I’m at about 90% away from a major goal speed wise on scalar playing alternate picking after never peaking over 65% before CTC. I have been a part of CTC for a good few years, but haven’t put monumental amounts of practice in over the years due to life getting in the way, so I wonder how I would have gotten on with a years solid practice.
But I have multiple goals - some of which I havent’ started on.
This isn’t a dig at you in anyway, but you don’t sound you’re trying to find the motivation to keep going. You sound like you’re trying to find a reason to justify giving up.
With this kind of mindset and negativity, you’re already closing yourself off to the possibilities.
If the technique doesn’t really matter to you, why not just move on now and stop “wasting” your time? Why not focus on singing and songwriting now and get a 3 month head start? If you don’t want it, or your not enjoying it, you don’t have to do it. We won’t judge you or shame you for it.
If you do want it, and you really are looking for reasons to keep with it, then you’re going to have to change your outlook. You have to learn to love the process.
I train and compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Last year, I had a really, really bad run. In one tournament I lost my first match with the fastest defeat of the day. In my next competition I placed dead last in my divisions and left with a sprained ankle I could barely walk on for a month.
For anybody who doesn’t like me very much, here’s a video of me being strangled:
I could have wondered if I was fighting an uphill battle I’d never win. I could have told myself that the improvements I’d made didn’t matter because I’d fallen flat on my ass so many times. I could have told myself that all my instincts were wrong and that I was wasting my time.
I studied the tape, I went back to the gym, I asked my coach for advice, I taped up my ankle and I trained as hard as I could. I took gold at my next competition.
Learning any new skill is difficult. We try, we fail, we make adjustments. We try again, we fail better. We repeat until we succeed.
You can either be frustrated and demotivated by your failures or you can learn to appreciate them for what they can teach you. As I hope the above video demonstrates, I’m fully aware that repeated failure is deeply unpleasant.
I want to take lessons with someone in person. I don’t think Skype lessons will work for me, because they can’t get up close and see all the little nuances of what I’m doing wrong. I just put my guitar down after practicing for about 20 minutes and from the bottom of my heart it’s scary how off I am mentally and physically with playing. 
I can barely even hold on to the pick without it feeling totally unstable in my hand. All the sudden I’m doing these massive twitchy, jumping around motions, swinging my pick side to side like a pendulum instead of up and down, and my left hand is spazzing out and speeding up once i get to the D string to the low E going high to low. I felt like i had made some break thoughts in the last 2-3 weeks to where i was finally getting my fingers under things, and just like that it’s GONE! This is exactly my concerns in why I’m sadly thinking that some of us will just never have the capability of playing fast, because it can’t be 98% shit, then every once in a blue moon stumble upon having a good day. It would be one thing to know how to correct it if I was off, but I have no idea how I get from being on or off?? Playing the guitar is becoming a not so fun, negative experience because of this, so I have to figure something out fast, or just sale all my guitars. 
Not personally, though you don’t have to look far to find plenty of people who have had success with it. I’ve been playing for about 11 years now and most days I’m lucky enough to get at least a couple of hours of good practice in. Technically, I’m no better than I was a year and a half in. I can’t play anything without stumbling over simple passages and I don’t find the instrument fun in the slightest, but I want to get good enough that I still pick up the guitar every day without much resistance. It’s definitely more about the destination than the journey for me, not to say I intend to stop learning as soon as I can play some songs I like.
I can’t speak for most of Masters In Mechanics material as I haven’t seen it, but I’ve been working on the instructions for wrist motion since they came out about a year ago as well as the CTC stuff on Youtube. Over the last 9 years or so I’ve sunk a good amount of time into just about every other method you’ll find online and been through a few different teachers too. Hopefully I’ll figure it out before the inevitable existential crisis of all that time wasted. 
I hear you and i agree with you. I don’t want to give up, but maybe I have to start coming to reality that I’m just not going to succeed with it. I don’t know how old you are, but I’ll be 50 in March, and I have been beating my head against the wall with this stuff for years. Trust me, I’ve put in the hours and hours of hard work, taken lessons, done any and everything that people like Troy suggest, but if the physical talents are just not there what do i do? It’s like desperately wanting to be taller, you can try and try but it ain’t gonna happen. A good example that I’ve seen from a singers stand point is seeing vocalist that train for years and years to be able to hit higher notes, and they really aren’t that more well off than they where before the studied with a vocal teacher. I was lucky and born with a multi octave range, that wasn’t taught to me. It was a born gift, my guess is guys like Troy or the people we try to emulate where the same way with the guitar. Did they work at it? Of course but they figure stuff out, and move on, There’s no way Troy would spend 5 years of beating his head against the wall and not going anywhere like i have. Just my two cents. 
I posted a guide to goal-based practice a while back in another thread: Effectivity of practice
If i were to diagnose you over the internet (a very imprecise science), I’d probably suggest a lack of clear outcomes in your practice sessions.
You mentioned EJ pentatonic 5s patterns - that’s a useful starting point as a goal. How would you analyze your process of practicing this type of technique? Have you tried the following:
Are there particular exercises you find easy, any that are difficult? Are you practicing the difficult things until they’re mastered? Are you reviewing techniques periodically to make sure they’re still usable in a performance situation?
A lot of this structured, organized approach to practice is meant to force a type of discipline that may not be intuitive for you. This is a reality of high level musicianship. We can’t expect to play like Eric Johnson or Yngwie Malmsteen if we don’t work like they work. The material is all available to achieve results, but it’s not going to do the work for you.
I can’t speak for Troy, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the whole 1st season of Cracking the Code was about. He was playing for years before he figured out the mechanics of these techniques - and then spent more years refining them prior to publishing the concepts here. It was not an overnight process.
I have.
I was a professional stringhopper for a while in the 90s, and have always been more interested in improvising and writing music than in memorizing licks and performing other people’s solos. At the time, I thought playing fast was something I was simply incapable of. I never wanted to be an athlete like Shawn Lane or even Marty Friedman. I was more interested in being quick, fluid, and musical, like Warren DeMartini, Jake E. Lee, EVH, and especially Prince (Let’s Go Crazy and Eruption were equally mindblowing to me). For the longest time I assumed I was genetically incapable of fast, smooth, playing, whether lead or rhythm.
In 2017 or so, I stumbled across the CTC Youtube series. Among the many insights I picked up from the series and my subsequent investigations, a few were responsible for me making very quick gains.
The very first practical step of my CTC journey was breaking my stringhopping habit. This took about one month. During this month, I concentrated entirely on converting my picking technique to pure forearm rotation on a single string. (As a teenager in the 80’s I noticed I could rotate my right forearm very quickly, but could not seem to harness that movement for picking even a single note.) I did this by training very systematically, starting every session at about 40 bpm quarter notes and then bumping upward for about 30 minutes a day (about 5 minutes on, then a 2 minute break, repeat several times on all strings). This is a ridiculously slow speed, but it was kind of necessary at first because I it was like learning to walk again. I had to concentrate on each individual pickstroke, rather than on ‘alternate picking’ a series of notes. I focused on creating a clean and fluid pickstroke, using my kinesthetic sense and my ear to determine when it was working. It took a few days before I could reliably do a single clean pickstroke at this tempo with pure rotation. After a week I could do it reliably at faster speeds. After about a month it was easy. I could reliably tremolo pick 16ths at 180 bpm with no tension or fatigue, and I no longer reverted to stringhopping when I stopped concentrating.
From there I expanded into wrist deviation, dart throwing motions, elbow, and finally finger motion. I did this mostly intuitively. I let my body explore new motions on its own, and only analyzed my motions when it felt easy and produced clean and musical tones. I continue to do this kind of exploration every time I play, and continue to make noticeable gains on a weekly basis. These gains mainly take the form of increased vocabulary and improvements in tone, and they come pretty quickly. After that first month, I don’t find myself grinding away at anything anymore. I usually find a noticeable improvement after about 5 minutes of focused practice, and it gets baked in permanently in less than a week. I don’t really chase speed anymore, except when I’m learning a new pattern or getting a particular line up to tempo. I also rarely use forearm rotation at all anymore, but I can easily turn it on and off at will.
I’m not saying you have to learn pure rotation to make this stuff work. My point is that I found it very useful to start from scratch with a completely unfamiliar picking motion in order to extinguish my stringhopping habits. I couldn’t really play music during that initial month, I just spent my time trying to ingrain a new motion to replace the old one. After that I worked on vocabulary, but I found my form evolving without too much conscious guidance. I could pick up new motions pretty easily because my habit was now to chase easy, and to use physical feel and my ear to make adjustments.
In summary, I used the CTC concepts as a launching point, and designed my own exercises and practice routines to improve in the areas that were important to me for musical reasons. I can now play most of that 90’s stuff I loved so much back in the day with very little effort, even stuff that I never dreamed would be possible (Steve Vai and Paul Gilbert, for example). I bought the Cascade, Volcano, and Antigravity seminars out of gratitude and a feeling of wanting to reward Troy and the team for pointing me in the right direction, but all of my gains came from self-application of the concepts that are available for free in the Youtube series. But that’s how I learn things in general. Start with concepts and explore them on my own. I use teaching materials mainly as a source of new ideas and as a guide for personal explorations. Recipes have never really worked for me, in any subject.
I’m not suggesting that you follow my approach. Your goals may be different from mine. I’m also not claiming to be a guitarist that other people should emulate. But it seems like you were looking for CTC success stories, and I definitely consider myself one. I can now make the music I always wanted to make. I struggled with this stuff for 30 years before Troy nudged me in the right direction with a few key insights, and I am eternally grateful for it.
You should go for it! Online lessons could be an occasional supplement then. The main benefit of lessons like Teemu’s or Ben Eller’s would be that they already know the principles of CtC and can likely advise you from that specific perspective, if you’d like.
That has happened to me at least a few times even after joining CtC, and countless times before it. But I believe it has to be a feel-sort of thing. I do trust that once it starts “clicking” again and again at a more consistent hit rate, it will eventually become a solid thing one can find fast, and rely on.
I live in the Nashville area. Maybe i could get Ben to come here if he was already in town anyway. I don’t know man, I’m just so frustrated and bummed out with always feeling like I’m going in circles. It’s not like I’m a great player having a slightly off night of missing a few notes with picking fast. It’s like. I go from good/great to barely feeling like I can strum campfire chords. It’s just not a real reassuring thing when you’re a musician wanting to get on with your life and make music. If I was a bedroom player, or just doing it as a hobby it probably wouldn’t bother me as much. I want to incorporate these things into my music, and live situations. I hate doing it, but maybe I need to put the guitar down for a few days. Either way thank you all for your advice and words of encouragement… 
Take this with a grain of salt as it’s only one person’s experience, but I actually had one of those “overnight” success moments with this course.
I’ve been playing professionally for about 15 years plus another 4 years in high school bands prior. I’ve never been a speed player, in part because it’s not super necessary for the pop music side man role, but more so because every time I spent a long period shedding speed I ran into an upper limit of 16ths at 120bpm for alternate picking. Literally could not get past that mark with hours of practice… so each time I put speed aside for more practical playing techniques and licks and figured it wasn’t in my DNA.
I stumbled onto this course about a week ago while binging on Eric Johnson YouTube videos and decided to give it a try… figured the cost of one month is way less than I might pay for a lesson from a great teacher in Los Angeles. I went through the primer and legitimately with a couple days of practice, my upper limit is now juuuust under 140bpm 16ths. A 20 bpm bump is pretty freaking incredible in my book. Obviously, I’m not breaking speed records here, but I can tell that number is gong to go up with some more work.
I dont think this will be everyone’s experience, and I attribute my quick improvement to the fact that I already spend a whole lot of time on my touch and feel… specifically, the other big roadblock to speed, which is tension in the fingers, hands and wrists. Compared to my playing 10 years ago, I’m barely pushing the strings down onto the frets and I’m constantly stopping myself to breath and loosen my right hand wrist and pick grip.
I think in my case, I had done the ground work, and the downward pick slant was kind of a missing puzzle piece.
If I had learned about this 10 years ago, I don’t think the initial improvement would have been nearly as great. I actually think the biggest improvement to my overall tone and playing came from a light fretting touch and a relaxed pick grip/wrist… the downward picking and mindset about planning pick strokes for a lick simply brought the speed bump.
Still a long way to go, and I’m sure many of you consider 140 pretty slow in the scheme of things but as far as my goals are concerned, this is a big achievement for me 
Maybe you won’t succeed if you keep with it, I don’t know. I do know that you definitely won’t succeed if you don’t keep with it.
What this tells me is that you need to try a different approach. Would it be fair to say that you’ve had this mindset in the past when you were beating your head against that wall?
You need to take the pressure off yourself and try to enjoy the process. Let go of the expectation, and keep creating the conditions. Lightning will strike. Don’t be upset about the lack of repeatability, just be impressed with the possibility. In time, you’ll catch the lightning.
By the way, I’m 31, which makes me older than the majority of guys I compete against.
You keep going. It’s really that simple.
Stop comparing your progress to the progress of others. We’re all coming from different places and going in different directions. The only person you should be comparing yourself to is your previous self.
My original goal was (and still is) to “be able to play 16th stuff around 150 bpm”. Apart from true crosspicking licks, I am mostly there. A moderate goal, compared to what some other players here are capable of. Also, just KNOWING that what I originally did was DSX playing, instantly enabled me to just structure almost everything I wanted to play in a way that would work with that. I still have an on and off relationship with USX, and I dream of playing something REALLY fast every now and then.
However, I find one thing about CtC much more important than just enabling me to play some stuff.
I feel that CtC is searching for an “objective truth” about guitar technique. Wether you and I can make it work does not change that this may still just be how “it” works. That is such a breeze of fresh air in itself, compared to some of the schools, methods and youtube-quacks out there!
Apart from that, I also find, that the instructional material is not exactly bullet proof (yet), in the way that you’ll definitely get it if you just follow every step. But I find it encouraging, that they constantly update and adapt, even if it means changing the terminology and causing some confusion
EDIT: I should also add, that I didn’t practice a lot with CtC. Just casual, experimental maybe 30-45 minutes a few days a week, and I still improved a lot. Compared to the crazy hours a day in my 20s
I like this. Reach for 50% of your goal, and achieve that 100%. It feels better than going for 100% but achieving only 50%.
These are good questions! This is honestly what I do. I’ll put a drum beat on or a metronome and set it at a good tempo for me which is fast but not too fast. And I’ll play the 5 patterns in E starting high to low. I’m not practicing ascending as much as I should so it’s understandable to me that they might not be as clean. I try and play them in all the positions, so I’ll play in the 12th position and try and move to other box positions like what EJ does. Basically what I’m trying to learn is moving up and down the fretboard piecing them all together smooth like Cliffs of Dover. I’ll also jam along to backing tracks or loops from my looper pedal. Anything to make it more musical.
‘Are there particular exercises you find easy, any that are difficult? Are you practicing the difficult things until they’re mastered? Are you reviewing techniques periodically to make sure they’re still usable in a performance situation?’ This is what stumps me?! When I’m “ON” it’s actually very easy for me to play fast and clean. I can play that 5 stuff at 200BMP smooth and clean. It feels amazing, and I’m thinking to myself “wow this isn’t really that hard to do” when you’re connected to what you’re suppose to be doing technique wise. Mentally and physically i start thinking ok, I finally got this! I got the feel of those rolling 5’s that swing and sound so cool when Eric does it, then BAM! It’s gone! The coordination is not there, i get confused with chunking, I start doing weird stuff like twitching, my picking hand starts jumping up and down and side to side, and i over all feel like I’m playing with a broken hand. That’s ultimately why I’m so damn frustrated with the guitar because it’s not just some minor set back it’s like a crippling downfall to where I can never try and attempt this type of stuff live in a million years. Once I’m in no mans land with it, i have no idea how to return to what I was doing before that sounded so great? The changes are so microscopic that i personally can’t pick up on what the hell I changed to have everything go to hell in a hand basket. That’s why getting a teacher in person would really help me, because having him watch me on Skpe or even having a magnet I don’t thing is really going to work. So anyway hope that helps? It makes me think, that maybe I’m practicing wrong? Idk 
Hey @Regotheamigo, I see you have a few topics in technique critique already, but I didn’t watch most of them because I think they’re from before I joined the team officially. Or if I did I must have forgotten the details at this point!
Among those do you have a recent video that gives a good overview of the issues you are describing?
By the way, playing the EJ fives @200bpm (16th notes?) is no small feat, even if it happens only occasionally.
That’s what I keep shaking my head about lol…but probably also why our friend feels frustrated. I’m not so sure EJ himself can play 5’s that fast (at least not these days)!!! Having the ability to do this, then all the sudden not having that ability is understandably frustrating. It’s probably a tall order, but a clip documenting when it’s ‘on’ and another of when it’s ‘off’ may help you get some good feedback @Regotheamigo. In other news, hang in there!
I’m telling you THAT’S why I’m so damn frustrated that i want to cry over it all. 
Don’t get me wrong I’m not automatic with it, and can only do it on incredible days, but when I’m on it feels easy and free. Lately I’ve been pretty “on” with it so started to feel good about myself and my accomplishments then poof it disappeared. I’m tripping over stuff now, sweeping again has become very choppy sounding, my picking hand hurts like I’m holding a bowling ball between my thumb and fingers… Over all just very uncoordinated. It just doesn’t make any sense to have that much of a decline. It would be like Tiger woods missing the ball every time he swung at it or sliced it off into the woods. It’s just very disheartening because I want to do this stuff live or on record and I’d be a fool to ever attempt it being so hit and miss, mainly miss.
When I’m “ON” it’s actually very easy for me to play fast and clean. I can play that 5 stuff at 200BMP smooth and clean. It feels amazing, and I’m thinking to myself “wow this isn’t really that hard to do” when you’re connected to what you’re suppose to be doing technique wise. Mentally and physically i start thinking ok, I finally got this!
The fact that this happens, even only briefly, shows that it’s possible to develop skill in the technique. The challenge for you here is to keep this level of flow at a sustained level for long enough to become subconscious. This is how neural-muscular programming works.
A friend of mine at music school gave me some really good advice once: “Water only starts boiling when you keep sustained heat and pressure on it.” The boiling point is where change happens, not just the heat by itself. If you keep moving the pot on and off the heat without it reaching the boiling point, it will never get there no matter how much time you’re in the kitchen.
So that flow is where everything is working, the tempo is moving, and it feels almost impossible to miss a note. That’s the point you need to reach every time you practice. When you can sustain that “boiling point” for enough time - that’s where your technique can really transform into something you have consistent control over with much less effort.
I like this analogy. Also, just like mama always said “a watched pot never boils” lol!
Sounds like that’s a big problem at the moment. Maybe some time away from the guitar (or not shredding, just playing some easy stuff for joy of it for a few days???) would be good. Kind of a reset. We all get burnt out and need to recharge.