Primer "Pick Grip" section - feedback request

Masters in Mechanics
#1

We’ve been updating the Primer lately with what we hope are valuable hands-on type stuff, and making things more streamlined so you can just start at the first video and watch all the way through.

With that in mind, we were planning to try and condense the “Pick Grip” section into fewer videos to make it quicker to watch and presumably easier to follow. However I just re-watched the Pick grip section from start to finish, and it wasn’t as overkill as I thought.

The videos are pretty short, and to the point, with mostly hands-on demonstrations of what the different grips looks like, along with some closeups from the interviews. You also learn a little about arm position, anchoring, muting all just from showing what different players look like. This includes the “weird” ones like trailing edge players and middle-/three-finger grip players.

If you knew nothing at all about guitar, you could watch these videos and then pretty much look at any famous player and recognize from a distance what they’re doing. In this respect, if this is one of your first learning experiences as a new guitar player, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. The idea is to make this foreign subject with lots of weird details seem more familiar.

So the question here is, for those who have watched this section, did you find this useful? Did you feel like the experience was too long or hard to ingest given the information, or were you able to follow along without feeling overwhelmed?

Let us know what you think!

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#2

I found it interesting and well presented, and I like that the various grips are classified without being labelled “correct” or “incorrect”. In general, I find the whole “descriptive, not prescriptive” approach to be one of Cracking the Code’s greatest strengths.

Having said that, I think an absolute beginner would find the number of possibilities overwhelming. A beginner who asks questions like, “how should I hold my pick?” probably expects a more definite answer so they can move on to the more instantly-gratifying parts of learning guitar. I don’t know if beginners are your target audience, but I think for their sake it would help to move the “choosing a grip” section to the beginning. It establishes a default which the other grips can then be compared to. A structure that says “Start here, but try these if you’re feeling adventurous” would give beginners guidance without excluding the other options.

I could see these videos being of value to an intermediate player, who already has a preferred grip, but starts to second guess their decision after noticing other players holding their picks differently. These videos would serve as reassurance that there’s more than one valid approach.

#3

@Troy How can less be more? More is more. Had to do it. Anyways you know I’ve been pursuing the Crosspicking freedom thing a long time. I found these videos to be pretty helpful for me personally because I would consider myself a pretty advanced musician in general and I find that I learn better by direct and to the point demonstrations. The week the new material dropped I switched to 3 finger grip and it has definitely increased my level of Crosspicking freedom by a huge percentage. The short video “Identifying EVH style is wrist motion” has been helping me implement USX and DSX using the new grip as I was running into swiping on more linear passages much like the swiping seen in some of the passages in the original Steve Morse Analysis video.

#4

I thought this section was great. It covered everything, yet is short enough to watch in one sitting. It’s also nicely broken up so you can watch some of the grips and skip others without missing out.

If you’re going to add something to this I would take a few pictures of how these all look from a player’s POV. I think this is a good recommendation in general, going forward, to include an action shot (with tabs)–or at least a picture–of what the technique looks like from a player’s PoV. That way you can play the same snippet of music and have a form to compare with.

#5

They’re really well-paced in my opinion. However I tend to watch first without a guitar, just getting a quick overview, and later watch thoroughly with a studying mindset. So I don’t evaluate the first time as strongly as I do when I have a guitar in my hands. But the presentation and your articulation never feel overwhelming.

#6

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

We have gotten feedback from players over the years who felt that the sheer volume of “Discovery Channel-style” information presented in sections like “Pick Design” was too long, and lacked specific hands-on demonstrations of how this information could be useful, and clear instructions for what to do next. I actually agree with this.

The lessons you’re referring to as being helpful, like the EVH video, are much more recent lessons designed specifically to address this issue. They’re shorter, super hands-on, and focused on showing you specific practical things to look for or listen for to identify different picking motions.

From your feedback, it sounds like the newer style is… working!

They definitely are, and this is what we’re doing with the “Pick Design” section. Those videos are cool as a reference but I’m certain that it’s super overkill for someone to have to sit through all of them just to choose a pick and move to the next section. To fix this, we’ve scripted out a one-video, six-minute lesson on “Choosing a Pick”. We’ll put it first in the sequence and get rid of the old video, which currently comes last in the sequence. In the new script, I specifically state that most players should not watch 1.5 hours of pick tests, and instead skip it and move on to pick grip.

Our plan was to do the same with the “Pick Grip” section, but then I re-watched it last week and thought it actually wasn’t that overwhelming, and that even very new players might still benefit from knowing these things up front.

Maybe what we can do is redo or modify the “Choosing A Grip” video, and place it first in the sequence as you’re suggesting, and specifically state in there that we think it’s a good idea if you watch the other videos too. BUT, if you get stuck or it seems like too much at first, just skip those and keep moving, and come back later. Not sure if that’s actually a good way to organize this, or just a hack suggesting we haven’t really figured out the best sequence for presenting this information — or whether it’s necessary to present all of it anyway.

Thanks for the details. I’m guessing an experienced player is more likely to watch all the way through this because they’re not that long and fairly hands-on. It could be that newer players — or certain newer players who prefer a hands-on approach — might still get bogged down here.

I guess we’ll see!

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#7

I’m a new member so I guess you can call it fresh feedback. I personally AirPlay the videos a lot on my big tv while I’m noodling around and it’s not the length of the videos, but rather needing to go to a different one. I don’t think the info is overkill at all though and it’s not a big deal to me personally.

#8

I’m on the “More is more” team.

Now, concerning the pick grip section, I’ve actually been rewatching it lately and there are some concepts which haven’t been clear enough to me first time around, like pick point. The other main difficulty I’ve had is distinguishing between an extended trigger grip and an angle pad grip. I’m not sure if it’s just me who had trouble understanding the difference, or if the videos aren’t clear enough.

One thing that seems to be missing is the concept of grip tightness, how tight different players grip the pick.

#9

I think the only part I found a little hard to pay full attention to was the pick design and function/History of the pick etc. But that’s just me, I’m sure others are probably very interested in this. When it got to the different grips though, I thought it was great.
I did think there might be a little more to pick point than was discussed though. Meaning other things that cause it to happen beyond the arm and grip setup etc. Maybe it’s just me… :rofl: But I don’t know if anyone else is interested in that, or if it might draw too much attention to something that isn’t overly important.

#10

Also, I think it’s good that people are advised to try different grips. I know for me, I found certain grips, with certain arm setups, suit specific tasks more so than others. Again this is more of a personal thing, but I’d have probably not discovered that I can do some things better with a different grip if I wasn’t encouraged to do so.