I just want to second this. A thousand times this.
One of the best things I’ve ever done for my guitar playing was (after my most recent return to the instrument) forcing myself to sit down and try to learn riffs and licks, rather then sitting there trying to perfect my right hand. “Put your hand on the bridge like this and then just go play stuff” has done wonders.
I have been at it for 21 years and play at a fairly advanced level. I started off by playing for hours and hours a day improvising and coming up with songs and riffs. I did that for several years. Just like Troy says in CtC, it wasn’t disciplined. It was fun.
I have never been good at alternate picking. So in those formative years I developed sweeping, economy and 2wps (unbeknownst to me until CtC). I always assumed 2wps was wrong, because I had always heard that you have to start stuff on downstrokes.
After watching CtC, I decided to abandon my 16 or 17 years of 2wps and work on supinated dwps ala Troy. I decided to do this through massive repetition and exercises. Fast forward to now - I’m still not picking like Troy or Django.
I have realized 2 things
I have been going against my physiology for picking. I’m naturally an economy/2wps. I need to just focus on that and refine it. Maybe aim for Gambale like smoothness lol.
I relied waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy too much on picking exercises. I would spend hours upon hours practicing this stuff, trying to sound like Joe Bonamassa. Only to completely forget those hard earned reps the next day. Instead of doing exercises, I should have just been learning a Joe Bonamassa solo or Cliffs of Dover or something.
After watching Ben Eller’s fantastic video on this subject, I decided to learn some new riffs and go back to some old ones that I hadn’t bothered to check up on in years. Currently I’m working on Holy Wars, Take No Prisoners, Bark at the Moon and the main riffs to Under a Glass Moon for my alt picking. Working on Satch Boogie for just learning every other technique. Master of Puppets for my down stroking. And started The Mirror for my 7 string riffage.
In just a few weeks these riffs have solidified my technique infinitely more than repetitive exercises ever have.
@Jburd77 why do you say that you’re going against your physiology? Is it because you’re just not attaining the alternate picking lines you hoped you would? If so, I felt the same way when I was really trying to build it up at about my 5 year mark, to the point that I was tempted to abandon it and just do legato lines. Which segues into my next point…
@Yaakov I feel like you’re trying to get a blanket scheme that will improve your playing, which in my opinion does not exist. That being said, I think practice should be both correcting mechanics and plain repetition.
When I first started playing guitar, I’m pretty sure I hit my “max speed” within a year, if that. I even remember the exact song / riff: the intro trem picking to Fight Fire with Fire by Metallica. I would play it at a tempo way above what it should be because I was stoked that I could do the fast “brr” thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at a speed which is still my max (230ish 16th notes). This is in line with all the research @Troy has done as far as finding your picking movement and anecdotal evidence like @tommo with his partner can vouch for.
When I started to play “shred” riffs, I knew I had the speed, I just had to get the coordination and movement. I didn’t achieve that IMO by practicing over and over, I did that with experimenting with all the variables I could identify (which I believe would fall under “correcting mechanics”).
Wall of variables below, feel free to read or skip to the end:
I would experiment with different shapes / thicknesses of picks, flat / upward / downward pick slant, how tight was I holding it, how close to the bed of the nail or first joint I’d hold it, the angle of my thumb joint, the amount of curl in my index finger, how much pick was exposed, how much did the tip angle away from my joint, what angle it looked like I was hitting the string at, what angle my thumb and index finger seemed to make while holding a pick, the depth of the pick as I hit the string, how narrow or wide was my pick stroke, was I starting the stroke by resting on the string first or “passing by” it, how much were my fingers contributing to movement, how far up or down the string I should pick, where should my wrist be placed, the pressure of the wrist on the body, the angle of my forearm to the strings, if I leaned to one side of the wrist or the other, how much of the side of my thumb grazes the strings as I pick (which might be my cue for DSX / USX switching and I didn’t even know because this was before CTC), what were my other fingers doing while picking, was I moving my forearm for string changes or deviating my wrist more, was my upper arm / forearm close to my abdomen (good for me) or was I “C3PO-ing” the guitar in front of me (bad for me), was I elevating my right / left shoulder, how much I leaned into / away from the guitar at my abdomen, where on my leg would the guitar sit, at what angle did the guitar sit vs my femur, was my guitar perfectly perpendicular to my femur or did it angle back towards my chest, what angle was the neck in relation to the floor (all the guitar holding angles IMO get affected if you sit on something like a bed or couch where the cushioning pushes against the guitar and messes you up)… Stream of consciousness off the top of my head, might add more later. Edit: am I concentrating the pressure between my fingers near the tip of the pick (I’ve heard it referred to as “choking up on it”) or near the back, giving it more “give” in feel.
As you might guess, I spent more time messing with these variables than just sitting there practicing things ad nauseam. Whenever I found a variable that felt better for me, I’d remember it and try to get it to feel more normal. I would guess I was in the “conscious incompetence” phase.
As far as plain repetition, I find that most useful for remembering passages, identifying “landmark” notes or portions to not get lost, and making sure that the movement side of the equation is fluid (position shifts, string changes / skips, etc).
Yes it is because I haven’t achieved the kind of speed and fluidity that I hoped for, especially after playing for so long. I kind of thought it would come quicker to me. When I say going against my physiology though, I mean adopting a different method of picking altogether to try to mimick another player. In my case, my natural picking mechanic is nearly identical to how Martin Miller holds his pick. And the motions themselves are pretty similar to Frank Gambale. After discovering CtC, I tried a supinated, dwps “slouch” as I call it, ala Troy or Yngwie, Bonamassa, Petrucci, etc. In my practical playing experience, that only works in an efficient way for me when I’m palm muting metal stuff. Otherwise, a supinated wrist/forearm for lead playing feels very unnatural to me. And I think I have tried to force that instead of working with the way I am comfortable holding my picking hand.
Edit: I tried the supinated approach thinking it would help me with pickslanting and string changing. But I’m finding that the only thing that matters is the escape motion. Not necessarily how you hold the picking hand.
I gotta say that the yield in this thread has been way beyond what I was expecting. It’s a pleasure to learn from the passion and experience expressed here.
I hear that. I’d just add that as for me personally, I really feel like the rookie around here, and that just makes things a bit more challenging for me. I may inadvertently give off the impression that I’m further along than I am as a player (although my vid posts are helping set that straight). A lot of you guys - and it’s coming out in this very thread - probably weren’t even trying to play fast when you were as ‘noob’ as I am. Like I read @Jack_Hammer’s post and I see he’s in a totally different place than I am. (There are a lot of jackhammers around here!)
I don’t think I’m totally over my head, but it’s just something to know - as CTC gains popularity, you’re probably gonna see more and not less of this phenomenon. It’s gonna stretch your talking-to-(relatively)-new-player chops.
For instance…
Exactly! By rights, maybe that’s what I ought to be doing. I’m trying to skip a grade, basically. It’s something my gut tells me that most of you guys didn’t do. (But none of you started on guitar at 46 either!)
I guess you could say I’m having to fill in gaps. In that vein…
Could be Troy’s been saying this too and I was missing it. But you nailed it, I think. I was only processing the “play at high speed…” part - and not the “…so you can relax at the previous (lower) speed” part. [Not that lower means ‘slow.’ I get it;)] (…btw, @syzmonwoj1 - what you describe is exactly Hadcock, to a T. See my metronome thread if you’re interested in what that means.)
Another point of new-guy confusion is the lonely left hand. We talk much about the right (understandably), but…
This is making a lot of sense to me now. I think that’s one thing the whole massive reps deal is actually good for - when you get to the point of trying to synch up the hands, the fretting has to be nailed. Obvious to most of you, but not so to me. At least not until now.
Another light bulb moment for me - licks vs. exercises. Namely - it’s not licks versus excercises. Licks… are excercises! I think this is what you’re saying here, right?..
What’s dawning on me is that this talk about “I never practiced, I just played” - and I just saw that statement yet again this very night, in Greg Prato’s book “Shredders” - well, I was taking that way too literally. (In fairness, I don’t know why people don’t just say, “I didn’t drill Mel Bay exercises, I drilled licks from Kiss” - that I woulda understood. Anyway…)
So this kinda says where I’m at now:
When you hear the sort of anti-repetition mantra (and you’re literal-minded as all get-out, like me), it gets confusing. I do understand the reflex; we’ve already established that the nothing-but-reps approach in fact ‘doesn’t fix anything,’ as Troy put it. But…
There’s an aspect of gaining speed that’s not about fixing anything. @Pepepicks66’s point, I think (if I’m getting you): reps won’t create good mechanics, but mechanics won’t give the benefit (for example, burning in the fretting pattern) of reps. Probably obvious to most of you. But I needed to hear it, so I’m glad someone spelled it out.
[I’m just getting to where my fretting of @tommo’s sixes etude is *feeling* (if maybe not sounding) fast-ish to me - and it’s really the result of nothing but lots of repetition, far as I can tell.]
As for my final take-away:
Troy, you talk a lot about experimentation, so you must love this. The way he writes that list, something crystallized for me: technique is often discovered in pieces and not whole. That’s big encouragement for me not to feel like I’m just fooling around or wasting time when I get into some of those activities listed.
Oh yeah, plenty. But I do want you all to know - and Troy, you especially - that the patience and thoughtful responses here are just dynamite for a earlier-stage player like myself. I only hope that others are also benefiting from some of these discoveries.
Don’t worry too much about the age thing. I teach people who are much older than you and are in their early years of learning guitar. I spent so much time just naturally feeling out the guitar as a teenager that I overlooked TONS of important steps. So at 35, I feel like in some ways I am starting over again. I noodled and improvised for about 10 years before I ever really became friends with a metronome. And if you are starting to see the pattern, I uselessly drilled scale playing and exercises with a metronome to work on my timing. And while a metronome is very important, it does not build killer timing and feel in and of itself. To beat a dead horse, my timing would have gotten far better playing to James Brown songs than doing exercises to a click.
So as far as skipping a grade, I will say this route will be your quickest way to graduation 
lol.
You have lots of connections in the music industry. If you talk to any famous classically trained virtuoso violinist, pianist, etc., they will give you extensive answers to all of these metronome-related questions, and more. You might not believe them, but it will certainly be entertaining, and you can make a video about it as well, as it does seem to be such an area of interest for many people here. I hope that you do it!
Thanks for the shot in the arm. But… that’s the reason to worry. Those who have read my other posts kinda know that I’m the guy who wasted lots of time and is frustrated. Anyway, nice to hear from another recovering former metronome user;)
I know that comment was meant for Troy. Definitely interested in his take. But you raise a great point, and I’ve done some digging there myself, because the sort of classical pedagogy literature is pretty built up at this point. So right - do they know something we don’t know?
Just my own $.2 is that in fact, down that road lies danger. There does seem to be a lot of metronome use in those conservatory practice rooms. But… my sense is that a lot of those kids actually did what Troy did. They somehow worked out proper mechanics (whatever the violin/piano equivalents are of pickslanting), and only later did they use the metronome (like the Hadcock method; see the recent metronome thread here) for some other purposes. Or to close the gap on pieces where they were like 90% of the way to tempo.
To wit:
He’s talking about the ‘massive reps’ thing (see OP), but sure he’d agree it may well be the same for metronome use. (Metronome and massive rep are nearly interchangeable anyway.)
Granted, some had one of those Soviet-style, pennies-on-the-back-of-hands piano teachers to actually teach mechanical stuff. But I’ll bet a lot of them ‘just figured it out.’ Speculation, but hey - that’s definitely what happens on electric guitar all the time. At any rate, my point is that you can totally get the impression from them that the metronome is this crucial aid in acquiring chops. I’m learning to question (strongly!) whether that’s really true.
[For what it’s worth, I think we’re more likely to get @Troy to go for a different avenue of research. This was not said in jest! Troy, whaddya think?..]
Talk about groundbreaking… Talk about revolutionary… !!
I’m not trying to put guitar on a difficulty pedestal, but I think the comparison of the technical aspects of different instruments can be flawed. For example, I bet most people could do a super fast flurry of notes on a flute if they had someone to blow in it for them (thats the hard part). The flute and other instruments like a trumpet have one action in a forced-linear fashion (valves etc). Even a violin (although it starts getting trickier) has few factors in bowing for example (again not saying it is easy) and everyone uses pretty much the same motions - there isn’t always the same amount of mechanical correcting needed in the same way as guitar picking where the same outcome can occur with different/varied and compound motions and body parts.
For example - flute finger placement is not analogous with guitar picking - more akin to fretting
So I think the heavy metronome stuff is for ultimate consistency and a timing exercise - something that you would have to have if playing in an orchestra, for stuff they can largely do speedwise (mechanically) already.
I would bet the 100% opposite, the students invent nothing and are doing exactly what their teachers tell them to do. I am convinced that the guitar world, compared to other instruments, is an absolute train wreck, but at least we have CtC to fix picking.
I still have my misgivings about the analogy as it pertains to guitar. But I’d be less than an honest man if I didn’t make your day and share this;)…
Great clip! Loved the bit when he knew he would do it on the next go!
Just to be a b*stard…
would you class his repetition as “massive”? 
(Considering he could have busted his head on the 1st rry, maybe the answer is yes!)
Yeah, that lightbulb moment he has was just great. I guess that’s what we’re shooting for too, right?
“Massive reps” here? Naw, this is definitely the Troy, start-with-fast model;) There’s definitely more to say about that, but… I’m mentally exhausted!
I may post in this thread again when it all gels for me. (I actually printed out the whole thread and am going through carefully to make sense of what was said/what I learned.) Suffice it to say for now that learning to pick fast is like that proverbial elephant, and we’re all the blind men. I think some of the difficulty is that I’m saying ‘foreleg,’ someone else is saying ‘trunk’ - we might both be right. We’re just talking about different aspects of the same thing.
I will grant, though, that Troy (and a lot of you) are in touch with more parts of the elephant.
I’ve got just enough brainpower left to sort of repost this for @Jack_Hammer, who I don’t think got an answer. I’d like to hear the answer(s), too. Can anyone take a stab?..
That makes sense, yeah. I meant that if people in the classical music world would promote the metronome for speed (or mechanics), be skeptical. There is a fair amount of metronome talk at a place like bulletproofmusician; not that he necessarily advocates metronome for speed, but I’d say that my school band/orchestra environment (more a ‘classical’ than a pop music venue, pedagogically speaking) encouraged it.
That world is pretty regimented, compared to electric guitar. Maybe you’re right. It would for sure be interesting to know.
To be clear, I really don’t want this to come off like some kind of competition where I try to prove I’m right. And the whole laying down of weapons thing — if there are any weapons even brandished then that’s not the kind of learning environment we’re trying to create here. I get that you get that, and this thread is by and large very friendly. But I don’t even like to joke about that stuff because that kind of thing goes wrong on the internet so often.
Re: the skate video, yes, that captures the spirit of what I was getting at, where you make multiple attempts to do something which is hard to do correctly even once. The bike tricks I was thinking of that I worked on when I was younger didn’t even really relate to speed. Very often they were things you did standing still and required balance, like doing an “endo” and balancing on your front wheel. There was really no way to do that other than to just keep trying to do it. There weren’t these kind of discussions at all about the best way to learn to do it — you just kept trying to do it until you or someone else got it.
In guitar, the issue is clouded because people confuse getting the notes right with getting the motions right. I think that’s where most of the confusion comes from. As we can see from the stream of new faces here in the past few weeks, this is not an obvious observation.
Tons of players have no idea, or only some idea, that their technique is incorrect. If it were more obvious, then the whole slow practice / repetitive practice thing would be much less of a discussion. Players would simply observe that the motions are wrong, see that they’re not changing, and look for some other way to make them change.
The dude on the skateboard brings me back to the question of consistency…he finally pulled off the trick…once. What’s next to get to the point of pulling off the trick 90% of the time instead of 10%?
To me it’s a bit like an uncontrollable race car the engine has got the horse power but as soon as I stomp on the gas it’s sheer luck if I get to the end of the drag strip or crash as burn.
Starting with Speed has provided me with the motions but damned if I know how to put it all together with the left hand in a consistent way.
One of the things I said way up higher in this thread (I think I did, anyway), was that while ‘massive repetition’ is rightfully criticized regarding picking development, I’m not so sure that that criticism applies to fretting. Whatever lick you’re struggling with, you’re probably fretting accurately at moderate speeds, and your left-hand technique is unlikely to change much as you speed up. If I’m right, then that leaves you with repetition.
Chunking is often referred to around here as a way to line up with ‘landmark notes’ to make hand synch happen. For sure true. But I think that even more basically, it’s also about burning-in the pattern to the point of automaticity, where the left hand just reels it off faster than you could think your way through it, note-by-note.
That’s the one use of massive rep that I’m still holding onto. And I wonder if ultimately this will be part of the answer to your question, @Jack_Hammer. But I’m even more interested in what others will have to say. Especially regarding whether to work on things piecemeal (i.e. burn-in the pattern with the left in isolation, and only go to work on synch once that’s clicking) or instead work solely with both hands together. (I recall Troy advocating the latter, but not certain about that.)
…Just reread your post. You can play in synch up to around 150. I have the same question as you, though at lower speeds. Anyway, let’s see if anyone can speak first to your issue (later, if so, I may reinsert mine)
Are the fretting motions correct? How do you know? It’s still a motor learning challenge, the same rules still apply. You still have to ensure the fingering can even be played fast and going fast even if it’s sloppy is still the only way to know. Once you get something that is aerodynamic then you can slow it down a little and try to do more memorization of the motions.
However, I’m not sure what you’re calling “massive repetition” is really a thing. Some amount of repetition is necessary to memorize something, of course. But good habits take root very quickly. Mistakes are the best example of this. They start to stick within minutes sometimes.
We have heard every kind of story on here, people repeating stuff for hours and hours, usually with no particular clear goal in mind. You have to be careful with using words like “massive” because what does that even mean? Once a thing is really correct, it doesn’t take much to trigger the memorization process.
Edit: I did a Skype type lesson years ago with a guy who told me he repeated the Paul Gilbert lick for four hours. I didn’t even really object at the time because I was like, ok, I know people talk about the repetition and if it works for them… Anyway, I don’t think the fingering on the Paul Gilbert lick needs 4 hours of repetition. But I would definitely call that “massive”!