How fast should I be before moving on?

Playing Technique
#1

Hi Everyone,

I recently picked up a monthly subscription for CtC and I’m currently working my way through the Pickslating Primer. I just finished experimenting with the motions and found that Forearm-Wrist was the most comfortable for me, however, I’m still experimenting with pure wrist motion.

So now I’m working on the Eric Johnson lessons in the Pickslating Primer, more specifically, Lesson 2 - Pentatonic Sweeping.

https://troygrady.com/primer/downward-pickslanting/eric-johnson/chapter-2-pentatonic-sweeping/

My question is: how fast should I be before moving onto the other lessons? Should I reach close to Troy’s speed (16th notes at 180bpm) before moving on? Or should I think about this differently and perhaps learn everything and then work on speed after? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! :slight_smile:

#2

150 bpm is a good target. It’s pretty fast, so you can’t be doing inefficient stuff, but not so fast that you have to kill yourself to get there. At that point continue if you’re having a good time or move on.

The recent thinking here is that there’s more to be learned from doing different, but similar stuff. E.g. instead of grinding on the same EJ lick until you get it to 180, you work on a few of his licks, or some of his whole songs, and since they all use the same techniques you’ll be essentially grinding on the same thing. There’s an aspect of novelty in this way of doing things that seems to be quite beneficial (in addition to making it more fun!).

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