Antagonism toward Cracking the Code

General Music Discussion
#45

This is a fair point. I think part of how Claus markets himself is that he appeals to people who personally relate to a stoic “no pain, no gain” philosophy: people who want to believe that learning guitar is a crucible, and whose feeling of accomplishment is amplified by feeling like they have “the guts to endure hardship to reach their goal.” I compare this approach (and there are others similar to Claus) to CrossFit, which, at the risk of going way off topic, pretty much exploits the blind stoicism of people 25-45 who feel highly motivated to get in shape, but never received legitimate high performance coaching when they were young.

To be clear, I don’t think Claus is trying to deceive people, I think he is simply advocating an approach that worked for him, and he’s blind to other approaches.

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#46

In the spirit of positivity, I’ll switch it up and name just a few of my favorite youtube teachers that I do stay subscribed to, and highly recommend to anyone:

Steve Stine
Justin Sandercoe
Andrew Wasson

There are lots of others. There are some big names that I like, but didn’t bother to list, but there are other big names that I actively dislike. And I didn’t bother to list any of the Code-related folks like Ben Eller or Martin Miller, who I also think are great.

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#47

I agree with you. He has good intentions, but simply teaches based on his personal experiences and assumes a bit too much that what worked for him will work for everyone else. Blind is a good description, since I assume that he watched at least some interviews.

#48

I’ve been playing for 30 years now, over this period I practiced/studied with different teachers, books, videos…
As for picking mechanic/technique, nothing compares even close to the value I got from Troy and his Cracking The Code material, @Troy is Number one! Just my two cents :slight_smile:

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#49

For me it’s 17 years, but I’m totally with you!

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#50

Yeah, David Grier didn’t sound impressed with the analytical approach, but Troy skilfully managed the situation without ‘putting him straight’ and got most of what he needed to see. Must have been tempting though to grab a guitar, give him an ear full of fast pickslanting, and say ‘lets see you do that, then, Mr smartypants’. :slight_smile:

#51

There’s a lot of guys like David around here where I live, (Upstate South Carolina), but this is bluegrass and flatpicking country. Learning on your own from experience is a very important value for life rather than being told how to do something. That goes for most things that people around here would say, calls for “common sense” music included. Troy would catch him sometimes and David seemed to enjoy nerding out a little bit, even thought it goes against his “outward” personality. Self taught or not, anybody who gets to that level in my book, like to nerd out, even if they don’t want to admit it.

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#52

I take what you’re saying about a cultural value of self reliance.

But as a general point, I don’t agree about high level players needing a level of necessary nerdiness. Time and time again we see top exponents knowing far less about what they’re doing at the most basic level than amateur observers.

There’s a vid where Albert Lee is asked about which fingers he chicken picks with and only when he watched his right hand did he discover to his own surprise that he was occasionally using his pinky.

Batio said if you can’t repeat what you’ve just played then you don’t know what you’re doing and that this is a central problem holding players back. I’d bet most of the best jazz improvisers couldn’t repeat a line they just played once they’re in the flow.

That said, you do see look of astonished fascination on some of their faces when Troy turns a light on what they’re doing.

#53

Nah, they could sing it to you in all twelve keys both before and after playing it.

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#54

Agreed on that point. Most modern jazz players can replay what they just played.

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#55

No, you’re missing my point. We no the likes of Stern, Metheny, Pass, can sing what they play, and play what they hear in the head. I’m not talking about that. But contrasting the repetitive training of licks that a Batio has done with seat-of-the-pants improvisers. Albert Lee for example has said more than once that he can never play the same thing twice and doesn’t know exactly what he just played when asked in interviews to ‘do that again’. When Albert Lee improvises you can almost sense him deliberately getting himself somewhere he hasn’t been before and then trying to rescue the situation and get back home. It’s what makes it fun for him - that he can do that.

#56

Honestly, I can’t repeat what I just said the same way twice. There are times I’ll be reading a blog post of some kind, stop for a second, and then Command-F a word on the page to find my place again - and it won’t be there. Like, something I read ten seconds earlier, and I cannot remember the verbatim phrasing enough to find it on the page again.

I wouldn’t read into that too much - whether you are playing or talking or reading by the seat of your pants, memory is a very fickle thing!

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#57

Metheny, Scott Henderson and even Guthrie Govan have complained about being filmed on mobiles, saying it affects how they play, about taking risks. I don’t think it would bother Batio. And I don’t want to get on his case because he seems a nice guy. But he’s mostly playing prefabricated solos based on shred riffs he’s practiced thousands of times. These other guys could play safe, but they like to push themselves harmonically into unknown territory and that has the risk of totally screwing up.

Erm…sorry, I’ve forgotten what we were ‘arguing’ about. :wink:

#58

I like that analogy, and it jibes with something Albert, or someone else in the room, said about not finding it interesting to play something the same way twice. Not that Albert Lee doesn’t have lick fragments that get reused as building blocks, but that he tries to connect them in novel ways.

I’m reminded of something I read in a book or article once, suggesting that it was good exercise for your brain to deliberately get yourself lost in a safe region of an unfamiliar city once in a while.

And of course there’s the old Van Halen line about the musical aesthetic that most appeals to him: “falling down the stairs and landing on your feet.”

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#59

We’re getting old man!!!

:bear:

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#60

Speak for yourself, Zombie Bear! I’m growing younger. :wink:

Anti-intellectualism is rampant these days with the war on science. Furthermore each of us comes at what we’re doing with different experience, expectations, and needs. Hats off to CTC for opening the discussion up and the tremendously infectious production values.

One can quibble with the research details and individual hypotheses, but fighting the growing, working base of theory to draw from suggests a lot of things about where one’s mind is at.

Typical of much musical pedagogy is the emphasis on refining existing proficiency. The practice creates huge blind spots that make life difficult for those looking for solutions.

I’m thankful for the thoughtful skilled, the kind, the willing to play. Thanks for the youtube recommendations and the useful vocabulary. :slight_smile:

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#61

Well, I personally wouldn’t fight against technical analysis. As we know, there was next to no guidance for picking and what there was, was wrong.

But I’ll simply reiterate that the ‘greats’ learned to do this stuff largely without conscious awareness. McLaughlin was asked about edge picking (they didn’t call it that) in an old Guitar Player magazine interview. He said he didn’t do it, he played flat. You can’t be much less aware of what you’re doing than that.

I’ll go further and say that, almost by nature, the musical “greats’ tend to have their head in a different space. And it’s a musical one. I think mostly their tendency is not to be nerdy about something they can do. I don’t include amongst them the youtube shredders that everyone swoons over for playing at 200bpm + but who can’t play in time at 80 bpm. Which seems to be most of them.

As far as technical awareness goes, Marty Friedman - who is genuinely musical - commented (admittedly lightheartedly to Lisa-x) that he didn’t really know what Troy was talking about some of the time. And here’s even Rusty Cooley (er, well….never mind) demonstrating his rigorous understanding of Troy’s concepts (Ahem).

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#62

To be fair, Rusty is like a hummingbird trying to relate someone else’s description of how he flaps his wings. And I like that he’s open about not having geeked out on the analysis side himself, but without degrading the value it might have for others.

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#63

Personally, I’m not here to get anyone’s approval of CTC. I’m here to learn and grow. And I definitely have grown. My picking has become more accurate and quicker. I am mastering DWPS and working on incorporating UWPS in my scale playing. I’ve been mostly working on Eric Johnson type licks with DWPS but dabble in the Yngwie stuff and UWPS with upstrokes. My goal is not to be able to play like EJ or YM, but to be able to play like me…only better! LOL! If people can’t see the value in what @Troy is producing with CTC, that’s on them! As busy as Troy is with his business, he answers my questions and critiques my playing when I post a video. That to me is priceless. I’ve taken lessons from great guitar players like Greg Howe and Bruce Bouillet. I enjoyed my time with them. But really all I was doing was becoming a copy cat of their style. Nothing wrong with that at all. And they were phenomenal teachers. But I can take from a multitude of players at CTC and incorporate it into my own style. If you think about it, those great players are just men/women who honed their skills on the guitar, taking from their influences. They aren’t super-human…just human. I know that I have that same potential in me, so do you! And at 56 years old, I keep getting better and better. And since all I could draw from when I was younger was guitar teachers or listening to songs, it just didn’t click with me. But, and this being my second go around with CTC, something is geling with me. Seeing @Troy do slow mo videos of picking technique has been a tremendous help. Now, I feel my right hand technique is starting to work. I chunk things and progressively get faster and cleaner. So who cares about nay-sayers?

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#64

“The fact that once in a while you run across a true nerd like Steve Morse who flies planes, fixes his home electrical system, and thinks about his own picking movements — that’s just icing on the cake.”

This isn’t a big deal to me - just an observation. I see the term"nerd" being thrown around on this site a lot and I don’t know how old you are, but for those of my generation, “nerd” is a derogatory term. Second, if you were a rock 'n roll guitarist, you were about as far from a nerd as you could get, so I don’t know why I see people (apparently from younger generations) having this idea that the word is something it’s not. I’ve only had one experience with someone using that word directed at me in my entire life. It was high school in the mid 80s and some kid I’d never seen before walked up to me and point blank asked “Are you a nerd?” Obviously he didn’t know a thing about me. Suffice to say nobody ever tried that with me again.

Calling someone a nerd or asking someone if he was a nerd - those were fighting words. It would elicit about the same reaction as calling a black guy “boy” or “Sambo.” These were things you just didn’t do unless you were really looking for a fight. Why was “nerd’ such an offensive word”? To my generation it means a guy who is socially awkward as hell, has no clue how to dress, no idea as to how to be at least somewhat cool, would probably piss his pants if he had to talk to a pretty girl face to face, and couldn’t get laid in a woman’s prison even if he had a fistful of weekend passes to leave the premises.