Magnet reference material

Site Feedback
#1

A lot of magnets are going to go out soon, and after a short time lag there will inevitably be a lot of magnet footage and a lot of questions. I think a lot of these questions could be pre-empted if a package of reference footage was put together. That way guitarists have something to imitate, and if it looks the same under the magnet it’s likely to be the right thing.

There’s already a lot of magnet footage on the website, but in trying to learn a complete system it can be unhelpful to combine snippets from users with different grips, pick orientation and movements.
e.g. if you learn the excellent strumming of Joscho Stephan and the blistering lead technique of Vinnie Moore, you’d have a hard time moving seamlessly between the two because you’d probably have to stop to re-orient the pick to avoid garage spikes.

What would such reference footage contain? Well, you’d pick one setup, e.g. lightly supinated, wrist movement, with a trigger grip and film:

  • Ascending across all the strings (USX/DSX?)
  • Descending across all strings
  • Ascending sweeps
  • Descending sweeps
  • Palm muting on low strings
  • Palm muting high string
  • DBX
  • Strumming
  • Hybrid picking

I might have missed something but you get the idea. If you can do all this, then you have a whole system. Some of these skills will require different movements (e.g. strumming), and that’s fine, the point is more about showing all the pieces that fit together.

#2

What you’re suggesting is essentially what this section of the Primer is supposed to be:

This is basically a list of the most common picking styles we know about and teach. You are correct that a player who uses, say, a Doug Aldrich picking style is generally not going to be switching to an Andy Wood style form for mixed escape scale playing. Similarly, a player like David Grier is generally not going to be switching to a USX technique to do Eric Johnson lines with downstroke sweeping. They’re going to stick within their general styles and use motions and vocabulary that are idiomatic to that style. This means that not all styles will play all phrases equally – or at all. That’s just the way it is.

Once you’ve established one of these styles, the interviews already include a large number of examples idiomatic to that style, available only a few clicks away. They’re named reasonably explicitly to allow quick scanning of large lists of them to find things like scales, arpeggios, and so on - to the extent that they exist in that mechanical style. It’s already a pretty vast collection and catalogued pretty well.

Finally, don’t forget the Technique Critique piece. If a player has questions about which style they’re using and how certain things are accomplished in that style, these are the kinds of issues we’ve been addressing. This includes directing players to better styles for the vocabulary they want to play. Here’s a great recent example of this:

You’re not going to effectively play “the Paul Gilbert Lick” until you adopt a mixed escape playing style, and although your choice for this may depend somewhat on what mechanics you currently use, most often that is going to be wrist motion. Kaasik was essentially already there - the arm position just needed a tweak. The improvement in the motion was obvious and immediate. From this point onward, any of the Andy Wood interviews would be great reference points for developing this, including alternate picking, strumming, you name it.

TLDR as far as a compendium of reference material, I would say we already have that more than just about any place else. And of course we continue to add more interviews. But you can’t forget the guidance aspect. A new Magnet user isn’t necessarily going to know if what they’re doing is correct for the lines they want to play, and dumping a bunch of footage on them won’t necessarily teach them how to modify it to be that way without instruction.

1 Like