CTC's method for learning licks?

Playing Technique
#1

After playing 30+ years I have always done “Metronome + Slow and Steady.” I never have heard anything else for as long as I have been playing until I joined CTC. I still have a tough time learning to shred from the moment I look at the music. If I practice a lick I have never HEARD or fingered, how is it possible to shred it out like I’ve always known it like I know my own address?

“Just play it at top speed and you’ll get it!”

I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work. However, I am still trying from time to time and keeping an open mind. BUT, I still do what I’ve always done.

  • Set a timer for about 5 mins.
  • Learn the brand new lick/fingering SLOWLY in order to get it under my fingers. Avoiding mistakes so I won’t have bad habits from the start and waste time fixing them later.
  • Once said lick feels good, easy and natural at a slow speed begin to bump up the “Gnome” to a speed that feels “pushy” but not over my limits.
  • Timer goes off, pick up where I left off tomorrow.

I have spent 4x that amount of time on some of the things on the MR Rock seminar, playing at the speed Tommo performs it. Spaceship is 150bpm. I have spent 20 mins trying and missing every time and never get the lick. However, If I spend 5 mins a day I am setting the ground work and feeling like I am attaining a goal. And more confident I will take some more steps in the right direction in the next few days to come.

Now, thanks to the Primer and working with Troy for almost a year, I am able to do some new things while still learning a WHOLE lot more to get where I want to go.

I remember the Tony Hawk video of him having to nail the new trick. He obviously has NO CHOICE but to do it in real time. However, we have an option not to. To me, it sounds like in order for me to Bench Press 500 pounds I need to start at 500 lbsm, when I have never Bench Pressed an empty bar, or learned some basic mechanics/technique to bench press properly. And if there is any Fitness Trainer that told me that, I’d find another Trainer or another Gym.

I want to say that I don’t think I’m right and CTC’s wrong and visa versa. I’m keeping an open mind to new ideas about learning. Honestly, I am!

So, what is a plan/guideline that get’s CTC’s approval to play any notated lick on this site and not waste time trying to nail it on the first try at the performed speed.

#2

I see you have an open TC with Troy so I’m sure he’ll take care of you there :slight_smile:

However, as a generic response I wouldn’t say you should play everything at top speed and sloppy all the time.

If it’s a lick you never played before, you can certainly spend some time memorizing “where the fingers go” and “what the pickstrokes are”. This might necessarily require a few slow attempts (no metronome needed, just whatever speed you need to figure out the fingerings and pickstrokes).

Once you have the sequence memorized, you can start playing around with the speed. Oversimplifying things a lot, you can look for the “slowest fast speed” where you get most of the notes right. The notes you don’t get right, try to figure out what kind of mistake it is, if it’s happening on every attempt or only some attempts, see if there is anything you can change to correct the mistake, and so on.

If I had to condense everything into a smartassy statement that sounds cool while not necessarily telling you much, I’d say: “don’t do repetitions, do problem solving”.

Or something. It’s late here, dunno :smiley:

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#3

So then the old adage is true…or true-ish! So why is it being harped on to not use a Gnome and stop practicing slowly? That is the feeling I get when watching these videos. And that could just be my own problem.

#4

I’m not sure what you mean by the old adage :slight_smile:

I want to clarify that this is NOT a binary choice between:

  1. do everything super slow
  2. do everything super fast and sloppy all the time
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#5

The old adage I’m referring to is “Slow and Steady wins the race”. Find a speed you can play the Diagonal Scale and work your way up to a new attainable speed. Eventually you will get to your destination BPM.

#6

Uhm, if you put it like that, I would be worried that most players would play too slowly because they want to get all the notes perfect all the time. Then it easily becomes endless slow repetitions with incorrect motions, that teach you nothing about playing fast.

It’s important to try the fast stuff pretty early on, to know if you are on the right track or not!

#7

Agreed, you can’t just continue to bench press 100 lbs and expect that you can bench 200 without increasing the weight.

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#8

From what I know, you put sections into a chunk, you memorise a few movements, stop, then memorize some more. You separate long licks into small chunks.
1234…
1234…
123456…
123456…
1234567…

ect.

Almost like learning how to talk, you learn one small word, and another, and you start to combine those small quick chunks into longer lines.

Chunking. Memorising small things and combining them.
They start to flow into phrases.

I want pizza was a fave combo of mine as a kid.

The major difference from learning how to talk on guitar vs talking verbaly, is the environment, if you don’t learn how to say stuff verbally, you got major life threatening issues. you don’t learn a run in c minor, unless you’re in an environment thats pushing you towards that, you have near zero reason to learn it. And it will be a labour of love.

Also dont use a metronome to learn a lick.

People who have accents have them because they went at their natrual flow. You WANT an accent in playing music, thats YOUR voice.

“To me, it sounds like in order for me to Bench Press 500 pounds I need to start at 500 lbsm, when I have never Bench Pressed an empty bar, or learned some basic mechanics/technique to bench press properly. And if there is any Fitness Trainer that told me that, I’d find another Trainer or another Gym.”

The difference is you going really fast on a guitar won’t kill you in the way you’re talking about weight lifting, but believe it or not, if you take a lower weight and do your reps faster, that will actually allow you to lift a heavier weight.

That is very much the same concept, if you get comfy doing something outside your comfort zone, you will have an increased ability to do it normally, you’ll have pushed that mental and physical barrier, it is not the same as lifting a heavy weight you’ve never done before, it’s the opposite, you’re training to lift a new weight in a safe way, training to move at a speed you’ve not before in safe way.

Playing faster than you can control is a legit way to overextend yourself and slowly start to get a grip on it.

Here is one of the fastest guitarist in the world giving this exact advice

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#9

Why is a metronome slow? It just lets people rapidly speed up until something is wrong, and then they can fix it and advance again.

Some people want to go fast and face numerous errors all at once, and if they can do that and fix everything, awesome! I’m barely smart enough to fix one problem at a time, hence I love my metronome!

Note that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing regarding a metronome; one can always mix it up!

Why incorrect motions? If someone stops at a metronome speed it means something is broken and needs debugging!

If somebody can play in time but doesn’t want to, then I’m all for it. But if they can’t play in time, is that more of a problem with their musicianship than an expression of their voice? Indeed, can’t the most expressive voice adopt as it wishes? :thinking:

#10

I am an advocate for practicing at all the tempos: slow, medium, and fast. However, each speed is for a specific purpose.

Slow / walking = memorization of fingerings, picking patterns, etc.

Medium / jogging = This is where I spend time trying to get super locked in to a click and can work endurance and cleanliness, reduce background tension if there is any, etc.

fast / sprinting = Where I’m doing smaller segments of music (from a beat to a bar) and and focused on pushing my limits and not caring so much if its a little sloppy.

I will say though, that Troy/CtC is 100% correct in that you need to find a motion that works at the tempos you want to be able to play at or else “building up slow” won’t do much. And you can only really find these motions like Tony Hawk working a trick and “doing it in real time.” I think once you’ve gotten a reliable picking motion that can go as fast as you need it to, then the more traditional metronome methods stand a better chance of working like they’re supposed to.

Also, speed is relative. What is fast for one person is slow for another (just like Yngwie on those old instructional videos, I truly believe when he demos his licks slow, that does actually feel slow for him).

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#11

Absolutely agree with this :slight_smile: How fast is your tremolo @6StringSlinger?

#12

Well, let’s unpack this. Let’s say that I was able to afford to pay you to teach some six year olds to become guitar virtuosos (over a decade, say), where they had no prior experience but a willingness to practice. Would you start with tap tests, etc., or just pick a great style (like YJM’s, or Anton’s, perhaps) and teach it to them?

My guess is you could pick any style that has solid mechanics with lots of elite practitioners (e.g., it works in the real world) and it would work effectively. So, are the tap tests really necessary, or are they for adults that prefer not to change too much? :thinking:

For sure! :slight_smile:

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#13

The “if you can play it slow you can play it fast” question is a recurring one and I think that for our purposes as plectrum guitar players, we should probably amend it to “if you can’t play it slow, you can’t play it fast.”

Surprisingly enough, there are reasonably mature and codified systems of musical education for plectrum instruments - but rarely for the guitar, specifically, except in the jazz manouche style and that’s almost entirely done via “word of mouth” or in-person example. But instruments like the oud, the shamisen, and the sarod are all plectrum instruments with a well established pedagogy for performance - one that’s time tested, and can effectively be increased in speed to genetic limits etc for the specific repetoire the performers are going to learn.

With guitar, though, there’s been a quite a lot of change in the instrument over the past 100 or so years - moving from gut strings, to nylon strings, to steel strings (thanks to improved woodworking) to electric guitars… Incidentally, a lot of guitarists aren’t being taught so much as they’re learning themselves based on what they hear, which means that there’s a lot of variability in technique, especially since the individual goals and repetoire of each player can be different - do you want to play as fast as possible? As cleanly as possible? etc.

It is a possibility that there could, eventually, be a mature electric guitar pedagogy wherein we can go “alright do this, learn these, start slow and speed up” and because of the way it’s set up, the students won’t accidentally pick a motion that tops out at a certain speed. But we certainly aren’t there yet, if we get there at all.

Troy’s approach with the tap tests is basically one of going “alright, what’re your inclinations movement-wise? Can you hit this speed with the motion you want to go for? Sweet, it’s good and you should be able to get it to work”, which I really appreciate. I’m not a guitar teacher and probably never will be, but if I was trying to teach a kid, I’d give them the guitar and a pick and ask them to try to play a single note as fast as they can and then use that as a structure for my lessons - incidentally, I’m pretty sure @TomGilroy does the same thing, albeit with adult students.

I think the Mile High Shred method of practicing with a metronome is probably the best general way to learn licks in a “Cracking The Code” way. Yes you start slow, but you build up speed quickly until you top out, and from there trial and error your way improving the speed. Ultimately, all motor learning is trial and error - the difference is the quality of the feedback you get on your attempts and this method makes sure you get to a point where there is immediate feedback rather than ingraining movement patterns that don’t work first.

I’d like to take an aside and say that I’m a little bit annoyed at how every topic seems to lead back to Anton Oparin these days. The guy is a monster player, certainly, but bringing him up in topics on this forum seems either counterproductive or stealth advertising; the dude has his own method, his own lessons, etc. If you want to discuss him you should probably do so in his community, rather than this one.

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#14

Aren’t these all USX/DWPS techniques? I’m beginning to think that USX is easier to consistently teach.

THANK YOU.

#15

The risha technique for the oud is essentially the gypsy style floating wrist-forearm USX movement. I can’t speak to the others.

I’m not very comfortable with it on a guitar with a plectrum, but I can do it quite well on the oud.

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#16

I can actually speak to this, because I teach guitar for a living and have taught as young as 8.

For little kids and beginners, I usually give generalized advice, such as the pisaform bone anchor for picking single notes. However, I save escape motion discussions for older, teenage players who are far along enough to where it makes sense to introduce that level of observation.

I’ll also introduce the idea of finding a fast tremolo early on, but I give little advice on how to achieve that (aside from mentioning edge picking), since I want them to find their natural way. I have also used tap tests if a student cannot get a smooth fast tremolo on their own, just to see if a particular joint motion is more intuitive than others.

I know enough about different joint and escape motions that I can then help a student navigate whatever they need to within the motions that they get working. I’d say my sample size is kinda half and half USX / DSX players.

Thing is, most kids (and pretty much all little kids) would have their eyes glaze over if I went into escape motion and joint motion. It makes even less sense when they can’t even convincingly play through an AC/DC song.

Not to sound arrogant, but I also have a pretty good track record of producing students with killer right hands, so I feel like my methods are working.

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#17

By “using a metronome to learn a lick” I didn’t mean right from the start. :grin: Learning the lick first has always been “Gnome” free until I can play it back from memory and sing the lick or at least the part I am working on.

#18

Fast enough I guess?

#19

@BlackInMind Totally. Save those "Devil in the detail’ lessons when they become more Devil-like I their later years. Teenagers…AM I RIGHT GUYS??? (pause for crowd laughter and the inevitable standing ovation)

:Crickets:

Damn, that one usually kills.