I’m not sure if you’ve seen this Troy but Eric praises you in the new Premier Guitar interview. You got validation from the best. Congrats!
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It’s great that the guitar heroes are recognising CtC.
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I hate to break it to you but I’ve never met Eric Johnson! So either he’s not talking about us, or there’s someone else out there pretending to be us!
Damn! That’s weird. 
well I’m sure he’s seen the Cracking the Code stuff and praised it, so that’s all that matters. 
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Lmfao
Makes you wonder what the imagined scenario would even be.
Eric: Hey man, nice to meet you! Thanks for stopping by the show! Are you the picking guy on YouTube, with all the angles and stuff?
Random guy with cardboard cutout mask of Troy’s face: Oh yeah sweating profusely Well, yeah! Yeah I am.
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I wondered about that when I read that Eric said he met Troy. You would think that Troy would of mentioned that on CTC at least a few times.
I do believe Eric knows about it though. I chat with Tommy Taylor on Facebook and showed him some of Troys videos a while back. I’m sure he passed them along to EJ 
Also consider that when you meet as many strangers as someone like Eric must, it’s not hard to imagine that he’s seen the CTC stuff, but could have misremembered about meeting Troy.
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Tommy Taylor on the other hand I have also spoken to on Facebook. He commented on one of our uploads a few years back. He was actually a little defensive that the “magic” could be “debunked”. My quotes not his I don’t remember what the exact phrasing was. I was polite. I get it. Eric came up with this stuff and is legend for a reason.
Teaching instrument technique is not in any way a comment on someone’s artistic achievements. It’s a little tiring to continually address the non-sequitur. And there is also no doubt in my mind that the more you disseminate technical knowledge, the more art gets made. So that other chestnut, that teaching instrument technique somehow kills creativity, I think stands almost no chance of being true. The many cool ideas that players have come up with after learning these techniques, that they never would have considered prior, speaks loudly to the contrary.
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I know what you mean about Tommy. He’s a nice guy but can be a tad bit opinionated. 
I wouldn’t worry about it.
The thing is that technique is just one part of the magic and its just the method of delivery of your musical imagination. CtC has helped me loads and I’m starting to get near my goals. For me, CtC has made the ‘impossible’ - possible, not necessarily ‘easy’. It still takes hard work, dilligence and practice. There is still plenty of room for players to make the ‘magic’, even if we all possessed world class technique.
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shhhh no one tell the classical violinists and pianists. 
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I find this completely fascinating. The idea that EJ might have watched some of Troy’s videos analysing his technique.
It seems to me that Johnson is what Troy called “an intuitive physical genius”, and has an understanding of how it feels to him to play like that, but clearly hasn’t analysed his own technique as closely as Troy has.
In the interview, Eric talks again (like he did in 1993) about trying to free himself to change strings after the downstroke, and he confesses that he still hasn’t managed it. How fascinating would it be to see Eric get to grips with some of the videos about 2-Way pickslanting. It’s probably the very thing he’s missing.
He’s basically a guitar guy like the rest of us - he’s fascinated by it and he wants to get better, and he hasn’t quite figured out the detail yet (even though he’s one of the greatest ever to touch the instrument).
It would be weird, and probably a strange experience for Troy, but I’d love to see a video where Troy was able to sit down with Eric and go through the fundamentals of 2WPS with him. I’d love to hear what kind of magic EJ might come out with, armed with that extra knowhow.
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Ironically him trying to do “2 way pick slanting” is screwing his playing up and probably has been for years. His picking technique isn’t as smooth and clean as it use to be. Almost like he’s not playing with enough gain, or the action is too high off the fretboard. I just assumed that it was from age, but maybe it’s from his actually trying to get down a technique he’s not comfortable with yet. I’m not sure why he would even want to change unless he started doing more three no per string type passages but since he’s a pentatonic player his downward pick slanting was all he needed to do in my opinion. It worked brilliantly. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
I mean, the flip side of this is Steve Morse used to be a predominately economy picker, until he stopped and decided to alternate pick everything. And, well, look at him now.
Nothing wrong with someone wanting to grow, even if it ain’t broke.
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No, I get it that he wants to grow, but unfortunately it’s messing him up with what we all became in awe of regarding his technique through the years. Go back and watch the Austin city limits performance in 1988 and compare that to live videos now, and it’s night and day. It’s still amazing, but I doubt Troy would want to analyze his picking technique now. This is all of course if that IS the reason. Who knows maybe he injured his hand like Steve and hasn’t been the same since then.
I think he doesn’t sound the same because he just doesn’t pick as much, it looks like he mostly uses pull-offs now. I was watching some old footage from one of his g3 concerts in 1996 and he was still using his standard dwps/usx picking technique with all the DDU movements, but in his house of blues concert in '97, he barely uses it, mostly using pull-offs. I’m guessing he made the switch sometime between then, who really knows why tho.
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You’re absolutely right on that. I think he started incorporating more legato in his playing around the Venus Isle era during his live shows. By the time the Alien Love Child album came out he wasn’t picking every note at all. Still very cool, but doesn’t have the same punch or impact that his alternate pick lines does. I wonder why he stop doing that?? Maybe he just got tired of having to keep up with the practice to maintain it. To me it’s just such a huge part of what makes his playing so appealing. A good example is the intro to cliffs of Dover at Austin city limits. Can you imagine if he did the exact same notes but it was all Legato? it wouldn’t have the same wow factor.
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In Total Electric Guitar, he demonstrates one of his signature lines with both picking and pull-offs and basically says you should work on both and use either depending on the sound you want. Maybe he just decided he preferred a smoother sound as he got older. But yeah I completely agree. His later playing makes you think, “Oh cool, that sounds great” but his earlier stuff made you say, “Oh man, what a SCARY player!!”
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I’m sure he meets a lot of people. Maybe something was misconstrued in a conversation.