Higher Landrons - Eric Johnson's Fretting Mechanics and Strategies

Hi @eric_divers, that’s absolutely fantastic to hear. I was a little surprised not to have heard back from you, but I’m delighted that the reason is that the first lesson had such a positive impact.

For anybody reading, I can’t promise these kinds of results to everybody. I have to meet you where you are.

This is my goal for every student. To get you to this point, as quickly and directly as I possibly can.

I never withhold information to keep students “on the line” for more lessons. I have never held anything back from students unless I feel it’s likely to result in confusion, misunderstanding or distraction from something more immediately important.

I never claim to have all the answers, and if you ask me something I don’t know I’ll tell you so directly. I’ll give my best answer to my current understanding, and I promise that I will never bullshit you.

It would be pretty great for me if you did and I would very much appreciate it.

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I’ll work on such a post, then, hopefully with some video examples of things that used to feel impossible (inside gilberts in particular).

I apologize for not emailing you back earlier, and for hijacking your thread. Carry on!

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Excellent, thank you.

No worries, I’m definitely not upset that you commented to give a positive review!

I haven’t been active on the forum for a while. I’ve mostly been focused on Jiu-Jitsu for the past few months, I was promoted to Black Belt in December. I’ve actually considered writing up a post about how my time in BJJ has influenced my approach to playing and teaching guitar, but that’s not a high priority for me just yet.

The next big project, I think, is to write up the ideas on movement phase, hand synchronisation, etc, that we talked about in our session together. I also mean to write a updated article on Shawn Lane and the Efficient Digital Cycle principle (which I very much intend to rename) now that I have a much deeper understanding of the material and a lot of my own original vocabulary based on the concept.

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I think this would be hugely helpful to a lot of folks. I’m biased, of course. I do find that those concepts complement an understanding of the CtC basics very well.

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@Tom_Gilroy great stuff thank you! After reading your section on muting and string noise I listened back to this performance and realised… oh my god, there is basically ZERO string noise in the entire performance. Like not even once a random open string ringing for a few milliseconds.

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Peak EJ was one of the cleanest players ever. And as Tom mentioned in his write up, this is a cranked Tube amp EJ is playing through. I love all the modern (digital) amp modeling technology, but anyone old enough who’s played a cranked amp with a saturated distortion tone knows what a challenge it is to keep sympathetic string vibrations in check (as opposed to the digital stuff).

What I can’t fathom is how he even achieved this with single coil pickups lol! It was hard enough with humbuckers for saints’ sake!

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Thank you. I knew that it would take some time for forum members to read and absorb the article when I posted it, but I’d be really happy to read everybody’s thoughts when they’ve had some time to consider the ideas presented.

I don’t think people fully appreciate how incredible a feat this actually is.

Absolutely. Others have certainly reached similar heights, but I don’t believe anybody has ever been better. Eric Johnson was a perfect guitarist.

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One place Eric had to have learned how to play clean is his love of Chet Atkins.

I do not mean to detract from EJ in the slightest.

But…Chet Atkins played squeaky clean (zero distortion)……and……

Nothing.

Before you ask, or suggest it……No. He did not use flatwounds.

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Sure, but this goes both ways. Playing cleanly with loud amplifiers and distortion presents different challenges.

In the ACL performance, EJ is playing through a 100W Super Lead Plexi, a 150W Steel String Singer and two Twins. All of them loud.

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I 100% agree. It’s a similar challenge, but the mechanics are much the same. I throw zero shade on EJ. His amps are ridiculously loud making them extremely touch sensitive.

When you listen to Chet - there is nowhere to hide even the slightest string scuff. A tone that clean, even with string mutes, will ‘show’.

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Holy crap. I signed up to CtC just today. The CtC content is excellent as always, for a long time lurker on YouTube like me. And this is awesome. Thank you! I hit a speed barrier with my picking and my fretting is inefficient and not as fluid as it needs to be.

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