It is nearly impossible to explain his technique in a post. He has a 2 hour video at his school only about his string switching technique. He calls it 8s. He explains everything in detail.
You have to see his video to understand. It is very complicated. It takes a long time to just understand this concept and all the movements. And it is nearly impossible to learn this technique without Antons feedback. Great players thought they were doing it right and practiced for a long time without getting feedback. At the end they were doing it wrong and month of practice was wasted.
I haven’t seen a lot of players with a great technique like Anton at his school. I think because it is just too complicated. Search for sedaguitar on instagram. He is using Antons technique. But even he still asks a lot of questions and asks for feedback.
To learn this technique it takes years of slowly practice. For me it is not worth it. Troy has all the information for the right hand we need.
There are also 2 videos for the left hand and right hand. The information is very good and I learned a lot, but don’t changed completely to his technique. For me it was worth it to learn some small things and my playing got a bit better.
From my understanding of the lingo here, this essentially what Troy called and demonstrated as TWPS on older videos he had up here before he revised the terminology to better align with similar concepts. It’s not a difficult concept per se, it’s just not necessary to get a similar enough result.
Anytime you try to change something completely from the way you originally did it takes a lot more time than working to adapt what you had.
It’s not really necessary to be honest. My understanding of the situation is that it was something Troy had kind of postulated on in the early days of this whole thing and since revised when he had more information/material, people and visuals to work with.
I think the consensus now is that it’s equally effective to just have a primary technique couple with a small secondary one for those occasions when it’s needed for string changes.
You’re describing what we call “two-way pickslanting”, or 2wps for short. Here is a slow motion example of what this looks like on more complicated patterns. The last part of the lick switches intentionally to USX technique, so this is a good real-world example of mixing and matching of different techniques, which many 2wps players do:
I discovered 2wps in 2002. It was part of the reason I set out to conduct our initial series of slow-motion interviews, i.e. so I could document more examples of it. But I did not invent the technique – I just named it and made it public.
I’m mentioning this here mainly because we have tried to be sensitive on the forum to other people’s instructional material. If you want their teaching, you can get it from them. However this subject, in general, is a core part of how picking technique works and is fair game for discussion. It’s also uniquely tied to our history at Cracking the Code.
Players have used 2wps for as long as picked instruments have been played, and there is film footage of this going back far into the last century. As far as teaching, I will take some credit for that - this is one of those Cracking the Code breakthroughs which was essentially unknown in mainstream guitar instruction until we made our first public lessons on the subject in the early 2010s. It is covered extensively in our own instructional material, like the Antigravity seminar from 2014, and in more than one YouTube lesson that has over a million views, like this one:
It’s really not too complicated, and lots of people do this without being aware of it. You may even already do it yourself. If you have never filmed yourself up close, in Magnet view, in slow motion, it’s hard to know for sure.
But more generally, yes, I can understand why you would think that. 2wps is often learned subconsciously, by feel, without any specific instruction. When you are made aware of it, and try to do it deliberately, most people do an exaggerated version of it which feels unnatural or foreign, compared to the more streamlined motions they make when learning subconsciously.
Not a knock, I get what you mean, but I wouldn’t quite go that far. We still teach it / use it. We can’t not, since it’s something that many people already do. Plenty of classic patterns already work this way, where most people when filmed will show some amount of it happening. If I try to play the Antigravity lick from above, you’re going to see bits of it, and I can’t shut that off. Our whole approach here is more descriptive than prescriptive. If a thing exists in the world, we want to know why it exists, and when it might be helpful to learn it.
I think what you’re referring to is the complexity where some players appear to do less of it, and can still play all kinds of complicated things, while others do more obvious 2wps in combination with single-escape picking motions, and still others mix and match all of the above. There is indeed a complex spectrum out there in the real world.
But from a teaching perspective, we keep it simple. We just go for results. We are all about testing and observing. We get the core motion going and then see what it can do. If a thing is working, do more of it. If it’s not, here’s something else you can try.
Correct. This was not a generalized sweeping statement, but one more in regards to hyper fixation on one particular way to achieve something, when the reality is that it there can be a lot of variance involved. That said, and more sweepingly, it’s not necessary to be a good player.
Not only is there a complex spectrum in the real world, there is also a complex spectrum of what is acceptable.
To me It is always the end result, how that was achieved is what it is.
I’m not sure if I’m missing something but as it has already been pointed out here, this basically sounds like TWPS, so at least the concept sounds pretty straight forward? Mastering it with the perfection that Anton does is a different story, sure.
Again, not to knock Mr. Oparin’s fantastic playing, but I’ve watched his videos and he uses CTC clips to demonstrate swiping. Maybe he really is just that amazing of a musical savant, but from my perspective it seems that he probably only knows about swiping because of CTC. The reason I take issue with this is because in his video he said “you can so clearly hear how sloppy MAB is hitting all these strings,” while showing CTC footage of MAB swiping yet no footage of himself personally to demonstrate that he is not subconsciously doing so himself. The reason swiping is even noteworthy to begin with is specifically because, with few exceptions, you’d never even notice it if it weren’t for the slow motion footage showing it.
There’s also the sheer “too good to be true” factor. Mr. Oparin claims to have discovered “universal guitar technique.” He hypes himself up so much that he claims you don’t even need to bother with sweep picking because you can “alternate pick everything” with his technique. Well I simply don’t buy that he can do Rusty Cooley sweeps with alternate picking, and I don’t buy that he never uses a single idiomatic “shortcut” in his playing.
As I said before, the fact that he only vaguely alludes to his technique and hides it behind a very steep paywall further gives me doubts. I can appreciate that if you have something special to sell, it’s worth charging for the exclusivity. But the guitar technique market is crowded and while Mr. Oparin is a fantastic player, he is not so head-and-shoulders towering above the rest that he demands the price and secrecy. If he was the equivalent of selling Speed Kills when The Beatles were just getting started, I’d understand. But he’s just not. Yes, he’s better than me and probably most posters here, but so are hundreds of 8 year old prodigies and thousands of YouTubers selling their own courses.
In the end, I think that what Mr. Oparin is really selling is “polarisation.” If you hardline sell yourself as fully unapologetic in anything, not just music lessons but marketing and even dating, you will lose out on mass appeal but really cement a dedicated interest from a minority. It’s a good strategy, but I am a bit sick of hearing his fans going around in comments sections and forums calling everybody else stupid and misguided.
Nice post! I have some opinions on this. Please don’t take any of this as combative. Just on-topic discourse
The counter argument to this is that he’s aware of it and can turn it on/off at will as he shows here.
Also, he plays extremely complex string skipping patterns that would be game-over if there were (persistent) swipes.
(just watch the timestamped portion till he slows down)
I agree that without closeup highframe footage it’s impossible to rule out that he never does it. But he’s certainly doing less of it than his contemporaries. And he’s going through great lengths to avoid it. Whether the rest of need to go that far comes down to personal goals.
He never claims to be able to play the absolute fastest sweeps (i.e. Rusty Cooley) as alternate picking, and he uses sweep picking himself in plenty of his performances. He just points out that you lose control/quality of the notes when you sweep as compared to alternate picking. He wants to control which notes are palm muted, the volume etc of any note he plays, whenever humanly possible and alternate picking is going to win there. When it’s within his limits, he’ll alternate pick it. I get that not everyone cares about that, and I don’t fault anyone for taking a “shortcut” because there are only so many hours in the day. We’re talking about stuff here that most would only pick up on with extreme slow down footage, as if we’re in the musical Olympics. That’s more dedication than I’ve got, but I respect his work ethic.
When we get to the upper echelon of anything in life, it’s those final few percentage that are often the hardest. Michael Jordan wasn’t 2x the player of all his opponents. Some he probably only edged out by a similar few percentage points (if that were even measurable). Yet still, he was seemingly out of reach. He had this extra “something” that no one else could capture.
While it’s impossible to be aware of every single player out there, (like many of us) I’m pretty deep into who the monsters are. Anton plays things I’ve never seen anyone else play (in some cases, at all such as his string skipping 1nps like the one I posted above) and in other cases, as cleanly. When viewing virtuosos, we tend to focus on speed/complexity and can miss very fundamental things like attack control, synchronization, raw tone production, dynamics, and evenness of sound. Anton’s playing demonstrates extreme attention to all those things. I can’t think of many other elite level alternate pickers that I can say that about. In my opinion (which is fine if anyone else shares it or disagrees with it), he’s either better at picking than everyone else (i.e. more raw talent) OR he’s doing something differently than everyone else, therefore getting different results. I can’t accept that there are others who’s picking is at his same level. Typically people who say that aren’t aware of the difficulty of what he plays. I’ve gone deep down the rabbit whole of DBX/Mixed Escape/2Way pickslanting or whatever term we want to call “Alternate Pick anything”. Nothing I’ve attempted to play comes close to the difficulty of his classical violin transcriptions. I know of no other guitarists who could alternate pick their way through these. Well, maybe one…
With that segue, I’ve seen one player to date that I consider in the same league as him, in terms of alternate picking prowess. And what a treat for all of us, he works at CtC
Check out these beautifully filmed/played clips https://troygrady.com/users/Joao667/video/
Even as terrifying a player as he is, he’ll tell you himself (humble/sweet guy) that he considers Anton a better player. To me that speaks volumes of just how good Anton is.
Total agreement here. It’s unfortunate. I’m obviously a huge fan of Anton’s playing (and even more so, his hard work) but I won’t call players who have dedicated their efforts to different areas “stupid or misguided”. There’s no place for talk like that. We all want the same thing, to get better at picking/playing. It would be much better if we all support each other in our goals and not pit players/teachers against each other. Except Tom Hess of course Stay away from that guy! lol!
There are dozens of players who I admire just as much as Anton (though for different reasons) and they each offer something unique we can learn from. What we do with that info…Mostly it comes down to goals, awareness, tolerance of when better technique in any given area will be worth the required work. BTW I’m also a huge fan/supporter of Troy and everything he’s done and continues to do. I’d encourage everyone to view things more objectively and not throw out any babies with bathwater.
Joe, you know I love you man, and I totally understand what you are trying to convey when you say this, but dealing with subject matter that is, well, primarily subjective in nature, it is incredibly hard to divorce yourself from that aspect. Even your post above demonstrates it to an extent, as it opens with a well established, strong bias. It becomes kind of hard to look at objectively from there.
One person’s baby, may always be someone else’s bathwater.
With a metronome?! Is there anything else that you might have to add about that?
He is remarkable in my book because he was able to integrate lots of techniques that were not well known and produce something that just sounds great! I’ll bet that he (re)invented many of the techniques that CtC discovered, but his fusion is the true genius, IMHO.
I don´t know if this post here is 100% in line with the topic of the thread since it´s called “…using CtC”, but I thought it was worth mentioning some aspects that I have found in Anton´s videos or videos about Anton´s guitar course that I haven´t found in CtC (yet?).
One of Anton´s students has a Youtube channel where he will give the one or the other chunk about Anton´s methodology. He even has a video where he gives a review of Anton´s course.
One aspect that really stood out to me was the difference of going through the string as opposed to having the string dictate the movement of the pick, so that the pick “hops” over the string. It´s in this video from 08:15 onward to about 09:10. One important note is that what is here refered to as “hopping” is not the same as the “string hopping” we have in CtC (the usage of the same muscle for two types of escape movements).
There´s also a snippet of a lesson from Anton with a student where he talks about this.
It was a major revelation for me anyway because I noticed I actually struggle with this in certain scenarios, while in other scenarios it´s not a problem and the pick goes through the string with ease. Also I noticed about myself that I focused so much on the escape motion(s) that those problems relating to the picking on ONE string would go more or less unnoticed.
Someone above mentioned that it´s very hard if not impossible to play at Anton´s speeds with pure deviation and I happen to agree, with a mild objection at the same time. In his long video about “Universal Guitar Technique”, he goes into fatigue and relaxation and alludes to a way of playing that I guess only he can teach, where you are using antagonizing (??) muscles to illicit kind of an automatic “reverse” movement to a pick strokes.
If he is right about this whole process, that would explain how he can play those ridiculously fast and wide string skipping sections. If I attempt those kind of licks, I end up with strumming chords.
Long story short, except for the aspect of going through a string and the relaxation, I don´t think there´s anything that CtC doesn´t offer in a different terminology.
I am at his school and all I can say is that his technique is different. I think he developed it by himself. I don’t know if it is THE best, but at least one of the best techniques I know. To play like Anton has its price. His technique is very complex and very difficult. You have to invest a lot of time and practice slowly to get all the movements right. I think with swiping you get faster great results but this has its limitations. Antons technique has no limitations. If done right, you never hit unwanted strings. His movements are not hops. He pays great attentions to hops and I finally learned what hops really are.
Anton is not only a great talent, he knows exactly what he is doing. And he is explaining everything in detail.
I decided not to learn his technique, but only because I have been playing for too long and don’t want to start from scratch again. But it still was worth it to look at his technique. I have learned a lot of things that I have integrated into my playing and I got better.
Look at his video of the second support at his Youtube Channel. Those small things changed my playing for the better.
I think it’s always good to learn from all the top guitarists and pick out the best things from each one.
I think of all the guitarists I know of, the one who has the most similar technique and pholosophy to Anton - including aphorisms and frankly a slightly culty atmosphere - is Robert Fripp, who is a ridiculously talented guitarist himself.
Can anybody here play this exercise, starting at about 8:09 in the vid?
5 note pattern (1 note on the G string, 3 notes on the B string,1 note on the high E string.
Then accenting after every 4th note.
The pattern on itself, at a slower speed is, already very difficult, and then with the accents and gradualy speeding up, is just…nuts!!
No way for me…
I appreciate @Klampfer 's measured review. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Because the stuff is behind a paywall, from the outside it’s really easy to conclude that he’s either Jesus or a scam artist.
Sounds like his system could be more accessible if he could take where you’re at/what you can do, and help you make gradual adjustments to improve, rather than starting over.
@joebegly 's comments are also very fair. I have been nerding out about guitar shredders on the internet for a good twenty years now, and I have seen a lot, and in terms of the alternate picking skills Joe talks about, I agree I don’t believe I’ve heard much or any playing at Anton’s level. Again that’s just in terms of alternate picking skill. Even the Steve Morse stuff probably wasn’t as clean and articulate.
Now, at the same time, I find his playing unlistenable and incredibly un-musical, but that’s a separate issue!
It’s interesting to know more from people who worked with his teaching material. There is a very big difference between being able to do something and being able to understand and explain what you’re doing. And similarly there is a very big difference between understanding and being able to get someone else to successfully DO the thing.
I think he sounds great, but everyone can agree he plays superbly. I love how opinionated he is; I’m sure his system is very refined given how thoughtful he is.
The main drawback of his school is the cost (£271 / $345). However, when broken down to £22.58 / $28.75 per month, one could argue that it’s quite reasonable. In fact, if your playing reached a level anywhere near Anton’s, you might even feel like you owed him money!
I’ve come across several accounts of players from Anton’s school who were unwilling to relearn their technique, and that’s what keeps me intrigued. It makes me think this isn’t just about DBX technique but something closely related—perhaps even a technique yet to be discovered. Interestingly, I don’t recall anyone on Cracking the Code describing any of the techniques Troy has demonstrated as very complex or very difficult, nor suggesting a requirement to completely relearn the guitar. This only fuels my doubts that Anton is using a standard DBX or any technique we’ve seen before.
I’ve read numerous posts from forum members who have made rapid progress after learning about different pick escapes through Cracking the Code. Personally, my own playing improved within days after stumbling upon the website, where I first learned about pick escapes and the pitfalls of string hopping.
I keep hearing that Anton’s technique takes a very, very long time to develop. So what is the hidden wrist movement that is so hard to do that we can’t see from the teaser videos he posts?
I’m in awe of Anton’s playing—I guess I’m going to have to find out the expensive way.
Is there anything else that you might have to add about that?
