New Member from Boston

[Drew]

Hey - I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, my name’s Drew, and and I new member here from the Boston area. I’m in my mid-30s, and have been playing since I was a teenager, more than 20 years. I’m a Strat lover from way back but these days play mostly seven string (my poison of choice is a Suhr Modern 7), and play sort of bluesy, proggy instrumental rock in the vein of Andy Timmons, Joe Satriani, and Nick Johnson (though I’ll ruin the surprise and say they’re a bit better. )

I’ve always been a fairly mediocre alternate picker by shred standards. Partly between liking the sound of a lot of guys who do this and partly because it just came easier to me I’ve generally gotten by on legato playing, but I’ve been following the Cracking the Code youtube channel for a while now and I think between a mix of extremely helpful information and a presentation format that’s just a lot of fun and brings me back to the feeling of being a kid in my bedroom and absolutely being floored by something on my stereo (seriously, I want a DVD of season 1 to play for my non-guitarist friends, because I think that might actually help them get what got me so caught up in the guitar as a kid, and understand a lot of the excitement I feel about music), it’s actually helped me make some pretty solid improvements in my technique.

I’m writing this for the time being as a free member. I’ll sign up for the full membership at some point this year, but the impetus for my writing this tonight is I’m one week out from shoulder surgery for a cycling injury that’ll have me in a sling for at least several weeks, possibly a couple months, and even if I spring back faster than I expect I don’t imagine I’ll be cleared by my doctor to do anything remotely close to fast alternate picking for at least the next month or two. However, I figure on the bright side this is a perfect opportunity to rebuild my picking technique from the ground up, since while I’ll keep my legato chops up to speed I’ll pretty much have to start picking from scratch after a hiatus.

I think I’m predominately an upwards pick-slanter, but I haven’t actually tried filming my technique to really analyze it. Also, weirdly, when consciously trying to exaggerate a slant in either direction, it seems like EITHER upwards or downwards slanting seems to make crossing strings easier than a strictly parallel positioning - not sure if that’s some weird quirk of my technique or something others here has found, but I assume that any upwards or downwards motion incorporated into the pick stroke has to make crossing strings a little easier… Also, my trem picking has never been exceptionally fast, so right off the bat I imagine I could probably make some pretty solid improvements just by speeding up my pickstroke, before really getting too far into the mechanics of switching strings.

Anyway, even the free material Troy has been posting is pretty damned cool, and I’m more than happy to support the work this site has been doing - happy to be here!

-Drew

[Brendan]

Hey Drew, welcome to the forum, and thanks for sharing your story! Great to have you here. Hope the injury recovery goes well…reframing it in terms of the possibilities for doubling down on technical learning seems like a great attitude to have

[Drew]

Thanks Brendan! Sadly it’s not my first time doing this - the same surgeon did my right ACL four years ago after a skiing accident (I promise I’m a risk-taker and not a klutz), and ironically cycling was a big part of my recovery from that one. It does make you a little more flip, though, and certainly a lot more goal-oriented during the recovery. The way I see it, picking is probably great rehab!

For you or any of the regulars familiar with the full CtC canon, if - hypothetically - you were planning on starting from scratch and starting with slow muscle memory type drills, where in the material you guys have now would be a good place to start?

I guess as far as musical goals, while I’d like to get a little faster - say, another 10-20% - for the most part I don’t think I’m being limited in what I want to play by speed, so much as I want to improve the accuracy of my picking technique. I do lean pretty heavily on legato while playing, but at the same time with a blues and metal background I tend to like stuff with a firm, explosive pick technique, and not really a ton of gain, so I’m looking to build efficiency without sacrificing a strong picking attack.

Thanks!

[Brendan]

Ow damn! Well try not to sprain your wrist or elbow or something due to excessively risky guitar playing. Cracking the Code disclaims all liability from injuries that may result from daredevil six-string acrobatics etc. etc.

Have you gone through our Pickslanting Primer yet? That’s currently our best all around intro. There’s still some stuff it doesn’t yet cover so we’re actually in the process of working on some additional material, along the lines of our recent live broadcast, focused on practical demonstrations of achieving the techniques.

I’d also suggest taking some time to browse through the forum and try some keyword searches for any particular topics / questions you find interesting. For example there are several topics on here addressing questions around practice strategy and speed that you may find helpful. Not always super obvious what has / hasn’t been discussed here on the forum but the search functionality is pretty good. And if you have other specific questions of course feel free to create new topics as needed as well!

[Drew]

I’ve only seen what you guys have on YouTube, but I’ll definitely dig a little deeper, as well as expore the forum. And definitely no need to worry about liability - I still love skiing and riding, so it’ll take more than a few alt-picking related injuries to scare me off the guitar!