Hello all! First I want to just thank Troy, Brendan and the rest of the CTC team for approving my application for the scholarship! Like so many others, my income has been decimated by the covid situation, and having access to all this content is giving me quite a lot to work on and stay busy during the quarantine.
I’ve been playing for over twenty years now, and I’ve always felt my right hand technique was holding me back as a player from being able to execute the sounds in my head, and since being turned onto Cracking the Code by hearing about ti through an interview with Wes Hauch, I’ve been able to really start to right that ship.
I’m primarily a metal/prog/rock player (check out my original band Earth’s Yellow Sun, also play in tributes to Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Incubus) but also a lot of jazz and other stuff including musical theatre gigs. I’m a member of the Canadian Naval Reserve, employed as a musician, so I get to flex a lot of different musical muscles doing that gig, and will soon be deployed to help stop the spread of Covid up here.
I definitely spent the majority of technique development time as a rhythm player when I was younger, and was able to develop pretty mean rhythm chops on the chunky strings a la Hetfield or Willie Adler at one point, but when I tried to transfer those skills to a lead guitar focus, I would run up against a lot of walls that would frustrate me. But as far as lead guitarists go,m y heroes growing up were guys like Dimebag, Zakk, Alex Skolnick, etc. and I always wanted to get that mean right hand working like them. That machine gun downward pickslanting stuff is some of my favourite guitarwork. I’ve worked through the pickslanting primer and am currently working on the seminars to get my DPS and 2WPS happening, which is a slog as you know, but I’m definitely seeing improvement! For most of my playing life, I was never really able to alternate pick with any kind of accuracy beyond 16th notes at 100bpm, but with the help of the content here, I’ve really been able to push that, and I’m now getting 16th note triplets around 100bpm fairly comfortably, depending on what I’m playing. If there was ever a time for me to put in the hours to get my right hand moving the way I wanted, this quarantine is probably the best opportunity we’ll get!
In terms of music education, I’ve taken a tonne of private lessons, as well as got my bachelors in music performance from Humber College in Toronto, one of the best Jazz programs in North America, which totally kicked my ass. (If anyone has any theory questions let me know!).
Anyways, I’m stoked to be part of the community, and I’ve attached a bunch of links of my playing and my bands to check out! (plug plug plug). I’m also putting a new solo cover together this week which I’ll hopefully finish soon and post for you guys to check out my technique progress!
Cheers guys
-Josh
Earth’s Yellow Sun’s Cover of Backstreet Boys’ Larger than Life feat. Lauren Babic (released yesterday, happy easter!)
Pantera-10’s solo cover I just made a couple weeks ago
Earth’s Yellow Sun’s Cover of Overture 2112/Temples of Syrinx feat. Rody Walker of Protest the Hero (this one actually has a guitar solo ;))
Our most recent original EP (released in 2015, we’re hard at work writing the new one)
Edit: I should add that when this was recorded, our band had another lead guitarist, who has since left leaving me the only guitar. But when we recorded this, I did all the rhythms and most melodies, but none of the solos or crazy shred parts.
The tribute bands:
Nicely done with the video.