Hello from France

Introduce Yourself
#1

First off all, let me say that discovering Cracking the Code has been a major breakthrough in my guitar learning process. I’m 43 and have been playing and practicing seriously for about 20 years now. By “seriously” I mean that I’ve been aiming at developing my technical abilities on the instrument as well as improving my music theory knowledge. I don’t mean that it’s all I’ve been doing, as I’m not a professional musician.

By now I have a fairly good command of my instrument but one thing I’ve kept struggling with and that I’m still not satisfied with is speed. It seems that no matter how hard I train, I cannot go over a certain speed without becoming sloppy (I don’t know why a lot of guitarist want to play fast by the way, I have a friend who is perfectly happy with the same old trusty blues licks, who couldn’t care less about sweeping or the modes of the melodic minor scale. Sometimes I envy him).

Anyway, after just a couple of weeks with CTC, I’ve seen some considerable improvement. Amazing. I’ve gone through the Pickslanting Primer downward pickslanting section and I truly found it amazing. I don’t know if my speed has increased, but my accuracy and my control definitely have! I’m still very much in awe of the speed at which Troy goes through the licks and I doubt I’ll ever reach that level, but at least now I know how to work.

It is such a revolution that I wonder if I should go on with the upward pickslanting section or if I should dig in deeper with the Volcano and Cascade seminars, what do you guys think?

On another topic, I have an issue with the 2-strings sweeping illustrated in the Eric Johnson 5-notes pentatonic runs. My problem is in the timing: I can do the sweeping but I find it difficult to keep it in time with the alternated notes. The sweeping bit is often faster than the alternated notes so the overall lick doesn’t sound so good. Also, I find it even more difficult to achieve descending than ascending. Is there a particular way to address this issue or should I just keep practicing until it becomes smoother?

Anyway, many thanks to Troy and the whole CTC team for your awesome work. Hello to everyone from France !

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#2

Hey, welcome to the forum! Glad you’re finding out material useful so far :slight_smile:

There’s a lot of discussion on speed here on the forum, if you haven’t already I’d suggest searching / browsing around a bit; you’ll likely find some interesting conversations.

I’d suggest at least watching the upward and two-way pickslanting sections of the Primer, will only take a couple more hours and will give you a better sense of the pickslanting possibility space, so to speak. Then you can decide whether to dive deep on DWPS or try working on other techniques as well.

#3

The Masters of Mechanics Interviews are amazing! And all the work Troy has done to tab those interviews out, it is endless learning material. I paid for the year with all access.

I started out deciding I would focus on downward pick slanting, but then realized my playing already had bits of 2 way pick slanting, and was working on that…

Then I discovered the cross picking interviews, Andy Wood, Molly Tuttle, and that is now my prime objective.

And I blame Troy that all I do now with my new EVH 5150 Striped Series is play blue grass…

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#4

Hi there!

It’s a legitimate question why us guitar players want to play fast.
I think for the most part it’s not just to be able to shred flashy stuff, but rather that some styles ask for it. In some styes, speed is required if you want to be able to play the songs with other people (that’s what I face in bluegrass and I’m sure people face it in other styles).
Furthermore, I think being able to play fast is also an asset in musics that are more “feel” based, like blues, because it opens doors for dynamic variations!

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#5

Its also useful to have technique that goes beyond what is required when playing live - songs can easily be bumped up a few bpm when the bands adrenaline is pumping.

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