Introducing Synchronicity: the ultimate guide to hand synchronization

View this page on the Cracking the Code Platform:


12 Likes

Our latest seminar on hand synchronization is up. It’s a major addition to the platform and fills in a meaningful gap in the current sequence. @tommo really knocked it out of the park on this one.

Hand synchronization in general, and chunking specifically, is one of the earliest Crackng The Code concepts, going back all the way to the original 1992 independent study. I didn’t create the concept, of course, but I borrowed it from psychology without actually knowing at the time that it is the actual concept used in neuroscience to describe motor memory. So it’s a pretty foundational concept to motor skill acquisition, and it’s taken us literally decades to figure out some of the concepts you’ll see in the seminar. It’s great to see it in a fully evolved form in our teaching.

Also note that there is a ton of fretting in Synchronicity, but it’s not a lesson on fretting mechanics. That’s a separate subject, and we wanted to leave spaced for an eventual @Tom_Gilroy seminar on that. So instead we focus on testing the output - whatever your fretting is - to figure out which parts are hanging in there with your picking.

The same is true of the picking side. It’s not a lesson on how to perform picking motions - that’s the Primer. But it is about testing how well that motion is working in combination with what you’re doing on the fretting side. This distinction means that Synchronicity slots it very cleanly right alongside the current Primer and future frettinhg-specific and ergonomic / postural instruction, so we’re really happy about that.

The whole seminar is 40+ lessons and we have the first few groups up already, along with all three etudes and all 32 “rudiments” that we came up with for rapidly generating huge numbers of fun practice patterns. We’ll be rolling out the rest over the next couple weeks so stay tuned!

19 Likes

Thank you so much for doing this! Appreciate all of your hard work!!!

1 Like

This is exactly what I needed. Thank you!!!

2 Likes

Super proud of the work we did together here!

14 Likes

Very nice! I already watched everything that’s up, waiting for the rest :slight_smile:

1 Like

This is what I’ve needed. Thanks!

1 Like

I just got this. I think this will be the missing piece for me, I’ve gotten my picking speed way up but can’t get my hands synced.

Just watching the first few videos, I think it found a major roadblock and breakthrough.
I could chunk fours, but never could do it with twos. I never thought to count the twos as one.
Amazing information! Will work on this and see where it gets me.

1 Like

Oh, also a shout out / special thanks to the hundreds of Technique Critique students we’ve had over the years, both on the forum and on the new TC platform.

You all have been brave enough to let us look at your picking and fretting techniques under the microscope (and in super-unforgiving 10x slow-motion, in many cases!).
And you were all open to trying testing our (often strange/unusual) new ideas and solutions, even when they went against “conventional guitar wisdom”.

In short, you helped us gather a ton of data without which Synchronicity would not have been possible!

Finally, a special thanks to my internet buddy Rick Mazz (https://rickmazzstudios.com/) who programmed an awesome drum beat for the Synchronicity Rock Etude.

Thank you all :clinking_glasses:

3 Likes

I’ll admit I only skimmed Troy’s post here but I’m not sure I get the point. This is a site dedicated to picking mechanics, why have an entire course about a single Police album?

jk jk this looks great, looking forward to checking it out.

5 Likes

I’ll definitely check this out - I feel like I’ve made a lot of practice here but it’s still not AS tight as I want it to be.

1 Like

I’m 73 years old. While I used to play fast, once I hit my 60’s I found both fretting and picking began to get out sync, and of course to slow down.

I understand the speed piece slowing as I age, but the sync is a surprise.

Even though this is about picking, the focus on chunking and the exercises will be really useful for me.

3 Likes

Strange…I was thinking about this exact topic last week! :wink:

3 Likes

We may or may not be secretly monitoring everyone’s thoughts to get lesson ideas… but don’t worry, it’s for your own good :smiley:

4 Likes

Wow – some great songs again Tommo! Can’t wait to work the exercises and rudiments. Is that the same Charvel from Metronomic?

1 Like

Yes it is! Which reminds me it needs a setup :slight_smile:

Compared to MR we did raise the action (by loosening the truss rod) a bit to make the clean tone sound better. I got used to it quickly though, and ended up recording the rock etude with the new setting:

1 Like

Looking forward to the further lessons!

1 Like

Tommo, I am so excited about this new course, is there anything I need to do to become a paticipant? I can’t find a sign up page.

Tommo, this is off topic, I know. When you gave me the last assignment in my tecnique Critique a ditifully recorded it, and (I’m guessing for some reason you didn’t see it) and my thread got deleted, or closed. I would love tp pick up where we left it, or, start all oiver again. Let me know what I should do.

1 Like

It should be under the Seminars section - here is a link.

1 Like

Sorry, not sure what happened there but I just reopened your TC on the platform and will take a look tomorrow!