Pre-CTC Picking Technique

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. As the title suggests, I am new to CTC/MIM and this is my current technique. It is how I’ve always picked since starting approximately 30 years ago. If there was an evolution anywhere along the path it was unintended and unnoticed. I tried to tinker with grip a couple of times years ago, but I settled right where I started. I have no formal training to speak of, so this is my first foray into a formalized guitar practice system. This would be the before in a before-and-after comparison. I have not practiced anything from CTC yet. Was trying to get advice about the best way to start and what needs the most attention.

I mentioned in my introduction thread that I have a difficult time picking anything beyond a certain point and it is by no means fast. This is about as fast as I can play without the wheels completely falling off the wagon. The lick is the intro to “I Know a Little”, which I mentioned also in my introduction thread. It’s a song I’ve always loved and wanted to play, among others, but that I just have never had the speed or accuracy to play. All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Thank you.

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Hey! You could start apply Downward Pickslanting and Rest strokes to this intro to get a system in place for your accuracy. Also, I would work on the six note pattern to work on your synchronization. The notes on the b string on pretty muted, but that will go away once your sync is better. Try emphasizing the first note on each string and only focuses on that one to chunk it like Troy mentions in Ctc. Also, i would pick all of the notes until the pattern is sounding clean. That way you always know where both hands are.

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I might dive into this thread as it gets rolling, but since your question is pretty open-ended, I’m curious what @troy might suggest you do.

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Welcome! I agree with @Sguitar that this lick you are considering is a perfect place to start practicing rest strokes and DWPS. It is two notes per string right? Something like the below?

E ------------------5
B ---------5–7-----
G --5–6------------

I am a huge fan of rest strokes in particular, try to see what happens if you just think about resting the pick on the higher string after every “5”. so the picking pattern would be down-rest-up-down-rest-up-down

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Thank you all for the feedback. Will start working on pick slanting and rest strokes.

@tommo, yes that’s the tab for the intro–2NPS.

Is this your way of saying I need to participate more in class?? It’s true, sometimes the platform stuff does intrude - we’ve been a little preoccupied getting Mike Stern together. Apologies.

Hi! Thanks for signing up. Your technique appears to be a pretty blank slate currently. And I don’t mean that negatively, just meaning it seems like this isn’t an area you have worked on. That can be a good thing if it means you don’t have habits to work around.

As others have pointed out, it’s probably time to choose a system, even if that is a somewhat arbitrary choice at this point. What they mean by this is that most great players have a particular type of picking movement they use which actually limits the kinds of phrases they can play, or at least makes certain phrases easier than others. Believe it or not, this actually makes it much easier to get started since certain phrases and fingerings will immediately present as “easy” and you can simply ignore the others for the time being.

A lot of guitar styles like to match downstrokes and downbeats, which for your phrase, would mean making sure that the top note is a downstroke. That would suggest starting out with the downward pickslanting stuff and seeing you can make that work for you. Again, in the Pickslanting Primer.

One thing that’s not yet in the Pickslanting Primer, but which we will be adding some thoughts on hopefully soon, is your setup with respect to pick grip and anchoring. A lot of this is personal preference, and there is no “right” way. But it can be helpful to know what the various ways are, so you know how to spend your trial and error time. Of those variables, the one I’d point out now is that I like to use some amount of edge picking in my sound to soften the pick attack. That’s this:

https://troygrady.com/2015/01/08/the-difference-between-pickslanting-and-edge-picking/

It looks like you’re using almost no edge picking, and regardless of what you think of the tone, it can also make it a little harder to get the pick flowing over the string. Even a small amount of edge picking can make a difference. Most players use leading edge - see the blog post for details.

Otherwise take a look at the Pickslanting Primer and feel free to post an update once you’ve been able to put in a few weeks on the basics.

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I really didn’t mean it that way at all. Since this is, as you described it, a “blank slate” situation, and since he has a pronated wrist-oriented thing going on, I was trying to suppress my knee-jerk impulse to browbeat him into doing things the way I would do them. :smiley:

I figured, I’m just giving you a hard time here.

Yes how do you advise someone who is essentially a blank slate? Like if you had to teach a kid, who has never played before, what would you do? I think we have some teachers on the forum here with this kind of experience.

What I can say personally from watching people pick up instruments for the first time is that sometimes when you’ve got players with really strong physical instincts for figuring out stuff on their own, it can pay to completely avoid teaching them anything, and just monitor them while they trial and error. It’s frustrating as a physical dummy who needs everything spoon-fed, but it’s very clear there are people out there with vastly better “natural” type physical abilities than my own. It’s like going back to gym class in elementary school. Why are some kids better at hockey? Don’t know, but it’s clear that they are.

One exception would be if I were teaching something like Gypsy jazz. That’s one instance where I would enforce the technique. The movements are so standardized, and gauging the results is so clear, that you just guide the pronated / uwps ‘naturals’ into the classic Django form. No real reason not to. They can be pronated all day in their rock band. It’s just another language at that point.

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