Greetings fretboard travellers

Introduce Yourself
#1

Greetings, friends! I’m Tiago from Portugal, I’m 32 years old and I’m very happy to have joined the CtC community.

  • How many years have you been playing?
    It feels weird saying this out loud but 20 years.
  • What musical genres are you interested in?
    I’m interested in Folk Metal, Neoclássicas and good ol’ Hard Rock
  • Particular things you’re excited to learn / talk about here?
    I’ve always been an ok player, I guess. Not exactly bad but not good enough. I’m rather sloppy and I’ve got no strategies to play better and fast. For what I seen, the grip on technique that CtC allows you to have feels like just what I need, and that is the most exciting part about this.

How have you gone about learning guitar so far?

  • Self-taught? Regular lessons with a teacher? Both?
    I had lessons with teachers over the years.

  • Have you spent much time on technique before finding our stuff?
    I did spend some of time, but the picking hand was never the focus.

  • What Cracking the Code material have you watched?
    Bits and pieces on YouTube. Teemu’s interview is my favorite. That guy can seriously play!

  • Can you comfortably play a scale? At roughly what speed?
    I can. Around 180 bpms.

  • Any particular things you find yourself stuck on?
    I suck at sweeping, and just playing things without mistakes is hard. It’s like my brain stops trying.

I am very excited about this. It’s not a new year resolution or anything, I just honestly want to have a grip on my playing.

1 Like
#2

Hi Tiago, welcome! Sorry for the delayed reply here, I missed this earlier when I was traveling around the holidays.

Hope you find what you’re looking for and are enjoying things so far! Have you started going through the material in the Primer yet? Let us know if there’s anything we can help you find or any questions we can address!

#4

Hey Brendan! Thank you! I’ve been going at it for the last couple of weeks. I’ve noticed that I’m actually an upward pickslanter (which explains so much…) but I’m starting with the downward pickslanting first.
It’s like learning to walk again, it’s a bit overwhelming for me but I’m trying to put my best effort forward.
I’m trying to get the motion right and so far I think I can pull it off around 150bpms doing a propper downward pickslanting motion, although I’m practicing the right hand mostly without a metronome as Troy advises on the video. I’ve also picked up the 6 note pattern with the accent on the first note but is like everything falls appart when I try it. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can’t. I’ve been trying to figuring out why.
Is it ok to start practicing the 6 note pattern at a slower speed? Say, around 120 or 130?

1 Like
#5

Sure yeah there’s no specific speed you must play it at, and okay to vary it a bit. Keep in mind from the “Starting with Speed” chapter (Primer, Wrist Motion section) that playing faster (even if a bit sloppy) can sometimes be more helpful for getting the feel for a motion:

This one’s discussed more here as well: New vid: Don't "Work Up" To Picking Speed — Start With It!

Also, don’t feel like you necessarily have to master every motion / technique. That is: if the downstroke escape motion (DSX, which typically corresponds to “upward pickslanting”) feels more natural than upstroke escape (USX) motion, fine to mainly stick with that. Though worth giving them all a shot though, with a mix of speeds and musical patterns etc. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#6

Thank you for your help! It’s finally beginning to come around I think.
I wanted to nail both of them. Yeah, I was worrying because I was practicing my righ hand at faster speeds because of that video, but I was incredibly sloppy when I added the other hand.
I’m going to keep practicing and adding more exercises and patterns!
Thank you once again! I’ll bother you again a bit more, once I am a little bette at this!