Just picked up this course from JTC. I love Gus G’s playing… very creative, melodic, and really melds several styles into a very dynamic and exciting style!
I was really excited to see he released a “master class” on his speed picking concepts.
Its not as if I don’t have enough content from this site to last me several lifetimes on
this side of eternity… 
I thought it would be interesting to hear what Gus has to say, and his approach to picking in his fabulous playing style…
I’m still waiting…
Judging from the intro video above, you would think that he was going to impart everything he ever knew about picking. Nothing.
Now it does come with “performance notes” pdf that gives guidance on how to
approach playing the sequence, lines… but Gus doesn’t share anything …
Is this just the format with JTC? Because it’s really misleading. Now, I’m not discouraging anyone from purchasing the course, because the melodic ideas are excellent, but I was hoping for what was advertised.
Gus gives more details into his playing on free YT vids than this course. I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but Gus is pretty smart, and he is very capable of articulating in “his own words” what he does, or his approach at the very least.
Don’t think I’ll be getting anymore course from JTC soon.
I wouldn’t go into any instructional purchase expecting the type of teaching we do here. That type of information is not super common out there, even in the soon-to-be year 2024.
Instead, I think the best approach when considering instructional material is to lean on the resources that typical instructionals do provide: good video of someone’s technique, accurate transcriptions of what they’re playing, any kind of subjective feedback the player can offer about what it feels like to perform their technique. That stuff is still very valuable even without specifics on how to do the actual joint motions the player is using.
TLDR I think these types of courses are valuable. The REH Yngwie tape was what kicked the door in for me, and it was almost universally considered a bad example of an instrctional video at the time. People just weren’t looking at the important parts.
Edit: Gus is a great player! Technique looks cool. Can’t tell if wrist, fingers, or both, but we’ve seen other examples like that.
4 Likes
I dropped a few dollars ($20 maybe???) on a JTC course a little over a year ago. It was by (the amazing!!!) Igor Paspalj and my experience was similar. I didn’t have high expectations going into it or anything though. I was more interested in seeing the closeups and and getting some backing tracks at a challenging tempo (195bpm). Well, challenging for me 
Troy’s playing at 270 now so everything seems terribly slow compared to that lol!
But yeah there were no “insights” into the technique or anything. There was an interesting comment from him in the performance notes about speed in general. He mentioned the good ol’ “play it controlled and clean and gradually increase” dogma. But…he did actually say that to hit the big speeds, at some point you’ve got to gun it because there’s no other way to play fast besides…playing fast.
Is Gus kind of doing something a bit similar to Yngwie there? Looks like a thumb/fingers thing with a bit of wrist action to me? Gus is awesome, what a great guitarist! Anyways, rock on…
I didn’t see that comment? i looked over the performance notes, and they look like they’re written by JTC… not Gus… "Gus plays this with 3 nps, … Gus start this riff with… etc.
Again there’s lot a great ideas “demonstrated”, but the course wasn’t marketed as a
“Gus G super sequence pack”, etc."
1 Like
I agree with everything you’re saying… Gus comes off as fairly articulate player verbally, so I was expecting at the very least some points, and insights. Again, if you listen to what he’s saying in the promo vid, it sounds like he’s actually going to attempt to describe what he does, or at least give you some pointers.
I think Zack Wylde went into greater detail in his Pentatonic Hardcore video…
“Its just up and down man” 
Armed with the knowledge acquired here, i can get value from this course.
I would not discourage any fan of Gus’ playing NOT to get it! There are really
cool and interesting melodic concepts here that are worth assimilating.
I hate the JTC format, feels super impersonal
1 Like
I just wish that they came with an audio track of commentary from Troy.
1 Like
I would hope at the very least it comes with correct picking motions and fingerings of the composer/player of the content. if i am paying money i expect to not have to do the leg work.
1 Like
I had to pick it up cause I dig Gus’s stuff. Thanks.
I’ve been a fan of Gus since 2002. I have all of his Young Guitar mags, which show a lot of great stuff. His biggest influences were Paul Gilbert and Yngwie, but he went to Berklee for a semester and studied under Joe Stump during that time. He has said that Paul’s first instructional video was his main influence for playing.
An interesting tidbit is that he roomed with James Malone from Arsis, who is amazing in his own right. They have a demo out there somewhere of stuff that they did together back then.
1 Like
I wonder if Joe Stump is where Gus got his cool finger motion component?
It could be. His early stuff has a lot of Joe in it, the vibrato and aggressive picking (Joe sites Gary Moore on that).
1 Like
You won’t regret it, despite my frustration with what seems to be JTC’s format…
There’s a good amount creative melodic sequences using odd timing/subdivsions that are really cool and out of the box.
I was hoping Gus would have shared “in his own words” his strategies on the development aspects of his technique, because that’s how the course is marketed…
Check out his lessons with RockHouse. I haven’t viewed them in a while, not sure if he talks more about development in that one.
1 Like
Also wouldn’t be surprised considering Joe has given Gus a good number of lessons IIRC (even if Gus only attended undergrad for a week and a half!).
Joe Stump is awesome. a few years back i had a private lesson with him…
talk about intimidated… lol
What a great guy, and fabulous player.
1 Like
Gus has had me GASing over this Jackson since I saw the vid.
2 Likes
Man, I could listen to him play all day! Great picking, phrasing and killer vibrato, sounds super in time and wide. I don’t know why but it reminds me of Paul Gilberts vibrato - particularly from his Guitars From Mars instructionals 
1 Like
I was tooling with the licks some and looked at the tab. from the way these are grouped on the strings it appears a-lot of them are or could be DSX type licks. even on the odd ones the upstroke is on the outside going down which would in my case be a good place for swiping down to the lower downstroke on the next string. So even if he dosnt say and if the tabs are very accurate its hard to say iits not DSX. At least 2 tru 4 of the alt picking runs. Even on the Yngwie sixes going down you could swipe the outside string change. its only when your going up with then that you would feel trapped unless you used an alt way of picking that inside upstroke.