Hello from Chicago!

Introduce Yourself
#1

I’ve been playing for about 20 years, initially inspired by Hendrix and Beck but for the last decade I’ve been studying John McLaughlin’s approach as well as Robert Fripp’s crosspicking style. I’ve found these videos and lessons to be pretty interesting and useful. I never really understood why I naturally slanted the pick when I wanted to alternate pick nor did I even realize I was doing it! Pretty crazy revelation. Either way, thanks creating such a cool community

P.S For what it’s worth the big stubby 3.0 has been my goto pick, it just feels and plays amazing. Thought that was interesting given the Jazz III fanbase around here

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#2

Hi,
Welcome to Cracking the Code.
Any crosspicking stuff from Robert Fripp you can share ? i must admit I’m not super familiar to his work (though I have many records he plays on)

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#3

One thing I’m working on is Fracture, which is considered to be one of the harder guitar songs cause it’s straight crosspicking 16th notes at 125 bpm for about 3 minutes straight

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#4

The “Mirrors” section of “21st Schizoid Man” is so much fun to play. Especially the part after the atonal guitar solo with all the fast runs.

Fripp explained his guitar solo to Guitar Player magazine in 1974: “It’s all picked down-up. The basis of the picking technique is to strike down on the on-beat and up on the off-beat. Then one must learn to reverse that. I’ll generally use a downstroke on the down-beat except where I wish to accent a phrase in a particular way or create a certain kind of tension by confusing accents, in which case I might begin a run on the upstroke.”

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#5

Thanks guys. Great stuff indeed.

btw in that crosspicking section of ‘Fracture’ I can recognize some patterns that Andy Wood also plays and has demonstrated for CTC, with the double inside change, like:

B------d-------d---d------
G----u---u---u---u---u----
D--d-------d-----------d--

Cool stuff to play actually.

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#6

I’ll have to check that out and yeah that figure is all over Fripp’s playing

#7

Hey! Where’re you at in Chicago? I live in the Lakeview neighborhood, about a block from Chicago Music Exchange.

#8

Western suburbs actually. I just use Chicago in the general because this is an international forum

#9

I thought CME was more Roscoe Village… :slight_smile:

#10

I always thought of Roscoe Village starting a block or two west at Ravenswood, but the map I just looked at has Lincoln as the border. Which is funny—that means Chicago Music Exchange is in Roscoe but the Reverb office across the street isn’t. :slight_smile:

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#11

Just giving you a hard time! I lived all over the North side when I was there.

#12

Ha, I totally know some people who would split hairs like that (that’s not Bucktown, it’s Wicker Park!). :roll_eyes:

As well as some, uh… aspirational folks who’d misrepresent their neighborhood to sound impressive. Sorry brah, but Addison & Elston isn’t Wrigleyville. Not even close.

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