Greetings from Brazil and technique critique - choro player

Hello there! If you want only the technique critique part you can skip the first two paragraphs.

My name is Tom Cykman, I play electric guitar since my 15 years old (so that makes it 10 years from now) and have been into choro music since 2015 or so. In the beggining I had a shred kinda past and was always into techcnical stuff, trying to figure out a lot of it by myself. In some ways I may got it right, but in others not, cause i had injuries and had to reeducate my muscles and movements. Its been something like 4 years since I’ve been consciously in a relaxing-mode path and I got really good results, not one injury in the past years.

Choro music is a brazilian instrumental popular kind of music which have its own language, really tonal and with a lot of harmonic movement, and of course a very rich rhythm section. It require a lot of technical abilites also, mainly for the solist and 7 string guitar player. I can suggest some videos, musicians and groups for whoever is interrested. I’ve discovered pickslanting and cracking the code just about a month ago and its been revolutionary, I like so much the way Troy puts lucidly the information, with plenty of real knowledge and experience. It will be a pleasure trade information with you guys.

Here’s a today’s video of myself playing 1x0 (Pixinguinha), a really cool piece of music that plays with the soccer concept and demands plenty of concentration but without loosing the groove :slight_smile:

If you may also consider this a technical critique, I stiil am familiarizing myself with those new concepts. Still dont know if I am more like a upward pickslanter or if I still stringhop or not. I mix upward and downward sweep, use legatto really often and am trying to include the double pickslanting in my playing. Feel free to comment on those aspects too!

Ps. Electric guitar is a really uncommon choro solist, there are no references at all! My references are mainly bandolinist (the brazilian mandolin), and there are some really incredible ones!

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Welcome @tom.cykman! I only learned about choro music a couple of days ago - sounds great!

Looking forward to knowing more about it and about your playing :slight_smile:

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Thanks man! Any thoughts about the technique?

Well everything you played here sounded great!

Let us know if you are stuck on something and feel free to post a technique critique video about it - otherwise keep doing what you are doing :slight_smile: