New to forum, ready to dip my toe into CtC

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hello all,

New to the forum. I’ve seen a few of Troy’s videos over the years, but just watched the CtC series for the first time. My story is pretty similar to a lot I’ve read here, so I’ll try to be brief. I’ve had a guitar since I was probably around 8, and I’m 41 now. Lots of stops and starts and hacking together bits and pieces on my own. I’ve bought ridiculous amounts of instructional books, videos, and online courses, but I have had trouble with consistently practicing the materials. I might be slightly odd in that I’ve spent more time learning exercises than songs and riffs. I spent years burning alternate picking into my brain, which I think created a not very efficient DBX/USX hybrid. I’d really like to get my sh*t together for once and learn how to really play. I like blues, fusion, rock, bluegrass. I’d say most of what I do currently falls in the blues camp, but I’d like to be able to play fusion proficiently some day.

So my question is… I haven’t bought Pick Slanting Primer yet. From what I’m reading, I’m not getting a clear picture of what to expect from it. Does it just help you identify your picking style and explain the styles? That’s all I’m hearing. Or is it a method for improving playing? Is the full membership a better deal? Is there enough in the PSP to work on for awhile? A few months, a year, more?

#2

I think I found the answers I was looking for. I watched the “Help, I can’t play fast” video and it slapped me upside the head. My technique is not an “inefficient dbx/usx hybrid”, it’s string hopping. More specifically, it’s USX with string hopping, and I was mistaking the string hopping for DBX. I’ve seen the light. I went ahead and enrolled in the membership. Let’s get this show on the road!

#3

Welcome to the forum @notTHEwillienelson, your story is a much like mine. I stated with the volcano seminar, was awesome to get into the YJM space. Goodluck!

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#4

Hi, @notTHEwillienelson. Welcome!

I was going to tell you this before you joined up but since I no longer need to convince you I’ll congratulate you on making a great decision.

For me, a membership is a better ‘value’ because you get access to everything. The Primer as I understand it, once you buy you keep for life and get all the subsequent updates. So I guess that’s a different kind of value, which is also great. But with your membership (while it’s active), you’ll of course have access to the Primer. And it is recommended to go through the whole Primer, in order. Yeah there’s a lot there, but the concepts are important and build on themselves as you go through. I didn’t realize this when I joined, I just cherry-picked the parts I thought applied to me. I missed a bunch of stuff lol!

For you specifically, I’d recommend you take advantage of the membership’s Technique Critique feature. Once you’re logged in on the ‘main’ site, this page has a video to walk you through how to do it:

To answer your specific questions about the platform overall:

It doesn’t just do that, but yeah that is a big part of it. It’s crucial to understand what your best motion is (or to find one if you don’t have one yet) and become aware of what types patterns naturally pair with it. It sounds like you have already identified your motion but I’d still recommend you use that critique feature to get the experts to weigh in. You’ve already paid for it! Why not take advantage and get what’s the equivalent of a very focused lesson from world class players, right? :wink:

Yes, it should improve your playing. It’s not a big set of exercises or anything. Some people are expecting that. It makes sense to me that it isn’t because depending on your motion you’ll have a drastically different set of patterns that make sense for you to play. There are plenty of tabbed (paired with high quality, loopable slow mo videos) examples for the various motions. So you could easily make your own regiment out of these.

Since it’s more of an explanation and a methodology, it should keep you going for the rest of your life. Again, since it’s not a group of exercises, you’ll learn everything there is to (currently) know about how picking works. It should change the way you think about guitar. It definitely has for me!

So yes, I’m obviously a highly biased unapologetic CtC fanboy. But it’s made a huge difference for me. I think I joined up in 2020 and I saw immediate progress in my playing. I’m still seeing it though. Every few months I have a new little ‘aha’ moment and get a little better at something else.

Anyway, sorry for the longwinded response, but glad to have you here and best of luck on your journey!

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