I have been watching some more interviews recently. I spent a long time focussing on the Andy Wood one, and then I also watched Carl Miner yesterday.
Just what a fascinating 90 minute interview, it’s a great piece of content.
He seems like a really nice guy. I also think that his explanations for what he’s doing and why are really clear…
It’s fascinating to see and listen to the player’s reaction when Troy explains what they are doing, and how that solves various technical problems (namely escaping the plane of the strings).
Carl Miner just seems really receptive and engaged hearing Troy explain what he does to escape every stroke. It’s cool when Troy asks him to play a lick, and then tells him what he should see there (namely air on every pickstroke). I can imagine there are light bulbs going off in his head when Troy explains the problem of string switching, because I imagine that these great players can’t even remember when this was actually a problem for them. Carl says that he learnt his motion in order to be louder, and he wasn’t trying to solve the string switching problem, but his motion solved both of those problems, so you can see how fascinated he is to hear what he is doing explained in terms of string escaping and motions.
Anyway these are just great resources. This leads me to think, there are so many youtube videos and resources on the web which just gives exercises or licks to play to get faster. But that leads me to think, any exercise or lick is useless for building speed unless you have the correct motion. The motion is most of the issue, not the lick. Either you just happen upon the right motion by accident/trial and error, or you learn a specific movement which solves your problem, like for Carl…