Introducing Strum Together: A Guitar Learning Platform Built in a Real Classroom

For the past three years I’ve been teaching guitar with Instruments 4 Success, a program that puts guitars in the hands of veterans and teaches them to play together as a group. Before that, starting in 2018, I volunteered with Guitars for Vets, a national program. Along the way I started building a few small web tools for our students. Those tools kept growing, and they’ve turned into something bigger: the Strum Together™ Learning Platform.

Its tagline sums up what I’m going for: Learn guitar. Make music together.

Why build a platform at all?

There is no shortage of guitar learning platforms on the internet. There are hundreds of them. That’s actually the problem for a new player. You go home after class, open YouTube to practice the G chord, and twenty minutes later you’re watching someone shred a solo you won’t be ready for in a few years.

Our students don’t need more random lessons while learning in person. They need the right next step, matched to what they just learned in class, on the phone or iPad they already carry. That’s what Strum Together is: one place that follows the class week by week, so students always know what to practice and instructors always know what everyone else is teaching.

One of the other learning platforms I personally recommend, post-graduation, is SongNotes.net. David Potts has developed a great learning platform. Strum Together is different because it’s hyper-focused on how we teach, and it’s built to support in-person weekly lessons.

What students get

• A weekly Learning Lab. Each week of the 12-week semester has its own page with that week’s topics, the handout, and a short list of hand-picked videos. No hunting, no rabbit holes.
• Chord charts with real photos. Every open chord we teach, with a diagram and a photo of the hand shape. Tap one and it fills the screen, so you can prop your phone on the music stand and play.
• The Song Trainer. Our class songs, with a bouncing ball that shows you the next chord change in time. It starts slow, counts you in, and can speed up a little every few rounds as your changes get cleaner.
• The parts of the guitar, a tuner, and a printed workbook that ties it all together for students who’d rather have paper in a binder.

It’s built around how we actually teach. Strumming starts with all down strokes. Down-up comes later. Every student is encouraged to make a song their own at whatever level they’re playing, and nobody is left behind because they missed a class.

Where it’s going

Right now Strum Together is running with the Instruments 4 Success class, and the next steps come straight from what that class needs:

• Levels I, II and III. Each level is a semester. Many students take Level I and move on, while others come back for more.
• Semester setup. An admin can set up a new semester in a few clicks.
• Location aware. As programs grow, each new location gets the same lessons, songs and tools on day one.

Beyond Instruments 4 Success

Strum Together is my platform, and it’s provided to Instruments 4 Success for free under license. I’d love to see it help other group guitar programs: community centers, veterans’ organizations, schools, churches, libraries, or a teacher running their own group lessons.

If you run a program and want to talk about bringing Strum Together to your students, get in touch. And if you’re just learning on your own, the free tools on my Guitar Tools page grew out of the same work and are there for anyone to use.

Music is Life!
Christopher Kracht
Full time dreamer, part-time doer...