Pickslanting Primer is too complicated, school-like and boring

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#1

I think that while the primer is great for someone with unlimited amount of time to watch the material, it really is not useful for the majority of the population because the videos are excessively long, and through complexity, fail to explain the essence of the concepts.

It honestly feels most of the time like I’m at school watching a class and not actually playing or refining a technique.

Some observations/feedback:

  1. I feel there are too many shots of Troy shredding throughout the primer. I really don’t want to see Troy shredding, I want to shred myself.
  2. I would much prefer if the viewer is holding a guitar and given actual watered down demonstrations on simply what to do, and drills on how to bake in the motion instead of a thesis on what a hundred great guitarists have done along with slowed down videos of an REH video from the 80s.
  3. For example, reverse dart thrower motion - I don’t need to know why it’s named that way or who else plays this way (along with video demonstrations) and Troy shredding up and down the neck with it. It could just be the animation and how to force the motion to see if it works for you.

While the concepts are great, I think the execution is such that it isn’t really useful. Maybe there needs to be a Pickslanting Primer Mini which is at most 2 hours of material focused on actual application.

#2

The problem is that no single product can make everyone happy. Having more content is arguably better than less, as people can skip around per their taste?

#3

I agree, I mean the normal primer can exist as it is, but for most people who want to actually learn and apply as soon as possible we could have a Mini version. Sort of like a reference book and a textbook.

#4

I agree. It contains too many videos.

#5

We take this type of feedback very seriously, and are constantly revising and rearranging things to be more targeted.

Just to take an example from the recent updates. The new USX tutorial lesson is 7 minutes in total:

It’s divided into 7 sections of one minute each. The sections are all linked and timestamped on the video page. You can click to jump instantly to each section in the topic list below the lesson.

Each section focuses on doing one single hands-on thing. Doing downward pickslanting is one section, for example. Doing a rest stroke is another section, also a minute long. Adding chunking accents is another section, also one minute. And so on. These are key things you need to know how to do.

I could chop this up into one-minute videos and I thought about it. But then that starts to look pretty cluttered, where the section has 50 lessons in it and people get lost scrolling through them all.

It’s always a battle to be as streamlined as possible while making sure we explain the things that we KNOW people will ask about because they ask us in Technique Critique.

So questions:

Have you watched that lesson? Are the one-minute mini subjects targeted or not targeted enough? How would you change this lesson to make it better for what you’re looking for?

This isn’t the first time we’ved moved things around and won’t be the last. You won’t find anyone as committed to improving as we are.

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#6

Thank you for the detailed reply, Troy. I really never expected anyone to look at the feedback but thought I should mention it and I’m happy to see the founder himself is listening.

It’s funny that you mention the USX tutorial because I found that a lot better than prior material and it was much more interactive. I think to truly teach us how to do these movements, some sort of drill which locks us in to the movement or licks would be helpful or an interactive sort of demo, e.g. “Pick up your guitar and follow with me, to do a reverse dart thrower motion your pick stroke is going down and OUT like this (multiple demos, angles, animations, Magnet views etc)…”. The point is more focus on the motion itself and reproducing it versus the theory behind it.

I also find your speed somewhat intimidating, when you scream through a lick once it’s great - because it proves to me that the movement works, but when done repeatedly it makes me want to just give up because it seems impossible.

Just a few comments, and thank you so much for your efforts. I trust your company and website more than any other guitar website out there.

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#7

We definitely look at the feedback! We’re not exactly a megacorporation here. :slight_smile:

In particular the Primer is something we sweat over. We don’t want to skip important stuff, and I have to resist the urge daily to delete or hide everything that’s not a hands-on tutorial. But we don’t really have that luxury, for a couple reasons.

One, not all people will figure out all picking motions, at least not right away. So they need options for doing stuff when some things don’t work. Can’t do wrist? How about forearm? How about elbow? That kind of thing.

Two, you might get one motion but not the escape you needf. Give me a nickel for every player who comes to us wanting to play Eric Johnson lines but can only do one of the DSX motions like wrist or elbow. How do you explain why that won’t work without at least explaining what escape is first? I feel for people who don’t want to know this stuff, and just want to play something.

If I had to boil this down, I would suggest, at bare minimum, you need some understanding of what escape is, and why it matters. Then do the motion tests. Then try the tutorials. That’s how I’d do it. Otherwise without that you won’t know what a USX tutorial is and why it’s any different from any other kind of tutorial. We’ll probably keep trimming stuff, or relocating the more talky stuff to the reference section, until we get to that point.

In your case, if you’re still trying to get through this material, mostly what we care about in the early stages is just doing a single motion fast on a single note. We don’t even care about phrases, because if you can’t move freely, then phrases (generally) don’t help. Slowing down to “getting all the notes right” speed usually just results in stringhopping. We want quality motion first, then we can try to fret something with it.

So if you’re at the tremolo stage, just try to get one of the motions happening with some degree of smoothness. Any one will do. Then make a Technique Critique and upload some clips, we’re happy to take a look!

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