Gabrielthorn progress thread

I agree with you both, I’ll pay more attention to this. 3 months ago I couldn’t even pick on medium speeds so I have new things to worry about I think. It makes sense that the more vibrato and phrasing stuff I do, the more it will be ingrained into my playing. Personally I love Yngwie’s vibrato the most, it always teleports me in an other world, no matter how many times he’s repeating the same licks/scales.

This talk of the importance of how you end a phrase reminds me of one of my favorite Marty Friedman clips:

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Great, clean playing with attitude! Very inspiring!

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Thank you :slight_smile:

Now I’m trying to do descending sixes starting with an upstroke and it feels much more comfortable this way.

Instead of playing 3 notes on the high E when I get there, I play only 2 notes, so 5 notes in total on the B and E string before turning around and starting the descending sixes.

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Listening to the isolated guitar track I’ve found on YouTube this seems like a pretty accurate transcription, million thanks for my teacher for the help :slight_smile:

Today I’ve tried to crank up the metronome a little, and gave a few tries to the easiest lick in my opinion (it feels the easiest to me to play). This is uncharted territory for me, and can’t sustain it for much longer.

And a sloppy attempt at 162 bpm:

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Hears no difference other than the speed increase…

{strokes chin and nods sagely} ahh yes, sloppy…

chops guitar up into firewood

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Awesome playing!

You’ve been posting a lot of clips that even very experienced listeners like me, @tommo, @JB_Winnipeg, and others all think sound essentially perfect with no mistakes. If there are mistakes, we can’t hear them. And more importantly, less experienced listeners, who are still trying to learn, are going to twist themselves into a pretzel trying to “hear” what the mistakes are. This can be confusing or even discouraging when their own playing doesn’t look or sound like this.

Let’s call your technique what it is: very good technique that is nearing the end of the learning phase, not the beginning. If any fine-tuning is required to fix certain things, it’s not possible to tell with the type of clips you’ve been posting — for two reasons.

One: room audio. It’s impossible to hear small mistakes like synchronization problems or missed string changes on very fast lines, with room echo. All recordings sound the same. And two, webcam video. The frame rate is super slow, which means there are not enough photographs in a second to show the motion. This also means the shutter speed is very often super low. This makes the motions blurry. Finally, the wide (audience-facing) camera angle is not ideal for seeing picking technique. We would ideally need a “down the strings” angle for that.

So, if I could make a small request, when you post clips, try to use audio recorded direct or miked up, and with down the strings camera angles. If you have a camera like a phone that has a 120fps mode, that would be ideal. If your phone has a 60fps mode, that is more common, and it’s still better because it has less motion blur. Here are some more filming tips:

If you want to post occasional webcam clips because it’s easy and convenient, to play through a song or something, that’s fine too. I completely understand. But if you’re posting things to show the difference between what you perceive as sloppy and less sloppy attempts, I would use the more technical recording style for that, to make those differences clearer.

So, once again, this is amazing playing, thank you for posting it here!

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Thank you for your words again, @Troy.

I honestly feel my playing is sloppy when I say it. On the 162 bpm clip I feel that a lot, on the 150 bpm one, not really, but I feel like I’m running for my life, I haven’t really played on these tempos before (it’s still funny and I’m shaking my head that I couldn’t really play anything faster than 130-140 bpm/16th notes 3 weeks ago, I pushed myself the first time when I recorded those videos for my first post).

I totally understand that the room echo kills the sound quality. I have the Axe III now so I can record the signal in a much better quality, I just need to sync up with the video. I posted one audio clip last week when I first tried to play around with 3nps scale fragments at 95 bpm 32th notes, I think the mistakes are quite audible here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LMN_ga406ByhLljLiktnQzvcvpQ7m_0I/view?usp=sharing

The video is there too but as you’ve said, it’s low frame rate and has the room audio.

I’m waiting for my magnet kickstarter patiently but I would be grateful if any of you could recommend any other solution how to mount my phone/set it up in a position to be able to record the videos in the recommended format and angles. I’m happy to invest some money into this, I’m 34, and spent only 2,5 years of my life on the guitar and had huge breaks between my first and second year. I started again after an other 10 year gap last October, so I feel like it’s a now or never thing.

And once again, I can’t express how grateful I am for finding this forum. No teacher has ever recommended me trying to play fast and push my limits, and even seeing that Shawn Lane video in the past about starting things fast and cleaning it up, it just didn’t work for me, I had a huge mental block I think and got discouraged very quickly. Spending hours and hours with the metronome, starting on 80 bpm, increasing by 1, didn’t work at all, my picking hand was destroyed already on 110 bpm playing 16th notes. That was my fastest before I stopped playing the guitar. It also took so much time to make a 30 bpm increase for one exercise.

All the teachers I’ve ever met told me my picking is awful and I should never ever use my elbow and play the way I do. I made more progress in the last few weeks than in 2,5 years in the past, thanks to the guys here. It’s priceless and it feels like I’m dreaming.

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The fact you’ve managed to nail hand sync to the level you’re at with whatever abbreviated amount of practice you’ve managed so far is astounding.

As far as filming goes…

Clip your phone into that and that onto your headstock, or a nearby desk or the arm of your chair and Bob’s your uncle. It might not be super stable, but I bet with a little ingenuity you could get nearly perfect video for the purposes of REAL technique analysis without more than a few minutes of work.

… Magnet kickstarter backers hate him… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Cheers and look forward to hearing more of your shitty unsynced playing! :smiley:

(that last line is facetious, you rule at the meedlies)

@gabrielthorn, the above is very true, I’m probably in the latter camp and I ALMOST avoid clicking on your videos, because I know exactly what I’m gonna hear. But I’m a sucker for well executed playing so I click anyway!

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I’ve ordered one of this, it should arrive by next Monday, so thanks for the tip :slight_smile: I’m still waiting for my magnet though, as I would always need to adjust my position to get a good angle with this (no way I’d mount it on my headstock :smiley: ) I think I’ll survive with this until the magnet arrives, and get some more feedback.

You don’t need any special device. A regular tripod and phone holder is fine. Just turn toward the lens. Or just place the phone on your desk up against a book. The Magnet makes things easier and closer, but anything can work.

Unfortunately my phone only supports 60 fps recording. I have a Galaxy S10+.

Haha I’m not sure which one of the two makes me feel worse :slight_smile:

I’m 36 and I played for about 22years. But compared to you I look 82 and I sound like I’ve been playing for 2 weeks :joy::joy::joy:

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hahah me too my dude, me too

I goof off a lot in my posts, keeps me (mostly) sane :smiley:

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When I’m watching your video clips, I have a very, very different impression :slight_smile: I wouldn’t be able to play a lot of licks you can do on a very fast tempo.

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@Troy @tommo my cheap amazon phone mount has arrived and I made a test shot. I try to find out how to disable the auto focus, it’s really annoying. I didn’t warm up or anything so I can clearly hear sync issues at the end of the first attempt. Anyways, what I’d like to ask if this format is sufficient for a more in-depth critique or not.

Normal tempo:

Slow motion:

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Much better angles thank you!

The first Impression I have from the slo mo video is that there are some repeated notes - are these intentional or not?

It could be that you are picking an extra note because your hand “wants” to do a certain string change. Take a look and let me know if you hear/see the same :slight_smile:

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It’s an extra note on purpose, let me post the tab for the lick. It’s a very simple DSX lick, I’ve only made the video for testing purposes.

I picked this type of lick because I can play it without warming up at all at this tempot :smiley:

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