Hahaha! No idea what the intro is…
Sorry, but this sounds realy bad.
One, “Sorry, but…” doesn’t make anything that follows it less offensive. In a forum where we’re all sharing clips for critique, tact goes a long way.
Two, what are you talking about? I’m listening on one earbud on my lunchbreak, and blueberrypie’s clip here sounds pretty damned good to my ears. Not perfectly flawless… But not bad at all for a guy woorking through some improvised new ideas on the fly. Dude’s crosspicking is better than either of ours.
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Well, he claimed he could do it, that phrase in the first part of the Anton vid. There is a lot of noodling going on with some attempts playing something similair and it comes nowhere close.
Anton has taken picking to a whole new level as Martin Miller has. Very few (if any) will be able to play this phrase that clean at that speed as Anton does,that is my point.
That’s what he wrote.
You have to agree with me that the few attempts playing the pattern does not sound anywhere close to what Anton does.
I suggest you give it some more practice and then again post a vid of just the pattern. If you can do it my hat is of to you sir!
But for now it sounds very far away from how it should sound like.
I will practice it myself but i will not say i am confident i can pull it off.
I don’t think i come even close to what Anton does, he is just phenomenal!
Hey, I know things can get heated when everyone’s favorite players are concerned. But this really isn’t the sort of spirit we’re looking for. We’re all trying to understand these techniques, and then trying to learn them. It’s a little like being in a 12-step program with guitar sometimes. A little encouragement can go a long way. I think @blueberrypie’s clip shows that he’s making inroads with wrist technique, that he is certainly using a similar if not the same movements Anton is — and he’s got some cool musical ideas happening as well. It’s clearly a work in progress which he acknowledges. As is everything we post around here.
Personally, I like having a forum full of people going “I can do that!” “Betcha Can’t Play This” is not the Cracking the Code way. “Betcha Can Play This Eventually!” is much more our speed.
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You’re comparing a polished performance video with a video of someone working out something new.
Not that BBP sounds bad to my ears but we’ve all got our own idiosyncrasies, would be boring if we all liked the same things.
Let’s all reflect on the absurdity of comparing a guy working through something new and sounding good while doing it to a guy who has been practicing for god knows how many hours with a borderline absurd fixation on his instrument.
If you can strum the pick up and down that fast, which I’m almost sure you can, you can do this.
The string skip is a red herring.
I’m by no means saying “you will be exactly as fast as this guy in 5 minutes”, but “impossible” should be a banned word on this forum.
Think of it as more like “targeted strumming” rather than “wide reaching alternate picking”.
edit: and you need to know some chord shapes and be able to get between them fluidly with your fretting hand, that’s what’s holding me up on this one more than the picking
Have you watched the slo mo vid i posted in this thread?
Looks very much like targeted alternate picking to me.
Of course you have to have a certain flow going on, as with all of that kind of aperggio picking. But he realy targets his picking strokes very precise, and exactely that is what makes it sound so clean without hitting strings that should not sound.
Please watchbthe slo mo vid and tell me again what you think.
Here’s the slo mo vid again. Look much more then just targeted strumming to me. What do you think?
There’s no “just” or “more than” about what I’m saying, obviously what he’s playing is super accurate and precise.
From that angle with that video I can’t tell if he does or doesn’t ever hit the skipped string, what matters is you don’t ever hear it.
I’m suggesting that it might be helpful, if you want to achieve this, to get the feeling of playing fast and loose at the right speed and then work on making that more precise and accurate.
i still beleive that some people just have those extra abilities to do things others, no matter how hard they practice, will never achieve.
It is with a lot of things the case, also in sports for instance.
Of course if you are very interested in something and put lots of effort in it you can do a lot, but some just have that extra thing going on.
A lot has to do with the age you started gettingn very interested in something and realy study on it, in my opinion.
Anton for instance started at a very young age on the violin and already played Paganini stuff on that instrument before he switched to the guitar.
We all know that at a young age the brain makes all the connections and learns very fast and very efficient.
Have you ever watched his vids where he plays those Paga stuff at the guitar already at a young age?
The way he plays it with that accurate alternate picking and unbeleivable left hand control is so out of this world.
So, that big advantage Anton has, starting at such a young age and already being very skilled at the young age is something else. It will be veeeery hard or (in my opinion) impossible to achieve that level starting with this at lets say the age of 20.
Well, just my opinion. I will still practice the stuff he does but i have no ilussion of ever reaching that level.
Anton certainly is a special person! All of the people we interview are. But what makes them special is not that they can play these things. It’s that they figured out simple methods for playing them without anyone showing them. That is their gift. The naturals show the rest of us what is possible.
If you’re feeling some negative pushback on this, it’s because people are reacting to the notion that some kind of special sauce is required to play this that cannot be learned by the rest of us here. This makes perfect sense. Look at what forum you are on. Everything I can do now, I once considered “impossible”. Our entire world view is about learning and empowerment. Suggesting that we can’t do something, in nerd-tastic terms, is actually offensive. I say that with pride!
However nobody is attacking you personally, and your frequent enthusiastic contributions to this forum are appreciated. I would just like you to take a step back from the negativity when you post stuff that directly criticizes the attempts of others to get better. It’s not what we’re about.
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I just have a different opinion on this as i explained already.
Take someone like Rick Graham, he has that very special ability to make this superfast spasm movement, which only very few people in the world can do. How hard i trie, even if i would practice this 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, i will never be able to do this; it realy is something special.
Anyways, of course we all can achieve things we never could do before by practicing and learning from and watching at all those great players.
I realy I love this site, your enormous work at Cracking The Code, and the contributions and discussions going on here.
On this specifick topic it just was that he stated he was very confident that he could pull it of. Then the vid came and it was…lets say, a little bit disapointing 
But, i will back off and keep enjoying all the great stuff on this site.
Cheers!
I really don’t want to make a huge deal out of this, but just so we are totally clear on this, what I am saying here has nothing to do with Anton or Rick. This has to do with how we treat each other on this forum. It’s fine if you were expecting something different from the clip that was posted. What is not fine is calling someone else’s playing ‘bad’. Honesty is saying hey you’re not nailing the technique yet. ‘Bad’ is just belittling someone’s efforts.
I think we’re probably on the same page here, and again, it’s not like this happens all the time. I just think we should all act like we’re in the same boat here when it comes to learning – because we are.
Onward…
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Ok, now that things have cooled down I hope this is the right place for this comment 
I was always amazed at Anton’s effortless string-tracking. From the few videos I watched, it seems to me that he can track all 6 strings almost exclusively with the wrist! I believe this is possible because he has Gilbert-esque (huge) hands. With smaller hands, I think the introduction of additional moving parts becomes necessary to reach the same results.
I think you are absolutely right!