Hello everyone,
For what it's worth (I'm still a "starter" after all) I want to say how impressed and excited I am about the Cathy Fink clawhammer lessons on True Fire. There was some discussion of this when it first came out, and I don't think the comments did the series justice: it was deemed pricey (and I think you can get personalized lessons somehow) but the ordinary lessons are about what you would expect to pay for a good set of DVDs.
I had some problems with the whole downloading / logging in thing, which imho is a little more fiddly than it has to be (a little too much like work to get up and running). But the system does work really well once you get it going (only on a computer, not an ipad, unfortunately). I haven't used all the features, and may never bother. Basically you get intelligent, easy to follow lessons, with thing broken down into manageable chunks and a lot of repetition. My big breakthrough came once we got to the songs; I always have trouble following the explanations of a song, but realized that I could print out the tab (very easy to do) and that the combination of that with Cathy explaining while she plays works very well.
Above all, Cathy is clear and methodical, and makes even simple songs sound interesting and exciting. It may not sound like much to the veterans out there, but I can now actually play Cripple Creek in clawhammer style, with a sense of how that is (or could be, with more practice) actual music. And the second song (I forget the name) came together in about two days, which for me is really fast.
I know there are other great resources out there, but I thought it might be worth sending out my appreciation of this one. I find it all very exciting, and I am truly grateful.
Will