Hey there,
I suck at these online intro things because they feel awkward to me. I tend to either under share over over share, but I’ll see if I can find a midway point
My name is John. I’m 54, ans I started playing guitar when I was 14. I played “seriously” (as in…wanting to be a rock star) when I was 16, but then stop after five or six years later and didn’t pick up the guitar until 2011, and it’s been a slow burn getting back into it. it’s only been in the recent few years that playing guitar has become a huge priority for me again. And even though I’ve always played ok and can get the job done. specifically with my Rhythm playing. Even though my default playing style is late 80s/early 90s thrash/death thrash, I know I have a very good sense of syncopation and swing as Funk, hip hop and 30s/40s era Swing are part of my musical heritage when growing up.
However I want to up my game, especially with leads and I have found Troy’s YouTube videos mind blowing with the missing pieces to take my ok playing into the realms of excellence
Following the script here:
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What musical genres are you interested in?
All of them. I’m not joking. I don’t particularly like talking about genre with musicians as many are so locked in and dogmatic about their specific genres. I think of music as the divisions of frequencies and time based rhythmic units. Songs are stories to me even with out lyrics. So genre would be like world building…I have lots of stories in me, many of which I’m not able to achieve yet. But they all come from different genres/worlds as it were. I want to communicate them in better metalZ leads and technical brootals, Jazz, Country and world music
.I even love non-technical playing like Punk and Grunge. -
Particular things you’re excited to learn / talk about here?
I mean…what I just said up there. I hope there are others that are more focused on having the technique help them express their musical stories rather than to improve their technique just to show off.
Also, I hope there are lessons and topics about string bending and musical phrasing
How have you gone about learning guitar so far?
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Self-taught? Regular lessons with a teacher? Both?
Mostly self-taught, but I was playing music in school starting at 4th grade. I used to know how to read music perfectly and I know a decent amount of music theory. -
Have you spent much time on technique before finding our stuff?
Oh yes. I might seem like I’m low-key bragging about my playing, but I’m not nearly as good enough for why I wanted to play in the first place. So I’ve been really drilling down on the minutia on YouTube for a few years now. And man, you guys are the game changers I’ve been needing. -
What Cracking the Code material have you watched?
I don’t in what particular order I watched your YouTube selections, but I watched enough to understand upward and downward slant well enough to attempt to improve it. -
Can you comfortably play a scale? At roughly what speed?
I can indeed play scales. I prefer three note per strings scales over the CAGED system. And I’m trying to break free from the boxed shape pentatonic scale. As far as tempo, I don’t know exactly. It’s been a few months so I’ll have to go back test that. When I was last playing, I was working on a song at 190 BPM that had a shuffle/triplets combo. I could get some tasty zings in there when I would practice my faster techniques in there. But I was best at around 150. -
Any particular things you find yourself stuck on?
The forearm placement. Especially when picking the higher strings. I realized that almost all the years of playing, I had my forearm locked at the edge of the guitar, close to the bridge and would reach out my fingers, and arc my wrist as I got to higher strings. My picking would go UP and get farther away from the strings. I’ve had learned though Tom Hess videos about how the forearm and/or shoulder needs to glide up and down a bit when moving from the different strings so you’re holding the pick in a consistent way and leveraging your up/down with the wrist properly
Feel free to modify this template as you like, and delete any extra default text before posting.
No.
Thanks!
You’re Welcome