I just found out, rather late… That Pebber Brown died. I really enjoyed his videos, he’s got some Really good stuff in there over the years. I had no idea he was gone, hard to believe for me 
Been watching him since I started playing.
I love this lesson in playing a scale without moving around. Something I’m still working on.
RIP. This guy was funny as hell.
Yeah 
, he was like Scott Grove n Wills easy guitar, WIlling to call bullshit out and say some harsh truths. I struggle myself with the ammount of work that it acually takes to get good.
I believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions, without work, it doesn’t work.
Pebber regularly showed the ammount of work it takes to become proficient in guitar, it seems ridiculous on face value, but all guitarists have put an autistic ammount of time to do what they do. Pebber made so many videos that resonate with me. It’s really caught me off guard him being gone. Going to happen to us all…
This is the standpoint I come from as well. Probably why people think I’m such a tight assed ctc heretic here. In the end nothing is going to save anyone from putting in the boring, unattractive work that it really takes, and that’s the realities of this.
I hope you already have a romantic partner that understands that they will always be #2
Very true! FWIW I don’t consider you a heretic lol! Especially since I don’t quite consider CtC a religion (though I’ve probably drank the Kool-Aid). You’re a great player with tons of knowledge that has valuable opinions. Even with Troy’s findings applied, it’s not like it’s going to take (most) players from suck to Yngwie in 6 months or anything. For my part, I champion the platform because I’ve put in an insane amount of work over the last 28-ish years and unfortunately it was applied incorrectly. That adds up to quite literally years of time I wasted. The progress I’ve seen in my own playing in the ~2 years I’ve tried CtC principals leaves me without question that if I would have practiced like this in my formative years, I’d have chops from hell. Water under the bridge for me. I like playing guitar, so even ‘wrong’ practice is still time spent with the instrument and it’s just a flat out fun instrument to play, right or wrong. I like having mistakes to learn from and I really enjoy seeing others bypass some of that wasted effort.
But yes, even ‘correct’ practice needs to be done over and over and it’s quite a lot of work 
There are no shortcuts…but let’s at least spare people from wasting years jamming a square peg in a round hole and taking a ‘long cut’ that leads to nowhere lol!
lol!!! I feel for the significant others of aspiring guitar virtuosos. I’ve been with my wife since high school. What a trooper she’s been, listening to my slop all these years!
I’ve made a huge amount of progress in a year due to CTC, after decades of bad practice. It might be harder for people who have more superior motor learning skills than I to understand how much of a benefit it is.
Anyway. I had already said to myself I was gonna stay out of these types of discussions 
Oh dear, I wasn’t trying to make it one of “these” types of discussions. My intent was “Great post Fossegrim, I agree. I’ve seen great results from CtC, I know you don’t mean it’s a trash program and you’re correct that getting awesome takes lots of work”. If it reads any differently, sorry about that.
Congrats! McLaughlin respectfully declined doing an interview with Troy because he views picking as highly personal. Or something like that! lol! I know the short of it was that he didn’t think putting his technique under a microscope would be useful to others.
I’m coming from the perspective of having realistic expectations. And also just a reminder to keep it all in the back of your head that it still is a lengthy process. There will be good days, there will be bad days, and there might even be months where it feels like you went no where.
I also think the thing both of you guys maybe overlook sometimes (@joebegly, @jptk) is that the reason you achieved the progress with this you did, in the short amount of time, was because you had already put in all that boring crappy work through years of playing, this was just the last little piece you needed.
The one thing I would go back and tell myself if I could: stop trying to play like someone else! I think I would be far above where I am if I had learned that early on. But maybe I needed to make that mistake.
It’s possible! The thing that makes me unsure is, the biggest problems I’ve had in learning some new motions is that whatever I’d baked in over all those years tended to creep back in. For example, I tend to default to the hinge movement of the elbow for the fastest stuff I can play (i.e. Vinnie Moore-ish). I wanted to try a rotational motion to get some USX exposure and when it got to a certain speed, my arm didn’t want to do it anymore, the elbow hinge thing would take over. Being the unintuitive chump that I am, I couldn’t even feel it happening. I’d have to be checking it visually and seeing that the motion changed. Would this process have been easier if I didn’t have the hinge movement baked in? Dunno.
Yeah, total agreement. We all have influences, but the best players spent most of their time trying to sound like themselves, not play just like someone else.
Again I think it’s all about expectations, and how much and long one person is really willing to put up with something mentally to get it to work. I would be willing to bet you a dollar that you (or anyone really) could get rotation to work for you if you wanted, you just need to form that brain hand connection, and that sometimes takes a bit. I wouldn’t also just pocket rotation as a synonym to USX, depending on how you hold your palm to the guitar it will translate to USX, DBX, and DSX, but that’s a different topic altogether.
I also mean physically and visually trying to play like them too. It’s a waste of time. There are days that I wished I had never noticed how Paul Gilbert’s was holding his picking hand in intense rock 2, and then there are days wondering if that truly might have been a breakthrough moment for me. I’ll never know.
It is a good idea. I don’t think I ever jump several positions like he shows in the beginning, but I’m definitely guilty of identifying scales starting only with the index finger on the root of either the E, A or D string. Probably one of the many reasons I’ve never been good at improvising.
Improvising is a broad subject and there are many ways to do it. What he is describing is really chord based soloing that utilizes boxed in voice leading. which which is really useful in musical styles that don’t necessarily stick to one key, and where you are looking for transitions that aren’t very abrupt. It all has its place.
Yeah it’s super broad. I didn’t elaborate, but I used to do tons of scale practice back in the day since I heard that’s what good musicians do a lot of (and maybe they do…). But what ended up happening was it lead me down this path of thinking of things in a really linear fashion. I guess when I say I’m bad at improvising I specifically mean in a jazz idiom and soloing over changes.
I know/knew enough of the shapes to always play notes that were in right key (or chord) at the time. So it’s not like I was playing notes that sounded wrong…but I never felt like I was playing things that sounded like jazz. There was no real ‘line’ to what I was playing. It got better when I stopped thinking ‘scales’ and started thinking ‘chords’ or melodies, having target notes etc. Oddly enough, studying Schenkerian analysis did more for my grasp of a jazz line than all the other things I was doing to try learning jazz haha! But even still, all that was stuff I was doing just because I heard people say it’s what a good musician does.
My interests really lie elsewhere so I probably won’t even waste my time on jazz imrov any more. NOT saying it is a waste of time. Just for me, it is
I thought it was a great way to get more comfortable with the neck. The tuning difference in standerd makes the shapes change awkwardly after G string. And doing that excersice he showed forces you to know where you’re going to be able to complete it.
I also rely way to much on finding the root note and visualizing the scale from there, from the lower strings. I’ve regularly shifted way up the neck to find a note and then visualize the box shape myself. Can be really limiting I find, and you just end up stuck in a rut playing the same patterns.
I’ve not put anywhere near the ammount of work I should into memorizeing the notes and intervals.
Been to obsessed with technique, lol. I’m relatively over that now tho n hope to improve my musicality with vids like that one.
Just a few years ago the vid would probably of gone over my head even tho it’s not complicated, once you understand the basics. The circle of 5ths fk’d with my head for years. I always thought of it like a clock and that really confused me. I wish I started theory with a piano, it would of made so much more sense.
I’ve seen a few of his videos and appreciated his skill and attitude.
RIP, Pebber.