Hi to ALL members,
My name is Paul, I’ve been on and around this site for several years. I come to you with realization that I am pretty sure that I can’t figure this out on my own anymore. I am 52 so time is valuable as I am not a youngster. In recent months, I’ve been making better progress but my standards are pretty high. I am here to spend time learning about the thing that is most important in my life, aside from my family, guitar playing. I play/practice guitar every day in the morning for 1-3 hours. My mind is calm and it is my most productive time of the day. I have a ton of anxiety so I am sure it won’t be easy to share my intimate love of guitar but I will do my best (to quiet the negative voice) and to push myself to share and seek the guidance I think I could really benefit from.
Where are you in your guitar journey?
Depends how much technique I can develop as I retrain myself and break old habits. Hopefully more than half way?
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How many years have you been playing?
86-96 and 2010-current (20 years) -
What musical genres are you interested in?
Mainly Rock/Metal from a playing reference. -
Particular things you’re excited to learn / talk about here?
I am curious about peoples struggles and breakthroughs as I find the instrument to be pretty difficult. I constantly analyze (with a mirror) my technique because I want to achieve more. I’ve been looking for years to find people who are talking about picking to this detail but never found anything like it unit CTC. I was shocked to find that I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed this material!
How have you gone about learning guitar so far?
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Self-taught? Regular lessons with a teacher? Both?
ALL guitar mags from 80s-90s. A few private lessons, MI-GIT, YouTube. -
Have you spent much time on technique before finding our stuff?
I’ve spent most of my practice (thousands of hours) dedicated to playing guitar so I could express what I was hearing and not be limited at faster BPMs. This has been a painful process and so I gave guitar up for over a decade out of frustration. I was really, really bad for all of the time I put in to it, I got very little back from my efforts. I was extremely depressed. In 2010, I basically decided to start over as a ‘beginner’ this time and this new mindset has been far more rewarding. As I finally begin to figure some things out, I’ve had to and continue to relax my mind and body to deal with tension and a ton of anxiety. This site has been one of several contributing factors in my recent ‘breakthroughs’, if you will. -
What Cracking the Code material have you watched?
All the free content. I seem to really connect with the Teemu interview. -
Can you comfortably play a scale? At roughly what speed?
Yes, of course. That depends on the note groupings and how many strings I need to cross. Not exactly sure as it varies on the complexity of the 16th note runs but with 2WPS I am maxing out at approximately, 144-152. (fast? eh, but not 6th gear, or ‘shred fast’. Not long ago, I couldn’t do much past 124-136. I can go a bit faster on a single string. I sense this is because my pick strokes shorten up on a single string. In my mind, switching strings seems like jumping a rushing river at times. -
Any particular things you find yourself stuck on?
Oh, there seem to be plenty. It seems I am a DWPS player but play odd notes all the time so apparently I am a 2WPS which is the most challenging and explains why it is so difficult because I adopted a fair amount of Paul Gilbert’s teaching (Intense Rock) and his basic string crossing exercise is how I attempted to develop ‘outside’ picking. I am uncoordinated and can’t sync my hands up when I start a lick on an upstroke. This is a problem but I am working more on even note groupings which obviously compliments DWPS which has been a great awakening. There is still some annoying string noise when I cross back and forth between strings ala Paul Gilbert exercise, especially between the D and G string.
Sure I could mention more, but picking at faster speeds is still the most challenging to me.
Paul
