Has anyone here gone through any of Rick Graham’s material? He has a special running for all of his courses and was considering purchasing the pack. His mini-lessons on YouTube are great, and he has great technique, so I figured it to be a good buy, but I would like some feedback from you fine gents.
A visual representation of Rick Graham’s technique;
haha, I was just looking at one of them before I go out the door! I have 3 of them. Ill respond more in depth when I get back. brb
I have:
Killer Shred Technique
Economy Picking 1
Economy Picking 2
The vids are great. Super high quality. Well worth the $$$ just to see one of the best in the world shredding up close. he takes his time ad explains each lick etc. Good tab with all of them and some contain backing tracks and drum loops etc
Does he explain exactly how to economy pick in a semi-CTC style or does he just say something like: Pick this note in the 5th string with a downstroke and then pick this note on the 4th string by continuing the same pick stroke?
Does he even mention the slant of the pick and changing it for upstrokes as opposed to downstrokes?
Finally let me ask you: Did you improve much because of the economy picking 1 and 2 courses?
I have instructional products from: Troy, Joe Stump, Chris Brooks, and Rick Graham.
Then going back to the VHS days I have/had tapes from Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, Arlen Roth, Joe Pass. Thru the years I also had books with cassettes and CDs like the Troy Stetina stuff I started on and many others.
AFAIK, apart from Troy, no one really EXPLICITLY mentions “slanting” except Chris Brooks. Chris goes into it fairly deeply in most of his products
Joe Stump makes a few small references along with visual demonstrations like he says something along the lines of “when you’re ascending you’re sweeping down” and he shows dwps, and “when you’re descending you’re sweeping up” and he shows uwps
Rick doesnt really explicitly mention slanting AFAIK. He mentions inside/outside and “economic” (economy) movement. HE also mentions “planting” which is essentially using very small movements lol. Keeping the pick close to the string after you pick a note, having it ready to pick the next one.
One thing about Rick, he seems to definitely be into economy of motion. Thats why it looks effortless as he plays. You dont always SEE explicit “slanting” movements. What you do see is thumb manipulation…which he does mention at times. You can see slanting moves if you know what to look for but in any case he isnt into “big” movements.
Rick and Chris use very small movements. Joe uses somewhat bigger movements so different movements are easier to spot. All of them use thumb/or finger manipulation from what I see.
That should be sort of an eye opener for all of us. If a monster like RG isnt explicitly mentioning slanting, its probably because he isnt all that aware of it. For me that means his “slanting” is very minimal and he is using other motions like thumb moves to compensate. There is more than one way to skin a cat
There is no way to answer “did you improve much” from any one instructional vid lol. The only way to answer that would be to only buy one vid and then go to an island and practice. I have bought many vids concurrently.
Obviously the CTC info helped me the most so far since it is the most explicit and in depth. One thing I will say, once you have the CTC info internalized, the other vids are all of a sudden way more valuable because you can SEE what they are doing even if they dont explicitly mention it
I will say that Rick has many licks that seem fairly unique to him including tons of smooth arp variations. The RG vids will be more important to me going forward because, lets get real, its pretty advanced stuff lol. I have to grow my way into some of it
for instance he has many arps using variations of picking like this:
g------------------4–7
d-----------4–5------- where the picking is UDDU. Starting any lick on an U is foreign to me and I have avoided it so far but he has so many cool arps that I have bit the bullet and started working on this
Me too. I’m a big believer in economy of motion, especially for the fretboard hand. I see players lifting their fingers far off the fretboard and it just slows them down. As for the picking hand, all other things being equal, the less the distance of travel, the less time it takes.
Thank you for the in depth explanation of the various instructional courses. Rick Graham’s courses sound pretty good.
I had some VHS courses too 
My favorite was the original version of Speed Kills by Michael Angelo (no Batio in his name at the time). I also bought the instructional video made by Jim Gillette who was the vocalist in Nitro. Jim and Michael recorded two albums in Nitro and I had good time at the show I went to which was part of the tour for their second album. Have you heard it? I know you have their first one, but I think their second one has more melodic music in general. Here’s their most melodic song from that album:
I HAD the first one like 25 yrs ago lol. At the time of course I thought it was sort of cheesy-ish and way overblown…but that what it was trying to be lol. I need to go listen to ti again for the heck of it
yeah, Nitro was so overblown, they could have toned it down and still sort of been in Queen territory with massive layering etc
I never really heard the 2nd one
this was a good instructional cassette. Wolf Marshall. Believe it or not the cassette itself is laying in my floor as we speak lol. The booklet is long gone
I have Arpeggio Workout, Hybrid Picking workout and 5 Arpeggio Studies. I also have monthly Skype lessons with him!
All the download products are excellent. No mention of pickslanting or the like, but if you know Troy’s work well enough, you can easily apply it to a lot of the examples and work it out yourself. All the examples are extremely musical as well, 100% worth the money!
Wow turns out even Rick Graham’s instructional material is secretly about a band that existed 25 years ago.
On topic, I was watching his discussion of legato technique the other day, and he seemed to have some great insight on ways to improve left hand technique. Made me interested in his other videos.
Yes, he is the best legato player I’ve ever seen, and once more, he doesn’t mind sharing his ‘secrets’.
He is to legato as troy is to alt-picking.
Awesome! I just purchased the lesson pack and look forward to being extreeeeeeeeeeeeemely humbled.
what all comes with it?
Videos, PDFs of Tab, Guitar Pro Tab, and backing tracks.
i mean which all lessons is it? which vids?
All of them, haha. I purchased this
wow. nice. see you in about 10 years lol. and thats just to get thru that first vid!
Hah. Right. I’ve done some of these exercise. My main difficulty is how light of a touch you need for Economy picking in general. I’m used to playing Metal and Blues. This stuff is like Tai Chi vs Boxing. Can’t just hammer away like I did with alt-picking.
he covers that on Economy picking 2 where he gets into dynamics and “string displacement”.
look how heavy he eco picks here