Hello everyone,
finally I come out of the closet and introduce myself here. I am a professional guitar player. I went to music college and got a degree as a jazz guitar major, although I would describe myself as more of a Rock/Pop player.
Apart from playing gigs I used to teach guitar students, until some time ago I went back to college. As a result I am doing research in computational social science now. I still play gigs, but I don’t teach anymore.
As a (social) scientist, I have to say that CtC is maybe the best scientific work that I have seen in a while. The rigor that Troy applied to the study of picking technique is impressive. He started, as it seems, with no real idea at all, did some hard qualitative research, observed something and came up with some hypotheses. From there on, he gathered data to test the hypotheses. Luckily for us, he seemed to have come up with the right hypotheses, as the evidence is overwhelming.
As a guitar player, learning about CtC and the new insights was a revelation. I had tried to get to speed a couple of times in my career, but always gave up after a while. And even though it does not fit with my world view, at some point I accepted that for some reason I just couldn’t play fast. (It’s worth noting, that I did manage to have a successful career as a guitar player nevertheless.) Now I know that’s not the case, and besides not having to change my world view, I can now tackle the whole speed thing with a whole new mindset.
Looking at the videos on this forum I am impressed. It’s pretty cool, to be part of this special little community. I’m looking forward to having some nerdy conversations on guitar picking technique!
Cheers
