Great guitarist, never practiced... Why it's not a fantasy

Playing Technique
#7

I’ll admit I didn’t read all of this, but I just want to be clear right up front about this. There is no question that I’ve played the same or similar licks probably thousands and thousands of times over the years. That’s just going to happen even for people who are primarily unstructured jammers like me. I don’t know what post you grabbed the line about never doing “repetitive practice”, but I apologize for giving the impression that I’ve never had to repeat anything. That’s definitely not the case. Saying that I’ve “never practiced” is super misleading, and not how I’d characterise my own progression at all.

What (I think) I was probably referring to is the thing where you sit there with a metronome for hours repeating an exercise at a specific tempo, then bumping the metronome. I haven’t ever done that. As a teenager I did lots of what people probably call “noodling”. I didn’t get nearly as far a the average Cracking the Code viewer gets now because I didn’t have much to go on. I plateaued after about a year and a half once my fingers and hands became comfortable holding the guitar and I was able to play basic “80s fast” legato type stuff like rudimentary pentatonics and rudimentary 3nps scale shapes.

It’s pretty obvious to me from everything we’ve seen here that the beginnings of comfortable fast motion do not require thousands of hours of “working up to speed”. Your very own “Technique Critique” thread is one of many, many examples on the forum of a person simply picking up a guitar and doing a correct, fast motion because we told them to try it.

There’s a long road after that, the “long tail”, where you learn to apply that motion to a wide variety of picking patterns and fretboard shapes. It doesn’t have to be repetitive in the “exercise” way, it can be more fun and musical than that. But there is no question you’ll have to try the same or similar things many thousands of time to make them smooth and accurate.

It’s clear that the big bottleneck for you was not physical strength or stamina, and having to work those up slowly over a long period of time like exercise at the gym, as we have often been told. Instead the bottleneck appears to have been mainly not knowing what you were supposed to be doing in the first place, so that those 3,000 hours could be put to more effective use right away.

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#8

Okay, think I got you. So let me set this up a little better… I’m thinking about any particular skill as not really being one thing. Thinking back to my kids’ early days, for example, a toddler walking isn’t just about ‘walking’ - it’s a bunch of component skills. All those components could be referred to with a word I like more, mechanics.

So what I think I hear you both saying, @Troy and @Drew, is that any specific skill on guitar (fast tremolo on one string, UPX on a fast ascending run, 2BX while crosspicking, etc. etc.) is about first learning a set of effective mechanics that comprise the skill… and secondly, honing/integrating those mechanics through application of the skill to lots of passages which require the skill.

Fair summation? If so…

…I can picture the first stage of working out effective mechanics; I can’t really picture how the second stage happens without the Hal Leonard nursery-rhyme-as-exercise (e.g. Lightly Row - ughh!) and the metronome (because I’m such a methodical square).

[…and I’m becoming convinced that poindexters like me get stuck because they can’t think outside that square box of theirs;)]

What did it look like when you were in that second honing/application stage…?

#9

Not sure what you’re referring to as the “second stage” but kids learn very complex language without ever doing laborious grammar drills. They just try to construct real-world sentences which begin sloppy and a little incorrect and they gradually correct bits of it over time. Same with guitar playing. You don’t solve your whole motion first until it’s perfect. In the beginning it’s still unfamiliar and a little sloppy. Over the long haul of playing a wide variety of music and correcting bits of it here and there as you see it, it all gets more accurate and smoother over time. Again, like language.

Whatever process you use for this long haul is up to you. I personally don’t like playing guitar unless it’s a little fun so metronomes and exercises are not fun for me. I like a somewhat more unstructured approach of trying to play cool lines and maybe get them clean-ish as I can, then moving on to other stuff. That keeps my attention better.

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#10

I see. Alright, think back to the '80s bedroom, under the watchful eye of David Lee…:wink: Were you cherry-picking licks? (listening to a song… nope, can’t do that one… nope, not that one… ah, this one I could probably manage with some effort). Or did you try to play every bit that caught your ear, even if you could only do a particular thing slowly? Or some other process altogether?

Basically, how were you making decisions about which challenges to accept?..

#11

What are you trying to figure out, what you should do next? I think you should start playing songs and phrases. Whatever excites you. Try not to worry too much about what and how. I think that may be overthinking things a little. I know you got burned by putting lots of time into stuff that didn’t work but that’s not going to happen any more, so you can set that concern aside. Everything will move much faster now so the particulars of exactly what you do and in what methodology may matter less.

Just try and play a wide variety of stuff that works with the motion you’re making. Simple single string repeating patterns are great for developing hand synchronization. Songs with lick ideas inside them that reflect your skill level are great for reinforcing those motions in a very practical, real-world kind of way. Diversity is great.

If there are any problems it will become apparent when you find stuff you can’t actually play, and we’re always happy to address those roadblocks when and if you hit them.

#12

(I used to listen to a lot of Sting… I see I picked up his habit of quoting himself…:wink:

I think I hear you basically agreeing with the above statement, in your own way and words. But I’m glad you used the learning-to-speak analogy, because that will bring out what I’m still stuck on…

Whatever goo-goo or gah-gah sound one of my kids made back in the day wasn’t far off (in terms of cognitive ability, motor control of the mouth, etc.) from the goo-goo’s he was able to make the day before. But so much of what’s attractive in a song is not the next evolutionary step - it’s like ten steps ahead of where you are now.

So I always imagined practice as a way of saying, okay, you’re going to need these various skills to be able to pull that thing off. Let’s work on those skills individually and then, when you’ve got those skills, you’ll finally be able.

That’s the ‘excerciser’ at work - and I see now that that’s not really how it happens.

EVH, SRV, Satch - choose any of the brand name nicknames - hardly anyone did this. I know I must seem dense, but I just can’t conceive of what they actually did! If I was hearing, ‘well, I just stuck with Bob Dylan tunes for a while, then I graduated to Chuck Berry…’ I’d get that. But the Accomplished Player always talks about having cut his teeth on some other Accomplished Players stuff.

I’m not clueless enough to think that they brought home the borrowed Danelectro or whatever and that afternoon started to rip. There’s something going on there in the middle… but no one ever, far as I can tell, clearly articulates what it is.

This I know: they were doing something observable and measurable. It couldn’t have all been ‘mental exercise’ (though that’s also a legitimate pedagogical tool in some musicians’ belts). It’s just so frustrating. I had an interest in fiction writing once upon a time, and so many authors you read on the subject could only talk about their “muse” - it was like they were deliberately trying to mystify the process so that no one else would get it.

This probably reads like a rant at this point, so maybe I should drop it, but I’ll say this one bit more… My 15-year-old has got the bug now. Got himself a cheap acoustic and he’s working on open chords, but he’s struggling with changes. He watched me play and couldn’t figure out how you’d actually learn to do that (apple don’t fall far…:wink:

So I sat down with him and showed him e-x-a-c-t-l-y what I had done. We did ‘push-ups’ (muted-fretted-muted-fretted - to get the feel of the shape); then we did ‘parachutes’ (lift the shape just 1/4" or so off the strings, and come back down); then after we’d done that a bunch of times with two different chords, we started ‘dropping cats’ (lift off from one chord and slowly slowly slowly form the shape of the next, so by the time you’re there, all fingers come down in their new locations at once - like a dropped cat’s perfect four-point landing). [not advocating animal cruelty here; just something I saw once.]

He’s both playing and smiling now - at the same time:)

We’ve got Troy’s genius Magnet-cam; now we need some other recording device built into every beginner guitar sold, to capture what it is that’s actually happening that enables people to learn to play this thing.

#13

Hey @Yaakov, if I understand your question correctly, it’s made of two parts:

  1. What did the greats do to get there?
  2. What can Yaakov do now? :slight_smile:

Point 1 is a fascinating question but very difficult to answer - unless we do the experiment you are proposing and wait 10 years :smiley:

Point 2 is in my (and Troy’s) opinion much clearer: you recently figured out a fast picking motion, and that’s great news! You are past one of the biggest hurdles of picking technique. We also know that your new motion is USX - so for now you can try to work on licks/tunes/etudes whose fast runs are USX - compatible*.

*= if they are not, you can try to make so by exploiting pulloffs, sweeping, and in some cases even swiping (plowing through a muted string)

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#14

If you take the clinical results in books like Motor Control And Learning: A Behavioral Emphasis and books that teach intuitive motor skills like The Inner Game of Tennis, I think you walk away with a few insights.

In terms of motor skill acquisition, the hard assertion is that more learning happens with with more deliberate practice trials; the “Power law of Practice.” I think it’s important to point out that while some great players may not spend a lot of time with formal practice, lets not discount “learning on the job” as a valuable form of time with the instrument.

I think what the metronome accomplishes for a player (outside of rhythm practice) is what researchers term “the gear shift analogy” where we start learning a skill in small disjointed chunks eventually working towards integrating groups of those chunks and then integrating it into a single action. Think of how you might learn a golf swing; I might take you piece by piece through the back swing, the down swing, the follow through. You might practice it slowly until it becomes a smooth integrated movement, and it becomes a powerful, fast swing. Increasing the speed of a metronome starts demanding smoother, more integrated motion from the hands.

I don’t think once you reach X bpm on a metronome all your work needs to be done there. If, say, I’m working on a sweep arpeggio, I may increase the tempo while I work my left hand, but I might notice something with my picking motion and I’ll bring the tempo down to work on that.

I think a teachable breakthrough for a lot of players would be more kinesthetic awareness; identifying, remembering and working towards reproducing what feels good and effortless in the motion of the hands… and some people excel at this sort of learning very intuitively and others don’t until you start coaching it. But it’s a much, much more well covered topic in sports performance than it is in music.

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#15

I’m sure you’re right. I’ve actually been meaning to read the Inner Game of Tennis for this reason.

…Okay, @tommo, I’ll let Squier and Epiphone know what they gotta do;)

Thanks to you all. I do appreciate the feedback throughout this thread. Any frustration on my part certainly isn’t aimed at anyone here.

#16

Think now I’ve got a better handle on how to get at what I’m trying to say…

If you’re the never-‘exercised’ type (okay, maybe exercises once in a while - but it wasn’t how you really practiced - seems this might apply to all of you, @tommo, @ScottyB, @Troy, @Drew, @GlassConcert, and @ASTN)…

So you’re listening to an album with guitar in hand, back in the day - did you only play the licks & other bits that you felt you’d be able to nail, at tempo, with not too much work? Or did you take on everything that sounded cool - may the whole solo or whatever - irrespective of whether or not you’d be able to pull it off at the recorded tempo?

#17

Hey @Yaakov, unfortunately I don’t qualify because I spent waay too many hours on silly metronome exercises at a snail’s pace, I was not that good at questioning authority as a kid.

But I do remember that when I could not take it anymore I would start doing “guitar procrastination” in between the boring metronome reps: i.e. kind of mindless noodling on scale shapes, with no specific tempo and some (attempts at) fast stuff thrown in at random.

Ironically, maybe those were more useful than the metronome stuff.

Also, infuriatingly, I remember having friends who instead didn’t bother with exercises and just played songs, and they were progressing much better than me!

So, after discovering Troy’s material 5ish years ago, I decided to work directly on songs and licks.

#18

Why this focus on what others did as teenagers? As I mentioned, I made relatively little progress then.

The big boost was in college when I figured out the downward pickslanting stuff. Within a year my USX technique sounded more or less like it does now. What I’ve suggested you do is exactly what I did. Cement the USX motion by working on phrases that you think sound cool. Integrating those licks into songs will give you real-world experience switching between rhythm and lead, which helps the learning process by forcing you to access the motions in different ways.

I would resist the urge to overthink this stuff and really just get straight to the playing.

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#19

Myself I always worked on music, technique was not something on my mind until later when I started to take lessons. I sat with my tape deck and my turntable and I played the records I liked. I started figuring out the songs I liked early on, Judas Priest, Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Anthrax etc. I was and still am more interesting in music than sitting around with a metronome and plunking out exercises. I do a little bit of it when I need to tighten up my timing, but I try to keep good time in my head. I don’t accent pick strokes like other people seem to do as it’s awkward for me and it messes me up thinking about things like that where I’d rather just play the ideas I have. I’ve always been a huge fan of Randy Rhoads (doesn’t seem to be popular around here) and I tend to gravitate to players that have their own style like that. Jeff Beck, Scott Gorham, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson, etc etc. I learned licks and stuff and through that I picked up techniques and I still do that from time to time, but I’d much rather develop my own style and ideas than copy other people or do mechanical exercising. It is very important to learn some theory and scales and triads and whatever else interests you as a song writer as long as that is also a tool that enables you to expand your ideas rather than become the focus. In my case, I’m here because I hit a brick wall and couldn’t play the things I wanted to play because I was missing that perception that Troy has. Thankfully there is this site and his and the teams work which opened my eyes to all these techniques and I’ve spent a little time getting familiar with them, and they’ve already been naturally becoming a part of my playing after learning some of the basics of them. To me it’s like Marty said in his interview, a tool in the toolbox to use to express what you want to do. I also found when you become excited about your ideas and just play/improvise and let things happen naturally and just “got for it”, you’ll surprise yourself and play some stuff you never thought you could do. The body is pretty amazing that way, keep the tape deck running.

#20

Why? Because…

Finally, a kindred spirit!

And it’s only about age incidentally… Like Tommo, I care enough to work hard at this (viz. in a scholastic, exercisey way) but have intuited by now that those dudes with the leather jackets in the smoker’s lounge are actually making way more progress. Okay, if we’re going back to high school, I was still playing my sax back then; but some of those guys were six-stringers, so you take my point Those are the teenagers I’m interested in.

More to the point - I’m interested in what exactly they’re doing. (Or for that matter, you, Troy, back in college.)

I think you’re taking a bit for granted the ease of evolution from the kind of insight you had about pickslanting to actually integrating it into your playing. Not everyone’s as good a scientist as you are. (Though we definitely appreciate that you’re leading the way - in a big way!)

I found two Technique Critique threads with excellent, nuts-&bolts advice from @Frylock (to @JustDave70 and @jpsychc) which is too specific for anyone to screw up, including me. I think they constitute the clearest word-picture I’ve yet seen about what you, Troy, were up to in that dorm room.

Hope I don’t come off as critical; I’m just trying to explain that “cement the… motion by working on phrases that you think sound cool” is far too vague for my Meyers-Briggs type.

#21

Nah, I’m an ‘exervcise’ guy. Though I don’t ususally practice unmusical exercises (except scales. everybody should play scales). And I like usnig a metronome, though I use programmed drums more often.
Come on, it took me two years to get USX! ))

P.S. Aaand I’m not even near to Tommo or Troy in terms of technique… But I’m glad that you mentioned me in one sentence with them )

#22

What did that look like, exactly?

Take me back… You hear an Ozzy song with a rippin’ solo - I’m talking when you were starting out. No way you can play it. Bits and pieces, much less than tempo; other parts, no way.

I’m not gonna believe you if you say that you just stuck to whatever was in eighth notes;) So what does it mean you “learned” the licks…??

#23

In case I didn’t repeat the point enough in those threads, the “cookbook” progression I describe there is meant as a supplement to more “musical” practice, not a replacement for it.

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#24

I did pick up on that vibe. Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning my iTunes library; I won’t quit being musical. Somewhere on the web I saw a thing about being a “guitar student” vs. a “guitar player.” I think we all want to be players here, so I’m with you. I see the structured stuff, thoughtfully applied, as a means to that end.

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#25

I wasn’t really interested in the leads at that time, I wanted to know songs. I picked up on Randy’s fills though, but they weren’t all that difficult. Funny thing is I still prefer that legato thing. I never figured out Tony Iommi’s leads as I don’t find him an interesting lead player, and I never figured out a single Judas Priest lead other than Living after midnight. I had read somewhere that Randy said that it was more important to develop your own style, and his words were gospel to me, so that’s what I did and still do.

#26

Ok, fair enough. Points for honesty. May I ask, have you developed your single-note (lead) play to the level of doing it in a band or performance context, or not so much?