Hi everyone! My name is João, I’m a 24 years old computer science major from Portugal. I´ve been playing guitar for the past 10 years, started out playing classic rock solos and riffs using only fingers (think Mark Knopfler, Richie Kotzen) but switched to pick after the first or second year playing.
I was mostly into bluesy rock/hard rock so never really got into strict alternate picking anything, even when trying to learn the intro to Racer X’s Scarified, Id pick the first note on a string and “legato” all the rest 
.
Nowadays I’m mostly into metal, I absolutely love Marty Friedman’s playing. Him, Gary Moore and Vai are probably the influences you’ll mostly hear in my playing (also like to use chromatics a la Synister Gates).
I stumbled across cracking the code in 2016 but never took it seriously until last year when it was becoming very difficult to play some of my band´s songs (and discovered the picking god that is Jason Richardson, really into his stuff as you can tell by my username 
), and so, thanks to CtC’s groundbreaking, and fairly entertaining investigation, I changed my pick grip (similar to Troy’s where he’s younger and dressed as a ghost) to the more “standard” grip, and began obsessing about my picking mechanics. My current guitar goal is to find and master TWPS and crosspicking motions that I like, are reliable, give me as much muting control as possible, and of course, allow me to shred effortlessly 
Weewwww, sorry for the long text, I also like writing XD, will definitely post some footage in the critic session somewhere in the near future, looking forward to becoming an active member of the forum!
Take a look around and if there’s anything we can help with just let us know!