Is Masters in Mechanics dead?

Masters in Mechanics
#1

It’s been a while since I’ve been actively checking out CtC. I figured there must be some cool new interviews since I’ve been gone, but nope! The most recent interview looks like it’s still Bill Hall from Aug 2021!

Is the ‘Masters in Mechanics’ interview format dead? I know COVID put a hiatus on a lot of artists touring, but it feels like that’s been a non-issue for the past couple years. Are new artist interviews no longer a priority? I feel like @Troy 's interviews + analysis were the most compelling part of the CtC site.

There’s still a nice big interview archive for newcomers, but I’m a little disappointed at the lack of new content for people who’ve been following for a while. What’s next for this series?

#2

We’d love to do everything, but we’re a very small team, and need to prioritize. The interviews are a wonderful resource, particularly for me as a teacher. But they’re not generally effective as instructional tools — at least not for the most serious challenges that players ask us to help them solve.

A big part of this realization came from the platform Technique Critique feature, which is one of the things we spent a huge amount of time implementing that took us away from filming and editing interviews. Once we got that running, it closed the feedback loop, and allowed us to see exactly what was working and not working in our teaching.

It quickly became clear that there were many points of failure. The number of players out there with 10+ years under their belts who are stuck at sixteenth notes in the mid-100 beats per minute, or stringhopping even slower than that — you have no idea. Or maybe you do! But it’s crazy. People ask us why we focus on picking technique, how can that be a whole business? That’s why. The sheer scope of the problem is really pretty astounding.

As a result we’ve made some significant instructional strides, with numerous substantial updates to the lessons over the past year and a half. Not only that, but the new setup allows us to be really targeted in devising and testing hacks for surmounting some of these obstacles. If someone has questions for me or Tommo, it’s probably because something is missing in our sequence that should really be there. If so, we’ll film it and add it on the fly.

In between the big updates, we’ve pushed out numerous tweaks to the core sequence as a direct result of something someone asked us in a critique. Some of these tricks produced immediate results. Over the past month alone I’ve had more than one player go from 170 bpm to 220+ bpm with greater ease and comfort. Someone walking in the door right now will have a lot more firepower directed at their most difficult problems.

I know you’re asking about interviews specifically, but I’m explaining this for two reasons. One, I want to provide a clearer picture as to why spending 3+ weeks editing an interview isn’t always possible for us. And two, I want to address the implicit question, which is, if you’re not editing and releasing interviews, what exactly are we doing that adds value for players who sign up? That’s really important to us.

We definitely do have a selection of interviews that we have filmed but no time to edit them at the moment, and we’ll definitely get back to them at some point.

FYI, “Masters in Mechanics” is just the term we use for the paid membership — it doesn’t refer to interviews specifically. Lately we’ve just been saying “membership” or “subscription” to eliminate confusion.

Hope that clarifies!

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#3

I’d be down for a 3rd season of the series! Don’t know what it would about but I loved the production of it.

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#4

Thanks for the in depth response Troy.

It’s interesting that the Technique Critique has become such an important priority. I’m sure its helpful to many people to get direct feedback, and I totally get that theres a big time commitment involved in that process. I can see the effort that’s gone into the Pickslanting Primer material, it just doesn’t feel relevant to my goals on the instrument at this stage.

I feel like for me personally, I’ve reached a point in my playing where the mechanics of pick technique are pretty much “Figured out”. I’m sure I’m lucky in that respect, and CtC materials have definitely made an impact on my playing. I’m grateful for the contributions you’ve made (and continue to make) to that study. But, for me personally, I’m less interested in the mechanical optimization of efficient picking motions, and much more interested in the musical applications of technique at the highest level. Beyond technique, my goals are centered around creativity, composition, improvisation, phrasing, style. That was the greatest value I was getting out of the Artist interviews.

I really appreciate the unique perspective you brought to the interview process. There are very few people with the right mindset and background to direct world class musicians to explore the intricate details of their methods to solving technical problems, practice strategies, and approaches to improv, theory, and creative process. The transcriptions and analysis were icing on the cake! The quality, depth, and breadth of discussion are just on a different level from the often superficial stuff we typically see in “guitar media”, ie. Guitar World, Instagram, etc. I especially love the diversity of genres represented from Metal to Bluegrass, Gypsy Jazz, Fusion. To not continue this project seems like such a lost opportunity, for the entire guitar playing community.

To be honest, when I noticed the drop in the rate of new interview material, thats when I started losing interest and eventually dropped my membership. I couldn’t really justify the continued cost, and decided to just buy the interviews I was most interested in. Obviously, I’m just one person, but I would be sad to lose such a valuable resource in continued new artist interviews.

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#5

We did however, put out a pretty huge addition to the seminars, in case you missed it :slight_smile:

It’s more application / music focused: the idea is to show how to use a basic DSX motion to play a huge variety of musical phrases, how to use the mechanical “rules” to write original material etc. We even have full-length songs that people can practice to see how all the techniques taught in the course can work together in a realistic Rock / Metal scenario.

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#6

Unless I’m mistaken the existing library of player interviews covers every major type of picking motion used. Strictly speaking, if CtC’s goal is to catalog and teach picking mechanics, what’s there covers that admirably.

More interviews are going to be different and welcome, but more a convenience and certainly redundant given CtC’s purpose. As enjoyable as the interviews are, their entertainment value is secondary. If is considered at all.

Prioritizing what will help the largest number of players in the shortest amount of time, given the resources they have makes sense.

Also, I don’t know that a CtC subscrtption is meant to be continuous like say, a streaming service. (Which, btw…no one ever adds/removes depending on content availability. :slight_smile: ) I don’t take guitar lessons every week like I did when I was (a lot) younger. But I will when I identify a trouble spot I can’t sort out, or decide “I’m done with not being able to do/play/understand this.”

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#7

Ooooo, I need to check this out. I default to DSX, can generate the occasional escaped upstroke but there’s probably an efficiency loss there, but because so much of the original rock-focused content was on USX players I’d kind of been working stuff out on my own. Which, I mean, is great… but it would also be cool to have a bunch of other ideas to try than just the stuff I was coming up with.

Also, as a Technique Critique newbie… I don’t think I fully appreciated how useful this was. I’m seeing a pretty immediate improvement - like 30 minutes of practice later - in my string skipping and really string tracking in general, and I wish I’d started posting questions as soon as you all rolled this out. And if in doing so I can help broaden your instruction tools a bit, then so much the better. As it stands I’m kind of bummed I’m at work so I can’t grab a guitar over lunch. :rofl:

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#8

It is SO good! You’ll dig it for sure.

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#9

I don’t know, I learn by watching players more than reading stuff or exercises. I really loved the videos so I can see what other players are doing. There’s subtle stuff in their techniques that’s hard to put into words or a study.

Yngwie’s picking technique is like that, I made some progress recently after I realized that his technique is really relaxed and he doesn’t grip the pick hard, and how he moves his hand in an extremely efficient manner. I would have never picked that up from written material or stuff that’s been posted here, only by watching him play. A lot of my stumbling was actually my left hand, and I picked up from Andy Wood’s interview where he mentioned not using the edge of the neck as a rest point because it didn’t work and shifted how he was fretting. There’s so much stuff that some people just don’t figure out on their own and only get it by watching another player.

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#10

Figured I might as well bump this - I started the DSX thingm then kinda got sidetracked in the intro material, and ended up pausinng it and instead spending some time trying to think up my own little chunk-able motifs that I could move efficiently around the neck to make fast, improvisable scale runs.

So… I guess it was a success? :laughing:

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