Introduction: Hakuna Matata

[Medium_Attempt]

Hiya,
I guess most of us here are interested in finding efficient ways of making desirable sounds come out of guitar. If not, I will gladly chat about funny things your pets do

I discovered Troy Grady’s YouTube channel just as I myself was tackling the problem of changing strings. Troy’s videos forced me to recognize that some of the greatest players use pickslanting while I was mainly string hopping or doing something like that. My technique of that era allowed me to pick any string from anywhere at any time in any context. That’s definitely cool and I took pride in this ability. What I lacked was speed. While I am not interested in being an uber mighty shredder, some speed is definitely necessary to play rock/metal music.

So I decided to try pickslanting. However, I’ve been living with myself for long enough to know some of my personal shortcomings. My main defect is the wish to try (and master) many things. Way too many things. This leads to me picking up a goal, working at it for less than a week and then discarding it so I could move on to another thing. Needless to say, this is sick I simply can’t focus long enough on one thing. I’ve read few books, blogs, and articles and watched few YouTube videos looking for a solution. I’ve tried few things but the method that helped me to keep my eyes on goal was creating my own blog and updating it frequently. I also made a YouTube account so I could record my progress. I’m not sure why it works but I’m surely glad. This helped me to work on pickslanting for a couple of weeks. I know, two weeks is stupidly short time when we speak about mastery of a musical instrument or any skill. However, I now am of opinion that if I don’t feel any promising progress for two weeks, it’s not worth pushing it any further. This rule of thumb may be faulty but I like it.

I am rather happy with pickslanting method but there are few more different approaches to make guitar submit to my will. Since I am so jolly about my blog and new ability to keep working on a goal for more than five days, I am trying few things out. (Examples: I worked on sweep picking (my long-time nemesis) and “Holdsworthian” legato. Now I’m tackling scalpel/circle picking where one makes the picking movement with thumb and index fingers.)

How could I be of service to the community? I learned pickslanting on my own (I have to admit that I didn’t buy any of Troy’s products ) so I had to solve few problems and to develop exercises. Furthermore, I simply enjoy troubleshooting and to help others. On the other hand, I don’t have that much experience with pickslanting so…I am basically useless here. I’m here just to drift along and to stalk forum

I know I’ve mentioned my blog and YouTube channel but I’m hesitant about sharing them here. I made these just as a journal and their main purpose is to keep me accountable to my goals. My blog posts aren’t written well enough to keep any readers interested and my videos are of rather poor quality. Why then did I mention them? Now, that you asked…I’m not sure. Probably because they are the reason I learned pickslanting. And now I am too lazy to edit this post and to delete that part.

Hakuna Matata

[Brendan]

Hey @Medium_Attempt, welcome! Great to have you here on the forum and glad you found our stuff

Ha, I can definitely be the same way in taking on too many hobbies, projects, or things to learn all at once…always challenging to take the time to really dive in and work on something over the long term. I think making YouTube videos, blog posts, etc. is great, even if the audience is mostly just yourself. That kind of thing can be a super useful tool for holding yourself accountable, visualizing your progress, and clarifying your goals.

Please feel free to share some of your stuff at any point. We’re all about helping each other learn, in whatever ways we can. Our #technique-critique category here on the forum is a great place both to share videos / questions you’d like help with when it comes to your own playing, and check out what others are sharing and see if you might have some helpful observations or pointers to add. And keep in mind, quality and polish aren’t the most important thing here — as long as there’s enough to see what’s going on, whatever you’re comfortable sharing is a great start and I’m sure will spark some good discussion!

[Medium_Attempt]

I didn’t expect such a hospitality on internet. Thanks for a warm greeting

About too many projects: I found that putting on horse blinders and forcing myself to stay on one goal at a time helped a lot. Whenever I try to juggle few things, I crash and burn, and get depressed, and anxiety comes, and all kinds of negative things happen.
Another key point was to find a way to make myself accountable.

It sounds like I have it all figured out. Well, no. I still struggle a lot. Actually, I tried to pursue several goals again two weeks ago and I ended up procrastinating for more than a week.