Hello from Detroit

Introduce Yourself
#1

I am a 50 year old that decided to learn the electric guitar 3 years ago. I have wanted to do this for a long time. Grew up in the 80’s and loved and still do all of the great Metal bands of that era. Pretty sure I lost half my hearing at an Iron Maiden show back in 85.

I have only been able to get so far and I am really now focused on have a breakthrough with speed. I get tripped at relatively moderate tempos and have not been able to improve. I am hoping that CTC will get me on the right track. I just started with downward pickslanting and it feels a little awkward but after a week I am getting used to it. I have started tremelo picking on one string focusing on using a rest stroke and clearing the string on the up. I am also practicing the Yngwie 6 note pattern to help with synchronization and am currently pretty slow. So it’s baby steps and hopefully results will follow.

I love all of the in depth breakdown that Troy provides but it would be really helpful if there was a pdf of exercises. It seems like there’s an introduction on ‘here get this down’ and then what seems very advanced licks. I am new so maybe I have missed a resource on the site. If so please point this out to me.

Thank,

Sean \m/

2 Likes
#2

Hi Sean, sorry to miss this earlier — welcome to the forum, thanks for joining!

Hope you’re making your way through the material and enjoying so far. Sounds like you’ve probably seen already, but the Pickslanting Primer is definitely our recommended starting point. It’s structured less around a specific series of exercises and more about going through how different picking motions work and helping you get at least one working. In particular the sections on wrist and forearm motion hopefully give pretty detailed instruction on doing these motions.

I do agree we could use more exercises / musical examples in a variety of styles to help as a starting point and reference for implementing the motions covered in the Primer, definitely something we’d like to add more of eventually. I also suggest browsing the Interviews section, as there are many good musical examples here across a range of styles. And usually a good range of length and difficulty as well, from short licks up to full songs in many cases.

Appreciate the feedback and if there’s anything else we can help with, please let us know! You’re welcome to post any time to #technique-critique with some video if you’d like specific feedback on your technique (details on how that works here).