He gave us the heads up this morning in the school’s chat that he published the video and I know many of you will find this useful. Enjoy.
Swiping for the win!!! lol! This would be more earth shattering for me if I hadn’t heard Troy call this out in his “swiping” section. This concept blew my mind when I saw it in Antigravity.
Still, I love Anton 
His videos are always entertaining and of course his playing is top notch. Very cool that someone besides Troy noticed this. Thanks for sharing!
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Nothing new here after watching CTC material, of course, for his way you need to join his academy. Good video anyways.
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Sometimes it helps to hear the same material from a different teacher. This can often makes things click where they otherwise wouldn’t.
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OR even an alternative/supplemental approach on the same subject from 2 or more different teachers. I’ve learned so much about Eric Johnson’s playing and technique from Troy. Over the weekend I took a skype lesson from Peter C. I learned…different stuff for him. Much less technical, focusing on the vibe of the phrases and just a general way to ‘think’ about the EJ ecosystem. I have this fresh perspective now. Still, talking to him without first learning what I did from Troy probably would have been fruitless. So this is neither a ding to Troy or to Peter.
I’m sure the same is true about Anton. My first reaction to this video is “ah, I can swipe it, who cares. Why learn it Anton’s way? Most people can’t even hear the difference until you tell them about it”. That type of closed mindedness could hold me back though. I’ve got way too much going on right now with work and my endeavors for the “Troy” stuff I’ve been working on. Maybe someday though, I’ll give Anton a shout.
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I totally agree with this.
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Anton is amazing, and I think that he heard the swipe, and didn’t see it… that freaks me out!
I practiced that Gilbert pattern a lot a teenager. I was always bothered that I couldn’t get it to “snarl” the way it does when Paul plays it.
I was definitely hearing the swipe, I just didn’t know it was swiping that I was hearing. I didn’t know what swiping was.
Actually, the swipe noise reminds me of scream bends and similar “snarls” in Clapton’s playing with Cream. All of which are achieved by deliberately playing through damped strings.
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My thoughts exactly!
In my mind, when Paul does it it’s not even a mistake, it’s more like a “rake” that makes the pick attack even more aggressive. I’m just repeating what you just said am I not 
This from Anton is a very interesting video, and it points out some interesting finger motions in Paul’s playing. But I disagree with some of the conclusions that Anton draws:
e.g. that finger movement is “bad” [counterexample: Martin Miller] and / or “trailing edge picking is bad” [Counterexample(s): Shawn Lane, George Benson, early Paul, many others!].
Anton’s picking technique is fantastic, but that does not mean that other methods aren’t equally valid.
EDIT: @guitarenthusiast since you are a subscriber to Anton’s school, may I ask you how the various lessons are organised? Are there some download products — e.g. similar to Troy’s Volcano/ Antigravity seminars that one can buy and watch to learn Anton’s picking strategies? If so I may be interested in buying them because I’d like to know more about his approach
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Yeah, the thing is that Anton made his technique even cleaner than Paul Gilbert’s earlier than Troy Grady had posted the first video on YouTube. So I don’t think Anton just watched Troy and decided to copy him, probably he doesn’t even know that Troy talked about Gilbert’s swiping before.
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As far as I know you just purchase the access to his school and he adds you to the group with lectures and exercises and 2 chats in telegram where you can record homework and ask him questions.
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He is a stickler for details and has an ear for music in a way that I’ve never seen from any other musician and guitarist. The only other person I met who was this strict and obsessed in my life (in the music world) was this girl at Juilliard I talked to who knew how to play 39 instruments and had 10 of them at a working on-the-stage proficiency level. These people definitely exist and Anton is of that caliber. Apparently his first experience with the guitar was his father playing a few chords and then Anton parroted it back to him with no prior practice. Some things are unexplainable.
I suppose it depends how you define mistake. Personally, I think last year at the start of this COVID mess, when Troy posted your descending fours clips, he was right about how a proper tab of your MAB line would be without the rake. You’re not trying to swipe, you’re trying to clear the string, but sometimes it didn’t happen. So would that make it a mistake? I don’t know. Eye of the beholder, etc. So if you were transcribing Paul’s performance, I could see why someone would include the rake in there. It’s a genuine sonic artifact. It exists, we know that much. But it’s not systematic in the same way Batio’s is. Personally, I thought your clip sounded great. To Anton, it would probably set him off and you would literally get a list of things to change. Like I said, eye of the beholder.
The reason Anton does not support this idea - and sorry if I can’t go into super borderline-autistic detail here as I’ve explained to you via PM - is the same as the reason why I went off in the Tenet thread. When you assign notes or the spaces between the striking of notes two different movements, you are turning on muscle groups that don’t have to be activated, detracting resources from your brain that would otherwise manage sync, and increasing tension. It’s just a simple fact. This isn’t up for debate in the same way that me checking my thermostat and seeing it is set for 72 degrees isn’t up for debate. This isn’t me being a big fat meaniehead absolutist or blasphemying someone’s name (lmfao) or whatever stuff was said to me in the thread yesterday. I’m not sure how to say otherwise. If you get that thumb movement in there as a component of your technique, you engage other muscle groups. You now have more tension in your body. As speed increases, you have to work harder and compensate for this detriment. In the same way that as the Tenet pattern increases in speed, two downpicks composed of four movements versus two alternate strokes will have a lower threshold. Unfortunately, I don’t write the rules of biomechanics. I wish I did, then I’d make everything playable at 600 BPM 32nd notes with downstrokes.
At the end of the day, does this matter for Joe Guitar who comes onto the forum to learn to play sixes at 120 BPM? Not really. Does it matter for sound quality? Depends who is listening. Is the average person/music listener going to have an ear for that sort of thing, especially in a live setting where the FOH guy is drunk and the guitarist is having a beer bottle thrown at his head? Fuck no.
You can work around most anything and hit very high speeds with less-than-optimal technique, but that’s not why people go to Anton.
Okay so below is as much info about the school as I can give within Anton’s guidelines since this information is really not available anywhere else online. As much as I love Anton I will try and keep it balanced:
If you check the description of the Gilbert video he posted, there is an outline of pricing and content.
He basically structures the school so that you can take what you need on an a la carte basis if you’re not super invested in the modified Gilbert technique he created. For you? You’re an advanced guitarist, with maybe some minor sticking points that you find frustrating and that you have communicated to me as such. I can tell you with a reasonable degree of confidence that if you were to buy his string-switching lesson, you’d probably find it repetitive especially given your expert level knowledge of Troy’s stuff. It’s not going to blow your mind. But maybe you’d like to watch it in the same way you’d watch a movie for fun. There might be some value. But I’m not going to shill for him or give him a blind endorsement on a digital product when I know the particularities of your playing and know that your time or money might best be served elsewhere.
The thing with Anton is that he provides information in the videos in great detail, but to get to the really, really, scary “How does this guy know which muscle group i’m activating for any given movement?” level stuff, you have to talk to him directly.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that he appreciates - and more frequently engages - students who don’t come to him and treat him as an AI chatbot for guitar technique, and instead actually try to treat him as a human being and joke around lol. And there are certainly people from what I’ve seen who don’t do that, and his terse responses reflect as much. I’m guessing he gives priority to students who he has known for some time, which would make sense, but this is just speculation. There are also people in the U.S. group who clearly do not watch any of the videos and then come into the chat and ask the absolute most basic questions or post videos of ridiculously sloppy playing showing no meaningful engagement with the material or whatever and then these same people delete them when he doesn’t respond. In a way I feel bad for him. It would be like if people came on here and asked Troy for advice and their response was to say “Fuck off.” or ignore him or start arguing or whatever when they haven’t watched even a second of the material. There are also people who have simply disappeared, either due to personal reasons or an inability to cope with the high standards, which are admittedly brutal. I admittedly get on edge when asking him stuff because 99% of the time I know I’ll have to practice harder or fix something.
In general, he is very busy, working on his own music, and maintains AFAK a Russian, American, possibly Spanish (or was it South American), and Taiwanese schools. For the past week he has been very active in the U.S. school.
There are some really awesome people in the U.S. school. I have made one really good friend who I talk to nearly every day. We work together and trade videos back and forth. There are some members who maintain both a CTC membership and MPAO membership, there are some who have abandoned CTC for lack of results (sorry man, these people exist, too), and there are people who might never have heard of CTC. It’s a mix.
That’s about all I can think of.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
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This reminds me of something I’ve been pondering lately. Not writing to argue but simply for discussion.
I can initiate different types of “vibrations” or “jiggles” in my picking arm which are very fast. I can trigger a very fast forearm rotation, and two-distinct feeeling wrist movements (one feels like dart-thrower, the other like reverse dart-thrower). I can trigger these movements on command and I could synch them to a beat.
However, the range of motion is miniscule. So small infact that I’ve have difficulty channeling these “jiggles” into effective picking movements. Even with a very sharp pick (like a Gravity Sunrise), most of the orientations I have attempted simply resulted in rubbing the tip of the pick very quickly back and forth on the string (literally lesss travel than the thickness of the strings). Other orientations strike the string and bounce off in one direction only, rather than decisively “breaking through” the string.
These movements are so small because they are so fast, not the other way around. Also, as there is so little distance to travel and so little time between changes in direction, the movements simply aren’t very powerful.
To make these movements effective, I must somehow increase range of motion and power, or devise solutions which make these movements effective with the range of motion and power they already have.
Potential solutions to improve range of motion and increase power may include recruiting other muscle groups to add a supplementary movement and generate additional force. If I could find a suitable secondary movement and learn to coordinate the two movement patterns, this might be efffective. Another is simply to push harder with the muscles I am already using.
The only other potential solution I can identify is to utilize the principle of a speed multipier lever by flexing the wrist with the rotational movement (like Govan’s fast strumming movement), thereby describing a wider arc with the same angular deviation. Doing so however would require greater force to break through the string on the strokes due to the same leverage, which may exacerbate the problem of bouncing off on one side.
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I do remember you bringing this up in the context of Roy Marchbank’s technique before the pandemic started.
I have the same issues you describe with that jiggle. I ended up burning out within 5 seconds. It’s a shame because Troy clocked that motion at 220-240 for me and it feels really relaxed away from the guitar. The moment I introduce the string as an obstacle it falls apart. It’s been over 2 years now and the motion hasn’t yet worked in a relaxed fashion, so I’m inclined to think it never will unless you end up finding some insight for a secondary motion.
Also I should add that I’m not sure how to even train the body to be able to split the motions at high speeds. It seems like the mental effort would be next to impossible.
Actually, after writing my post yesterday I tried imitating Roy’s form again with the pick I bought from him. I mostly just bounced off the string on one side at half speed as usual with intermittant doubling of the rate. There was however a very brief window of maybe a second or two where the movement was fully effective. I had another window of success which was shorter, but which resulted in burn out.
I’m not that interested in developing the technique, I find the tone is really shrill. Still, it’s fun to experiment with different movements every now and again.
I estimate my “jiggle” speeds as being higher than that, but I can’t really be sure. I’ll probably keep experimenting with variables for my own amusement. I can’t promise any insights 
My guess is that you would have to train the movement as a cohesive whole at a slower tempo, so that you can learning the feeling of the compound movement. Again, how feasible that actually is, I have no idea.
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