Well, as this thread came up before I sign up and now I had signed up, I want to leave my impression here.
Background, I know music theory from composing with the MIDI keyboard. I can't "play" keyboard as I need massive time to find notes and chords, therefore I did fine when composing game music for job since it waits for me to figure out as long as I have to think.
Then I picked up the bass and enrolled in 2 different courses last year :
Invalid Link Removed (completed all 12 hr drills worth of videos)
Invalid Link Removed (still mid course)
After doing those courses, I still don't "truly" know my fretboard. I still have to "figure out" from scratch from open string note, then count up or vaguely remember the dots on the fret, and then use nifty shortcut such as octave, +5 semi, +7 semi, etc. to find notes relative to the key. It is very similar to when I am composing music on keyboard. 5+ years of composing, still can't play in real time, since I always stick to figuring out from scratch slowly.
And there are some nifty trick like the first 3 dots would spell out alphabets G A B / C D E, and so on. Why these alphabets are appealing to remember as a shortcut? Just because they lands on the dots and they have no flat/sharp sign. The trick even stops working further than these lucky dots on the fret. This is an example of seemingly silly root cause that snowball into not knowing an entire board in long term.
The thing is, I have been avoiding "hard remembering" anything like plague for no reason. I don't know the circle of 5th (I know what it is, but I am not remembering it as it feels like a pain) Somehow I view the note with flats not equal to others without flat, among other weird unreasonable thing, like viewing the keyboard's black keys as less important, and now I sucks at playing something in other keys. String instrument is even linearized that, yet I fell back to the same trap.
There are something that worth ranking up from theory you can figured out from scratch, to hard remembering it instead, like when I was forced to remember 1x1 to 12x12 back in elementary school. That was a pain, but in the end that serves me well and worth the effort. In music, knowing 12 notes by viewing all the flat/sharp notes equally, and remember the circle of 5th, is this thing that worth remembering, yet I always postpone remembering them and always falling back to figuring out from scratch. (Equivalent to not knowing what 7x4 is, then you do 7+7+7+7 instead, etc.) Something has to force me to remember this, and FBA course is the only one that managed to do it for me.
In regarding to this FBA course, I know from its heavy marketing/upselling that it would backfire by causing experienced musicians to say things such as there is no secret sauce, and you can learn anywhere, etc. , and it is evident in this thread that the general mood leans that way. The same reaction as a lot of coffee drinker that would be compelled to say Starbucks sucks as they are the giant and doing things extravagantly. Though in reality, they definitely did something right that set them apart.
After experiencing it, I now know price you pay 95% for the way he say + and the learning sequence + really make sure what should be in your head and you are not botting out or playing while thinking with your spine. These 3 forcing your brain to absorb in higher rate in less time. That is not to be underestimated.
The other 5% is for convenience of not having to piece up information from the internet, for a bit of urgency that the lesson is gradually releasing so you don't procastinate, for great video and audio quality with clear editing, and the viewing platform. Those are very very small part of the cost. There is absolutely no secret sauce and it is all drills, as expected with learning music. There is no trick that instantly enables you to be able to do things, despite how many times Scott may says cheesy words like "the system" (he didn't say "my system" but it is still cheesy), that is all established music theory. What's really valuable and worth the price is the design of lesson/drills, not the actual musical knowledge. And strangely, these more important value of the course, he didn't hype it up as much.
You should visualize each note on the fret as having its own EXP gauge (or LV., etc.). Before, my fretboard "lights up" only on a certain hotspot and it was not spreading any further when I practice chord inversions and scales in those lessons. How so? In hindsight, it looks like a massive waste of time that all my practice (rather "mess around" with various scales or extended scales) didn't register long-term per-note. I just know if I do this, I get pentatonic scale or extended major scale that goes 2 octaves. But what fretboard experience did I gain? Just 1 C note on that second string where I start my scale on. I only have that in my head about the note, and the rest is the pattern that makes the scale. This practice is extremely unbalanced as the pattern is long and I gain EXP for just 1 note. If the learning experience is designed better, it should give EXP to each note of the fretboard more. There is a simple upgrade that if I think about the octave higher note that I ended my scale on, I would learn 2 notes in this practice instead of 1. But I didn't. There are many reasons why I didn't (stupid or not) when I really should have those in my head to get the fretboard mastery. I spaced out sometimes mid-pattern, sometimes mid-session. Maybe only first few minutes of practice was effective, the rest was more fun + dexterity training.
What goes in a design? Similar to working out, there are reps and sets, and each one get you more or less muscle depending on various factors. Therefore well designed plan from trainers are needed so you get more. Drilling music is similar, but since it involves a lot more brain than working out, it depends on what is in your head to cement the knowledge. Not many people keeps yelling to you what to think while drilling, just telling what to drill or how to handle the instrument / how to perform the movement correctly, or how long to keep doing it before moving on.
He immediately shove the most bitter pill to me which is forcing me to practice going in circle of 5th rather than chromatically or arbitrarily. Then he have me practice 3 inversions of major triad which I had spend hours before on Udemy and Skillshare lessons.
But what's different is that I was forced to drill the right way. The b flat and and d flat fret near the c fret I played thousand times started to light up bit by bit, somehow? This is all thanks to he forcing the drill to go in circle of 5th, and he keep repeating what to think and not think while doing it (think about root and shape, but not each note). This course is actually all about this kind of effective drill that lights up the entire fretboard so there is no (or less) hotspot. This is easier said than done as all other lessons I had enrolled seems to not account for this at all, and it is inefficient. "Accelerator" is very literally true, the design is intentionally leaning towards per-note knowledge, and inevitably away from other things like long patterns and dexterity. With long patterns, of course you get to go round the circle of 5th less times in the same amount of time, thus less EXP gain for the fretboard.
I hope this give some idea what this course is really about, it is kind of messy writing, but I was surprised when I realized what he really is aiming for in this course. (I am a game designer, and I am quite prone to "disassembling/debugging" the media other puts out) It is "just" carefully ordered drills and carefully curated sentences that he constantly says to make sure you have the right thing in the head while your hand moves. All other lessons I had less than optimal thing in the head so I gained only dexterity but not so much thinking speed. And yes, his business man talk is quite annoying especially the upsale video that shoved right after I enrolled so I pay more.
Besides that, I think it is a very interesting way to spend money and have the course fix/patch up dark spots you weren't realized before in your random practice / random courses. There is no new information to gain especially if you know basic music theory, just clever practice. I was lucky that all my holes were filled very quickly even from the first module, an exact repeat of lessons I enrolled before but with different thinking and approach. And even luckier that I already know some music theory and Scott did not put much emphasis in that, saving my time. Yours may not be as lucky as me, etc.
on the site, unfortunately the tradeoff seems to be Scott's 
, using different shapes for the 3 positions of each triad (root position, 1st and 2nd inversions).
