Success stories... what was the one revelation that changed it for you?

Off-Topic
#1

If you could pick one little (or big) detail that you had to change, that completely unlocked the speed and accuracy of your picking over time what would it be? (and also, how hard was it to retrain yourself from old habits)

I think i’m getting close to my issue, and believe it or not it was down to how I hold the pick. I find I naturally want to hold it with the pad of my index and thumb, however, trying the Andy Wood style trigger finger grip has almost unlocked a new, and more loose feeling wrist motion. I’m not clean playing this way, but I have a feeling I may have stumbled upon the change I need to make, even if it means I will struggle playing riffs I could normally play.

Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

#2

I don’t know if it was night and day, exactly, but understanding how my picking technique worked, and therefore what I SHOULD be able to play, was pretty big.

The rest is just practice.

1 Like
#3

I was doing bursts for tremolo speed, figured out that having the pick on the second knuckle of the index finger was severely limiting the motion of my wrist. I used to do primarily an elbow motion which I thought was wrist funnily enough. After that I accidentally figured out that the flexed form is the way to go for fast wrist picking. And now that I use the flexed form I can actually use 2 way pickslanting. All this happened in the last 2 months and its the biggest improvement I’ve had to my picking in my entire guitar career. Now to just polish this to as close to perfection as I can…

2 Likes
#4

For myself, learning to pick in a completely straight line with a motion close to wrist deviation (I know that word is anathema here, and technically I am ever so slightly RDT, I’m sure). The battle was developing an upstroke that didn’t use much, or any, flexion. I could easily do repeated fast downstrokes with flexion or extension, but the same was not true with upstrokes, and that lack of balance was a big hindrance as I wanted to alternate pick anything. It’s still a work-in-progress, but there’s actually a light at the end of the tunnel now. haha

2 Likes
#5

The pickslanting inquisition has been alerted. I’m sure they’ll be (just a little) more merciful since you confessed spontaneously :smiley:

On topic-er:
My guitar life can be easily decomposed into:

    • plateaus where I basically keep doing the same things and… surprise! I keep getting broadly the same results.
    • moments where I realise “Oh look, Thingy A works better than Thingy B for situation X”, and it’s basically instant improvement by doing A instead of B (for that situation X ofc).
4 Likes
#6

I think for me the big things that really helped stuff click was the clockface analogy for determining pick path (which I don’t see Troy using as much any more, but it’s been super helpful for me) and the revelation/idea that you can do two completely different pick paths with just wrist motion with absolutely minimal change in forearm placement.

Putting these two together, I was able to adjust my picking to being predominantly upstroke escape picking but with a dart thrower motion (clockface analogy path being close to 11-to-5) but with a downstroke escape motion that’s predominantly deviation (9-to-3 or so clockface path).

From there, I’m working on being able to fluidly switch between those two pick paths as needed, and being able to blend them into an 11-to-3 or so double escape motion for crosspicking.

Now I just need to actually learn songs and shit rather than just scales, arpeggios and licks…

2 Likes
#7

For me, stopping with the pretense of “practicing slow and gradually building up” or “playing to a metronome” and just fucking going for it, and seeing what happens.

Kinda like running track or doing anything athletic, you train the specific motions you need to do on the fly to refine them.

For guitar, you gotta know what it feels like to go at certain speeds before you can play any meaningful music at those speeds.

Sure, play with an idea till you get it under your fingers, but afterwards, just go for it and you’ll be surprised with the results.

I didn’t learn my technique with Cracking the Code, I learned it by learning Iron Maiden, King Diamond/Mercyful Fate, Death, Amon Amarth, and Children of Bodom tunes.

Was my technique as refined then? No, but I had a HELLUVA LOT OF FUN, and as a result you learn some interesting things.

If I was to get philosophical and all Zen-like, Confucious said there’s three ways we gain knowledge:

  1. Through imitation/instruction, which he says is the easiest. In other words, we imitate those that came before us, or somebody more experienced taught passed on their knowledge.

  2. Through introspection, which he says is the noblest. Sitting on things, thinking about it, pondering it, is also how we gain valuable knowledge. This is where creativity comes from after all!

  3. Through experience, which he says is the harshest. Learning by doing is a perfectly legitimate and valid way to gain knowledge and insight.

So really, there’s value in just doing it and seeing what happens. You can neurotically think and stress about being precise and technically correct, or you can just learn how to do so on the fly by just playing music, and playing what comes to your mind, absent of what you think shouldn’t be possible.

Basically like Morpheus from the Matrix, “Free your mind.”

4 Likes
#8

Now I just need to actually learn songs and shit rather than just scales, arpeggios and licks…

I feel this too. I have neglected playing any music at all since I started on my journey through this website. It’s almost a carrot on the stick method for me. The reward once I hit my tremolo picking target is i’ll start playing actual music again, but this time, writing and playing all those riffs I had in my head in years gone that were just too fast or intricate for me to be able to play up to tempo.

2 Likes
#9

The content on this here website which I discovered via youtube has been pretty revelatory.

However, for whatever reason I have never really taken to picking using any kind of wrist motion, despite having followed the instructions given in the pickslanting primer for RDT.

So for me, the main revelation was to discover the smoothest way I can pick is with finger-thumb motion. In this I was also inspired by Pasquale Grasso who briefly demonstrates a fast tremolo in one of his My Music Masterclass videos.

1 Like
#10
  1. Chunking
  2. Looking for easy instead of trying to execute motions
  3. Focusing my practice on what I want to play, not abstract exercises
4 Likes
#11

Growing up, I used to play with an amp listening to records. I imitated, not knowing what fingerings or type of picking technique were being used. I was going for the sound and attitude more than the exact notes and the correct fingerings. I played fast but sloppily and straightened it out after a while. I used a lot of legato at first, the right hand came later - probably a good idea.

Every technique has some disadvantage that you just have to accept. Most virtuoso players have pretty weird, unconventional techniques, but it works for them. Find what works for you.

1 Like
#12

I realize you are asking for a specific detail, and hesitated to reply until I read your next paragraph and you spoke about how you are holding the pick. But perhaps my experience will be helpful to someone reading here. I was already a full time professional jazz guitarist but constantly feeling frustrated about certain limitations that I realized must come from technique - most people here seem to focus as you do on speed and accuracy, which were factors for me, but at least as important to me was improving sound and feel. I took the leap, stopped taking gigs, went in isolation for 3 months (in another country!) and completely changed my right hand technique: how I held the pick, the angle at which the pick crossed the strings, the position of my right hand and right arm, the angle with respect to the plane of the strings (what you all refer to as DSX, etc.), the source of motion, etc. I practiced 8-10 hours a day during these 3 months and, at the end of it, had a new physical approach to playing (incidentally, this was long before the internet, let alone the Cracking the Code site). Possible lessons from this: 1) perhaps 1/2-2/3 of the way through this time, I got called to play with some great musicians and couldn’t resist - it was wild, because I had never yet played with the new technique with others, but had not used the old technique for a long time (and did not want to revert to it, even briefly), so it was an odd place to be. Years later, I listened to a cassette of that session, and I sounded pretty good, but I remember how bizarre the “in-between” feeling was. 2) I’m not convinced I could ever have made the change “gradually” - there was really no half-way stops technically for a transition, and it took this deep leap for me to make it happen. 3) I’ve spent the rest of my life so happy that I did this, and have had all these years to benefit from better sound, speed, feel. Doing this was perhaps the best use musically of any 3 months in my life! Although I’ve continued to revise, experiment, and fine-tune, it laid the foundation. 4) Most people I’ve known who were as far along as I was when I made that change - or even many students I’ve had who are less far along - would never consider putting in the work to make a change like this. However, I suspect I’m preaching to the choir here - anyone on this site must be at least considering revisions to picking technique, and I’ll bet there are at least a few of you who were pretty far along as players before you came here. So wishing you all good luck in getting to where you want to with this!

1 Like