Hey guys! Very excited to be here, after what I’ve learned so far from Troy and the CTC team. Might be the fastest I’ve ever improved my technique on guitar. Thank you so much!
- How many years have you been playing?
I picked up guitar in high school, I think in my junior year, so roughly seven years. I never played as part of an ensemble or band, or for performance, though I did jam with a guitar group sometimes in college. I’ve always just been playing it as a hobby and I’ve wanted to get more serious with it for years; this program gave me just the excuse I needed!
- What musical genres are you interested in?
I really don’t have a preference for musical genres, but I’ve practiced jazz the most, and most of the recent techniques I’ve learned have been for jazz standards. I’ve always liked rich harmonies and I think that jazz scratches that itch, plus I feel like you can take that knowledge into other genres and still get pretty far with it. Artist-wise, my three biggest influences are Peter Gabriel and Pat Metheny, whose music I’ve been listening to for longer than I can remember, and Tommy Emmanuel, who convinced me to actually pick up the guitar and start playing.
- Particular things you’re excited to learn / talk about here?
I’m really excited to talk about increasing my guitar playing speed. I’m one of those crabby people who doesn’t enjoy doing something if I’m not good at it, which is why I want to improve my guitar playing as quickly and as soon as possible.
- Self-taught? Regular lessons with a teacher? Both?
I have a lot of both under my belt. My first guitar teacher taught me basic chords and how to read tabs, along with arpeggios, some scales, and a lot of rock and pop songs. When I went to college for a music degree, I had a second guitar teacher who taught me jazz licks, modal scales, and improv “systems” like what Pat Martino uses. He left in my senior year and I got a third guitar teacher who worked with me almost exclusively on technique. What I’ve self-taught myself I’ve done through CTC and through a YouTuber named Claus Levin, who runs a channel called “guitarmastery”. I got my learning style from the latter; I like to break things down into their smallest possible parts and then work tirelessly on each part until I’ve mastered it before moving on.
- Have you spent much time on technique before finding our stuff?
I spent a really long time on exclusively alternate picking because of my learning style. Levin had a free alternate picking program that I downloaded and dove into, but I got stuck on the single-string triplet exercises because of string-hopping and couldn’t figure out what the problem was after multiple cracks at it over the span of a few years. I don’t blame Levin because he probably learned alternate picking the same way all the artists Troy interviews do, through unconsciously messing around. The CTC method of starting fast was a game-changer, though, because before I could only ever get up to ~150 bpm triplets, and now I don’t even know how fast I could go.
- What Cracking the Code material have you watched?
I watched a couple of videos from the YouTube channel, and the Pickslanting Primer up to Forearm motion videos (I binged the newer material a few nights ago except for the “Identifying Wrist Motion” section). As far as stuff I’ve learned so far, I’ve done the motion tests and gotten some pretty high scores in all categories and I’ve messed around with the motions on guitar and have got a slower but controllable DiMeola (I think) at ~165-170 bpm 16ths and a faster but uncontrollable elbow motion that I have no idea how fast it is, probably within the 200 bpm 16ths region. I also might have a forearm motion with a USX that is a bit slower than the wrist motion.
- Can you comfortably play a scale? At roughly what speed?
I can play a scale from top to bottom somewhat comfortably because of my past experience with guitar teachers. I’ve spent so much time practicing alternate picking that I can’t do it very fast, though. Plus, I haven’t incorporated what I’ve learned here into it, yet, so it’s probably very string-hoppy, too.
- Any particular things you find yourself stuck on?
I’m probably going to make a topic about it, but when I use the elbow motion, I can seem to only play it at the ridiculously fast speed, and when I finish, my upper forearm and bicep ache a bit. Right now, I’m aiming to get a comfortable playing speed of 180 bpm 16ths, and because of that, I’ve been thinking about whether I should ditch the elbow motion for now and focus on bring the speed of the wrist motion up those last couple of bpm or figure out what in my motion is causing in the strain and fix it. Before finding CTC, I watched an instructional video from a metal player named Al Joseph who said that he got tendonitis from picking from the elbow, but given what I’ve seen from CTC I don’t know how true that is. I’ve also been struggling a bit with bringing my fretting hand up to speed as well; it isn’t a synchronization problem yet, it’s just that I cannot move my fingers fast enough to be able to play at that speed yet. I know it’s possible because if I do a little motion test on the tabletop, my fingers can move that fast, but I’m having trouble translating it to guitar.
Can’t wait to get to work. I can tell this is gonna be a lot of fun!