If you were considering getting it… or if you never heard about it… It’s now available!!
It might be the most comprehensive coursework on the maestro’s playing (neoclassical in general) to date! Chris is pouring his immense knowledge of the genre/instrument out here.
It’s staggering how much great content is already available… and on the way.
If you’re a fan of the YJM style of guitar playing…This is a must have!
Great job here by Chris Brooks!
I am going through this course right now. I must say, it’s soooooo deep and concise. There is an approach at developing through technique exercises with detailed explanations.
It’s absolutely awesome. The master Chris brooks actually responds to questions in open forum. I can say enough… get it!!!
That course looks very cool and Chris’ playing is pristine.
Did he say magnet view as in Troy ‘s Magnet? Is he part of the CTC community? 
Yes. Yes i believe so.
I love that Troy doesn’t have an issue with posts like this, and that Chris doesn’t self-promote on the forum; he’s a CtC forum member, but it was someone else who posted the link.
I love both approaches but one thing I will say is that IMO there’s a potential downside to having all this information; when my only transcribing tool was a reel-to-reel that could play at half-speed, the magic and mystery pushed me through. I transcribed many complete Yngwie solos with fair success and it was nightmarishly frustrating, but I did it.
Now I have stem-splitting, digital slow-motion and loop-trainers, but I don’t bother transcribing any more.
Weird, eh?
so the downside in your opinion is there’s no longer 'mystery and magic? It did come at a cost though because you found it nightmarishly frustrating. I’m going to guess you got a good amount of it wrong regarding the execution of much of Yngwie’s playing as well.
I’m not saying there isn’t a benefit to learning material by ear, but for many of us later in life, we don’t have endless hours chasing the mystery and magic of our favorite technical players.
Troy and Chris haven’t simply transcribed solos for us. They have taught us the techniques, systems, musical logic behind some of the greatest technical players.
Excuse me? Dude I’m just making an observation about human nature here, what’s your point?
My transcriptions were pretty fucking accurate, the only substantial thing I got wrong was the direction of the sweeps; I’m double-escape but lean toward economy-picking for extended downward scales.
To answer what I imagine is your point, no, I’m not saying modern transcribing tools are evil or immoral or anything.
I addressed your observations. You considered it a “downside to having all this information”, saying there’s no longer “mystery and magic”. Also, relegating coursework like this to “solo transcriptions” and transcribing tools, which they are not.
Many accomplished players “mistook” what Yngwie was doing at the time and it resulted in a lot of bad tab, etc. I didn’t mean this as a personal attack, just stating a fact regarding early transcriptions of Yngwie’s material.
I think his point is that there is a tendency to apply a hazy veil of nostalgia the struggle we all had in the before times which may not actually be warranted. Hell, I did a whole animated series on it — with a literal haze machine! But if I’m being honest, I didn’t learn much during that period. I ended up with a notebook full of stuff I couldn’t play, with no way of knowing whether any of it was correct. Technique development basically stalled for the entirety of high school until I stumbled across the breakthrough in college.
Lots of players got farther than me. Our Bill Hall interview is a great example of how it’s “supposed” to work. Bill may not have known exactly how the pros were doing things, but he got shockingly close. And in the cases where he didn’t, he was able to do things his own way which sounded just as good. I was nowhere near that, so I was relieved when I figured there was basically a trick to it all, in a manner of speaking.
So I see both sides to this argument, and the implicated “value systems” of both can be very convoluted and messy, or they can be the exact opposite.
Honestly this is so individualized for any given person, and is really particular to what the exact goal is and where struggles lie, or what one is trying to get out of their guitar playing future.
TLDR: There is value to both. It really just depends on context and the person, goal, or where they are in life and their guitar playing future or wants.
Someone may have seen slowing down tape and being frustrated listening over and over again with a notebook full of gibberish as a waste of time retrospectively. Others may have learned to find their “voice” that way regardless of the accuracy of transcription or technique used by the original artist.
Context is everything, and not clear cut here.
Yeah, there is no argument here…nothing convoluted, messy, etc. about any of this. No reason to over-complicate this for any reason whatsoever. There’s no debate, and the purpose of these courses, really isn’t open to opinion… I’m not trying to be obnoxious here… but I posted this for Yngwie fans, who have purchased the Volcano Seminar, and Chris’ materials in the past.
Those of us who purchased the Volcano seminar from Troy along with Chris’ Brooks’ material on Yngwie’s style of guitar playing know (or should) what exactly they are getting and why they are getting it.
Do you get the “Cracking the code” thing? The code has been cracked on how to properly execute fast technical playing in this style. We don’t have to toil away slowing down records to try to decipher proper picking techniques, etc. involved with Malmsteens (or other top players) playing anymore.
Thanks, I ordered it—fantastic so far. I didn’t know things about YJM like that he always uses his middle finger to fret and goes 12-4 or 1-23 or 1-2-3… that alone is weird for me but it makes sense! I am glad to be spoon-fed information and am so thankful for Troy’s discoveries.
He also goes 1-24 at times, which is super bizarre to me. I had no idea until @joebegly pointed it out - I think it’s less frequent than the other combos, though.
Yeah as far as I know I’ve never seen Yngwie do index ring pinky combo, which I SUCK at. Most guitarists are at least ok at it. I imagine something just felt weird to him about it. It’s never felt good for me. There’s like 1 or 2 postures I can form where I’m at least not laughably bad at it, though still far below what I can do with any other combo. Plus, those postures themselves are weird and don’t work well with anything else haha.
Yngwie is super intuitive though. Everything he does is effortless, so I bet he only ever does things that feel very easy to him.
I didn’t take it as a personal attack, jeeze louise one swear word on this forum and you get a lecture from the whole admin team. You assumed a fact not in evidence, namely that I was making a value judgement about anything.
Here’s an analogy; back in the day CDs used to get released two weeks earlier in the States than in Canada and I’d get in the car with a friend, drive across the border to the nearest mall (which was not very near) just to get that album two weeks early.
In the early days of the InterWebs we found a guy who had a vast library of VHS tapes and he would put anything you wanted on a cassette and mail it to you. He was awesome, every minute of every tape got used so if you bought a 90 minute show there would be 30 minutes of whatever he thought you might like. Entire proshot Van Halen shows? It was heaven. Nowadays everything is a click away and I rarely bother. Troy nailed it, I’m just whimsical for those days when it was a handful of friends trying to figure out what that YJ guy was actually doing.
Man when I figured out how he did the triplets for Bigfoot I was over the moon, even if it did turn out I was literally doing it backward; I had the concept and I figured it out before my friends did, I rule!
Peace out.
Did Shawn Lane also use 2 to avoid using 3+4 combinations?
From my understanding, but I would say a lot of people do avoid 3 and 4 together. Although many are comfortable with 3 and 4 like PG and many others. The 1 space 2,4 thing is odd though. I’m not sure many people do that. If Yng does really do that he may be in the minority there.
I would read some of @Tom_Gilroy posts here regarding that. He is kind of the finger guy (sounds dirty) and Shawn Lane guy around here, and has done exhaustingly extensive write ups on this subject.
It’s not common, but he does it twice here in this ascending single string run, so I assume probably elsewhere, as well. He’s making all the position shifts with the pinky, which is causing this particular weird fingering.
Ah Gotcha! That practical example is not the same thing I thought was originally implied by that fingering combo.
And in so doing made fast-picked metal and rock guitar (really any picked guitar) accessible to any guitarist to follow thereafter. A mind-boggling accomplishment from the perspective of anybody who went through this struggle pre-CtC. You effectively killed brute force struggling for everyone after you. Amazing, sir.