Learning how to move my picking hand moderately fast was the biggest thing happened to me on my guitar journey and I’m grateful for all the folks here guiding me through my barrier. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get out the rut of the 200 mark, but that’s an other story.
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I only scanned this, so I may be missing some of the subtlety — always a risk with me! My main question is have you watched our instructional material where we explain why we do things like table tapping tests up front in the sequence, and not later on?
In the Primer we’ve taken great pains to make it clear that fast motion is not the end goal per se, but one of the most important diagnostic tests we have on the road to developing smooth, efficient motion. If you counted the number of times I say “smoothness” or “efficiency” in the Primer, it’s gotta be dozens or maybe hundreds of times. The hope is that it is clear where we are coming from, what we are trying to teach you, and why we’re taking the steps we’re taking.
Another thing we’ve taken great pains to do in the Primer is show a wide variety of musical styles and instruments. We specifically show acoustic guitar and mandolin examples in some of the very early Primer videos to make this point as clearly as we can. In those examples, I and our interviewees are playing things that are “hard” for styles like bluegrass, but obviously 130bpm sixteenth notes is nobody’s idea of death metal tremolo. So if we’re concerned that we focus too much on “speed”, then we are concerned with basically all musical tempos in the hundreds and above.
I’ve seen recent forum posts on sites like TDPRI from users who were initially apprehensive about signing up, but pleasantly surprised when they loaded up some of those initial chapters and saw the diversity of musical examples. Some of these posters were primarily acoustic players and not sure if our stuff would be for them. Obviously, personally I’m pleased that the message is getting out. Making the the Primer more style-diverse has been an important goal of the past couple years because it reflects our view that these issues in technique development really are universal.
That being said, if someone can watch the first few sections of the Primer and come away thinking that our focus is misplaced, then I’ll take that feedback for sure. If we’re wrong today, we’ll be right tomorrow.
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Yeah good luck with that “rut” lol! That’s like finding your car full of money and being upset that you’ll need to have it washed haha!
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Going through the primer from start to finish, about three times because I’m not the brightest, changed how I play and how I practice. Most importantly, I’m finally seeing results after being very much stuck at low speeds for longer than I care to mention.
If you go through the primer in order, even the stuff you think you may not apply, you can see it’s laid out in a practical way and it doesn’t say you must practice fast all the time.
This isn’t directed at anyone. Just my take having gone through the whole thing multiple times
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Oh, and the reason I went through it multiple times is because I skipped sections initially and missed out on some critical info
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Well I have some good news for you! There’s probably seldom going to be a time where you will need to break that barrier.
Also back on point. This is exactly what we are talking about. I have a suspicion both you and @joebegly already had been far enough along in your development and coordination that you were exactly the types of players that would benefit the most from the curriculum.
This is totally dependent on someone’s end goal. I know @gabrielthorn is trying to do some Petrucci stuff at like 230ish that’s sustained, and if that’s the brunt of what he wants to do, then he’s gotta push the speed.
Personally, I keep pushing because there’s a ton of Shawn Lane stuff that’s just mega fast and sounds awesome to me.
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No disagreement from me 
I came to the platform being able to play 16ths @ ~175bpm on my best days. It always felt difficult though and I couldn’t sustain it.
When I watched all of Troy’s YT series (the "Pop Culture Documentary stuff) the whole time I was like “Whoa! Me TOO!!! That’s exactly what I got stuck on”.
Now, totally on topic, I was confused when I bought the membership (though I didn’t realize it at first). I did not just watch the Primer in sequence either. I cherry picked stuff I thought looked the coolest and I missed some very important concepts. After all, I went to music school and for periods of my life I practiced 4+ hours per day and I had over 20 years of experience when I bought the membership. Why should I need to watch a video titled “Choosing a Pick”? Pride comes before a fall though, and I spent some wasted time trying to make my elbow motion play USX phrases. I think that’s on me, not the presentation or organization of the material.
So, this isn’t really the person we’re talking about. This is an ideal situation, where the person obviously has a very specific issue, in fact fortuitously the exact issue the curriculum is geared towards, is conscious that it resides in the picking hand, but is experienced enough that they have decent synchronization, and the general motor skills to pull it off - the other challenges involved are fairly ironed out. To get the most out of it, there’s an experience level that kind of already has to be in place, and a very specific issue to address. What I’ve noticed though lately, is really a divergence from this, and a general lack of the development necessary to get the absolute most out of it.
Now if I were to critique a little on the current ideas and form: I believe @joebegly were discussing this in another thread. The focus seems to be more on the joints and appendage movements as a pure visual reference, and maybe not so much on the particular muscles needed to make those movements happen the way they are described. To elaborate a little more, while you hear often that shredding shouldn’t be tense, playing guitar in general isn’t tension free. Muscles have to move and operate to make these movements possible, and maybe a bit of focus on what exactly these motions should feel like and the particular muscles involved that activate. I think we used a weight lifting analogy in the discussion. Someone can give you a barbell and tell you to move your elbow joint but with out knowing where you should feel that pump, or what muscle your expected to work, your kind of just guessing and hoping for the best. Someone on the other hand gives you a dumbell, tells you to move it towards your chest while utilizing a good form, and that you should feel the tension in the long head of the bicep, well now you have a clearer picture of what to look for.
The total beginner is rare here, but there have been a few. And I don’t think the curriculum is really geared towards them. In my opinion, theres a certain threshold of development that really needs to happen before you should even worry about some of this stuff. If your goal from the start is “yeah I wanna shred” than by all means at least play with the picking hand thing so you don’t have to back track later, but from there the focus should really be on developing your rhythm chops, playing songs, and coordination. I’ve seen more people recently in the in between category, who don’t quite have the sync there yet for some of the lessons to be the most useful. They have found how they pick the fastest, but now don’t know how to really apply it, or realize they don’t really have the coordination down to really do much with it or utilize it. I feel like I’ve had to break the news to a few here that now comes the hard part, and that there’s no getting out of that 10,000hrs to mastery, and that “yeah, you unfortunately really have to do all that tedious boring stuff everyone else from the dawn of guitar playing time has told you to do”
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Almost all the stuff I’m interested in playing is 200+, so I need to be able tackle those speeds one day.
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Starting with speed was one of the things that I avoided the most, always in favor of the classical “start slow and built up from there”.
Slow is good for playing slow but in order to acquire (as one acquire a language) fast mechanics, it’s necessary to practice fast movements.
Moving the pick fast is something I’d not have tried if it wasn’t for the lessons in the primer and the amazing comuntiy always guiding me.
Thanks a lot you, guys!
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I look at CtC as three tiers.
Tier 0 is worthy of the Nobel Prize in Music (if there was one), as this is the theory of picking (escapes, etc.) coupled with experimental proof (via Magnets), all wrapped up in one flawless package. The significance of this work cannot be overstated. This is even free!
Tier 1 is heuristic suggestions about how to enhance picking speed, as well as a massive body of practice material. This content is remarkable, and geared to a huge range of students of all skill levels; it is what will reach the masses and further spread picking excellence.
Tier 2 is about music theory, improvisation, and other typical stuff that is similar to other web sites, so I typically ignore it.
I believe that guitar technique is now mature, and CtC put in the final missing piece. There is no place that I am aware of that has all of the pieces clearly described, but CtC has the plectrum covered to perfection. If only more things were this awesome.
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How useful is picking speed if your fretting hand isn’t developed enough to take advantage of it, or your not developed enough to use it. That to me is the point of this thread.
The left hand steers, the right hand presses on the gas, and if you can’t steer, you shouldn’t press on the gas
-Paul Gilbert
Other technical aspects are more obvious. You put in the effort - you get results. Picking technique on the onther hand is kind of a mystery, at least it was before CTC.
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People come here for help with their picking hand, not to be told they are not ready to develop their picking. You can develop both hands at the same time.
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It is EXTREMELY USEFUL to remove the most significant barrier to speed (picking)! This way, there is one less thing to work on, and the ultimate problem (playing quickly overall) comes much closer to its ultimate resolution.
Now I want to see conservatories step up and teach ALL of guitar. 
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But you cannot get out of doing that, and sometimes the picking hand isn’t the biggest problem, in some cases it’s even a systemic one! The picking hand is only a part of the equation. Nobody said you can not develop both, but it should be emphasized that it IS a requirement. It takes a lot of work to develop all the pieces necessary to do it effectively, and for the beginner, the understanding that the picking hand is only one piece of the bigger puzzle, and the focus needs to be broadened sometimes has to be stated.
So yeah, if I see someone on here posting a video with a left hand that looks incapable of following the right, I’m going to recommend that be an area of focus.
This is where I will respectfully disagree, and say it’s only the most significant to some and not objectively the most significant barrier.
On this I’m not sure I have an opinion. That sounds like an interesting poll or study though.
I do think that given Troy’s marketing and mission, the site mostly attracts people struggling with picking. That is not to say they don’t have other issues too. I often suggest to people on critique threads that whatever phrases they are struggling with should be something that they can play entirely with a “light” all-hammers articulation at the desired speed (no pulloffs since that is a different technique and wouldn’t be used if they pick everything). If they can’t, then they have a fretting hand problem. If they can, but they can’t move their pick fast enough, they have a motion problem or are getting tripped up by an incorrect escape understanding.
From there it gets more nuanced and I think this is one of your points @Fossegrim (please correct me if I’m wrong) - it is entirely possible to have a great tremolo and sound fretting hand technique but something drastically change when combining the 2. I think of it like trying to comb my hair with one hand and brush my teeth with the other at the same time. The act of the combination results in an uncoordinated mess even if I can do them just fine on their own. I’d like to see more CtC case studies on that myself (not the personal hygiene thing, the combining left/right hands with guitar playing ) . We hear the suggestion of doing licks on one string and progression to crossing strings but maybe there is more to the hand sync (on every note, not just the first note of the pattern) for some players. Troy mentioned on his journey and discovery of applying “chunking” that if he aligned his pick on the first note of the pattern he was good to go. Maybe it’s not that straightforward for everyone.
Even if people can line up the “landmark” note…there’s a lot that can happen in between where things drift. I’ve read (in some thread here) Troy acknowledge this as a thing people may struggle with and it may even be on the roadmap of some new material.
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@joebegly I couldn’t have said better myself!
My other gripe is maybe a little more focus on what it takes (muscle activation) to get some of these movements to work effectively. Adam kind of summed it up pretty well at the bottom of the thread below:
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Excellent!
So broadly speaking, “issue” #1 is that there needs to be more focus on overall left/right hand coordination of each note.
What are you’re thoughts on how to improve that? Would it be a combination of playing slow and fast? Too slow, the motion(s) can change so much that it’s not efficient and will hit a wall if someone attempts to keep using it at faster speeds. Too fast and it could be slop fest that’s not useful. Maybe the “Goldilocks” thing? There’s some speed that’s “just right”? That’s likely different from player to player, but being able to identify when you find it could be helpful.
And this is all just thinking out loud. I’m actually in a situation where I’m working on some Eric Johnson licks and there are days where I can hang with the recordings at 100% the tempo. It’s not 100% clean 100% of the time though. I’ve noticed if I take that tempo down to 80 - 95% that my success rate goes up dramatically. I think that is still above speeds where I could accidentally revert to inefficient movements but who knows. I’ve been wrong about that before lol! Will lots of time in this 80 - 95% region eventually get me to the full speed, clean and controlled most of the time? Or would a better way be to always play at 100% of the tempo, but shorten the phrases so that I’m focusing on chunks of 6 - 12 notes? Pretty sure I could handle that 100% of the tempo, 100% clean, 98% of the time Maybe then doing some forward chaining and gradually adding notes.
Hopefully that’s not a tangent and is part of what you’re after for site improvement