Hi from London.
I’m mostly a humble bedroom player into a bit of jazz.
I’ve known about CTC for quite a while. I see it mentioned on forums often, but I’d assumed it probably wasn’t for me. I’m not exactly obsessed with the technique side of things.
Anyway, I watched my first CTC video today, The Younger, Scarier Joe Pass, and oh boy, what a great video. completely my kinda thing from start to finish.
So, i know the Pickslanting Primer is the usual recommended starting point. I’m just not sure my main interest is in mastering pickslanting itself. I’m more interested in understanding picking mechanics generally, being nosey, and why different players seem to do different things. Maybe the Primer is still exactly the right place to start I genuinely don’t know. I’d appreciate any pointers.
Thanks for signing up! Two things:
Our focus isn’t really pickslanting per se, or any other single technical aspect of picking technique – it’s mainly just having a functional picking technique in general. There’s really only one way to go about this, in our view, and the Joe video is a good example of the steps you would take: get the tremolo working first, make sure it has an escape, and so on.
There is not really a “less hardcore” version of learning picking technique where you skip these steps, any more than there is a less hardcore version of driving that skips learning pedals and only focuses on steering. These are just core parts of the skill.
Two, the Primer has tons of “What players do” stuff:
My only caution here is that this can be entertaining but distracting. If you want to work on your technique, the actual path is simple and the same for everyone: start with the motion tests.
We’ll be releasing a nice site redesign / refresh soon which will make all of this much clearer.