Hi CTC community!
My name is Alain. I’m in my 20s, and I live in Europe.
I’ve been playing guitar for about 12-13 years now. I started out taking a few years’ worth of lessons from the “local guitar guy”, but I’ve been a self-taught player for the last 8 years or so. I took a one year sabbatical from the guitar to focus on learning bass (I discovered Jaco, James Jamerson, and Rocco Prestia). And the last 2 years I have only played my acoustic guitar (I discovered Tony Rice and Doc Watson), but I’m jumping back into electric playing again.
I have a very broad musical taste, but the main style I’m trying to focus on is Fusion, as most of my current guitar heroes live within that world.
To list a few players I am really into: Issei Noro (Casiopea), Guthrie Govan, Allan Holdsworth, Shawn Lane, John Scofield.
But also people from outside the fusion world, like Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Derek Trucks, Tony Rice, Curtis Mayfield, Chalmers Alford, Matt schofield, Larry Carlton.
This list can go on for a very long time, and I also find a lot inspiration from musicians that aren’t guitarists.
Most of my picking technique I fell into kind of naturally from trying to learn fast jazz heads (tracks like Donna Lee for example). I naturally gravitate towards an upstroke-escape picking style which really got codified for me by watching the Cracking The Code series on youtube a few years ago.
My goal in using this site as a resource is to build a primarily double-escape focused alt-picking technique, getting it rock solid, and then plugging in sweeping and hybrid picking.
As to what I see as the primary bottleneck of my picking technique right now is if I try to play at higher tempos (in chunks, which is how i try to develop my speed mostly) I struggle a lot with the outside string changes (so down-up when ascending and up-down when descending). It literally feels like I’m jumping over hurdles compared to the inside changes (up-down ascending, down-up descending).
To answer the question “Can you comfortably play a scale? At roughly what speed? Any particular things you find yourself stuck on?”:
I’m not someone that does a lot of linear scale practice up and down the neck to build speed but my fastest comfortable tempo would be ~150bpm I’d say. Long linear 3nps passages are tough for me however.
I’m very excited to jump into the Pickslanting Primer and hopefully make use of this forum for questions regarding my technical development!
Cheers,
Al.