I totally agree - but for players like Vai, EVH, Yngwie, EJ etc., where efficient technique kind of ‘happened’, those hours seem necessary. Each one had to figure it out for themselves. As a result, you get different (but often strikingly similar) approaches. In his recent interview with Rick Beato, Yngwie said he never thought about what ultimately became what we term Yngwie’s ‘picking rules’.
Probably the most crucial thing CTC has taught me is
“Perfect practice makes perfect”
So whatever you practice, practice it well.
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what about the less ambitious: “problem-solving* solves problems”? 
*=informed by a mixture of theory, motor learning science and empirical evidence
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I like that a lot, actually.
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A less thought-provoking term is engineering. At its most basic - engineering is problem-solving.
Yeah…math, technology and science are brought to bear…but there’s usually some point where the problem-solver stares at the wall and…basically dreams up the solution.
The solution needn’t be revolutionary…just a solution.
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wait, is it not usually done by building 200 randomly shaped objects, throwing them all at the wall, and keeping the ones that bounce off the wall better? 
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I tend to skim AND conflate (a horrible combo) but is the new official ctc guidance that we try moving the pick back and forth in 200 different ways and see which one feels the best?
I’ve certainly tried moving 200 different picks back and forth to see which one felt best.
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That’s certainly one way to go about it!!
We forget that Edison conducted over 10,000 experiments before the dang thing worked. The problem I have is failing to recognize something isn’t working. I fall back to the old-ways of “You’re just not trying hard enough.”
Then, after wasting a good month or so being obstinate…I’ll email @Tom_Gilroy…and he solves the godforsaken problem in like…a sentence. True story.
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I only communicate the solution in a sentence. Finding the solution might be immediate, or it could have taken me years.
He also bought the patents of others so he had a better starting point 
Still, he definitely put in tons of time getting the shortcomings in these designs right. Not sure if it’s a misquote but I still love the notion that enjoyed the failures because that was one more thing that he knew “wouldn’t work”. Rather than try more of that, he moved onto something else to see if that would work.
I see the buying patents as an efficiency. Someone else figured it out…I’ll buy the rights.
Love it or hate it - Apple’s iPhone broke entirely new ground…without actually inventing much of anything totally new.
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And literally killed off entire industries of similar precursors.
Although much of apple’s success was timing with the fact that the Internet was robust enough by the late aughts to handle the backend of smart phone tech.
Hmmm reminds me of someone’s teaching method and analysis vs its decriers and being actually able to back up this analysis via observation.
It’s like the Henry Ford quote about innovation and people wanting a faster horse.
It’s crazy we have intense pedigree and technical level teaching for all the established instruments and even for some relatively new instruments like pedal steel guitar or theremin. But the six string is treated like this mystical unconquerable thing.
RE: Apple killing off precursors.
Apple merely got there first, and they really shouldn’t have.
If Blackberry hadn’t been so completely myopic, we’d be using their stuff instead. They had all they needed (phone, email, text, web, etc) 5 YEARS before the iPhone showed up.
For all his many faults (that people so often want to point out) - Blackberry didn’t have the vision Steve Jobs gave Apple. Blackberry was literally sitting there with nearly all the tools (except music) - and never got it out of neutral.
Must’ve been how Samuel Langley felt when two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio figured out powered flight before he could. Langley had all the resources you could want…and with very little money…using their spare time, the Wright brothers ate his lunch and stole his girl.
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And we wouldn’t be forced to use touchscreens all day >:(
No arguing that the touch typing sucks compared to a physical keyboard. For a phone, the tradeoff is fine. Anything much larger you need to input data? Physical keyboard.
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I had a blackberry in 2011. The keyboard was very difficult to use because the buttons were tiny. The keyboard also used up valuable real estate so that the screen was tiny. I was ecstatic when my company switched to Android. I don’t love touchscreen keyboards either, but they’re better than those blackberry keyboards IMO.
Touchscreen typing is nice due to the fact I can have multiple different language keyboards selectable at the touch of a button.
Don’t get me started on the whole having internet 24/7 on your person and what social media has done to societal cohesion in the last 13 years. I’ll sink this thread faster than the Edmund Fitzgerald.
As Lady Gaga said “Social Media is the toilet of the internet”
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Haha, I’d not heard that one before, I’m going to have to steal it from her 
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