… I mean, it’s also a video. Well, more like a sequence of videos. 24 of them to be exact, totalling just over 11 hours altogether. And I guess it’s audio as well, because there’s more than 6 hours or MP3 files to go with it. Now I’m just confusing myself, and probably you as well, so let me just start from square one.

I decided that I wanted to put together a program much like many of the home-study courses I have enjoyed in the past (i.e. P90X, Insanity, The Daniel Plan, Financial Peace University, etc) geared towards musicians. The aforementioned programs are stellar! Show up, press play, follow along, move at your own pace, and by the end of the program you’re a master; you’ve lost weight, bulked up, changed your lifestyle, conquered your finances… It’s so easy. Just follow the steps and keep at it and then you win. Plain and simple. So, I wanted to provide this same resource to musicians around the world because (as I mentioned already) the format is fantastic and fool-proof. Anyone can do it!

And also because I think it’s important.

These are the things that many players feel they are missing out on (music theory, ear training, reading, scales, key signatures, circles and fifths and other “confusing” stuffs). These are the things that a lot of people (myself included, for the longest time) either give up on or never start because they don’t know where to start, what’s important, what’s not important, what comes next, where to go once you “finish” and how to apply this stuff to what YOU are trying to do with music.

Enter Ignite Musical Training.

It’s a home-study kit, just like the others, and it’s easy. You watch the video and follow along in your workbook. You complete the homework assignments. You check your answers in the back of the book. You listen to audio exercises. You take a video dictation test. And then you move on to the next lesson. And the next lesson. And so on.

It’s practical and applicable to musicians because it covers Music Theory and Ear Training simultaneously, while introducing you to the most important material that you would study in the first two years of a college-level music curriculum. And it does so in 12 easy to follow lessons.

So, as you can imagine, this was quite an undertaking for me, engulfing nearly the better half of 2 years of my life with hard labor to complete. I’ll give you an example: in order to end up with 11 hours of video you first need to start with about 100 hours to edit through bad takes and mistakes. A 220 page final draft means the rough draft was substantially longer, and was read multiple times and revised, and then read multiple times and revised, and then read multip… Well, I think you get the point. Needless to say, I’m SO THANKFUL that it’s done. Well, at least the labor is done. Now comes the marketing, the printing, packaging, bookkeeping, invoicing… All that stuff I never thought I would have to do because I’m “just” a musician. Isn’t technology wonderful? (insert sarcasm)

Anyways, now that I’ve just alleviated an enormous amount of my workload, I’m looking forward to going back to full time bass-playing and pumping out content on my blog, podcast, YouTube channel and such. It’s good to be back 🙂

P.S. Not to make this too much of a commercial (shameless plug shamefully plugged) but we are accepting Pre-Orders right now! The price has been reduced to print up as many of them as I can before the holidays, so head over to www.ignitemusicaltraining.com to order your copy. The deadline for the introductory Pre-Sale price is December 1st 🙂