The Single Most Important Thing You've learned From CTC and Masters Of Mechanics

Playing Technique
#1

Also which player that they analyzed and/or interviewed was most beneficial to you?

The answer to these two questions will obviously vary from person to person. I think it would be interesting if we each answered this question.

The most important thing I’ve learned from subscribing to Masters Of Mechanics was the Antigravity section in general, and specifically, swiping. It was hard to imagine that all these players were perfectly crossing over the strings every time they did a string change. To find out they sometimes used swiping was very beneficial. Two way pick slanting was very important as well. I’d rate it as a close second in importance to me.

The person I learned the most from whom they interviewed and and/or analyzed is Michael Angelo Batio. I’m a heavy metal player and don’t have much interest in interviews with bluegrass players or players who aren’t primarily rock players. The exception to that is jazz fusion because I find the techniques of Al DiMeola and John McLaughlin very applicable to heavy metal.

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#2

Cool idea for a thread!

I think the best thing for me is just the concept of escaping the strings via pick slant. Most of the other insights are secondary to that in my opinion.

My favorite interview is the Andy Wood. Even though I’m mostly a metal player, I tend to like players that have other types of musical influences in their playing. There’s a F ton of ideas to explore in Andy’s clips.

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#3

So you never used a pick slant before seeing Try Grady’s videos? How did you “escape” from between the strings before that if so?

I actually first discovered the concept of two way pick slanting when in my 5th year of guitar playing my new guitar teacher, Dallas Perkins who was roommates with Paul Gilbert at G.I.T. in Hollywood, taught me sweep picking. he didn’t tell me to angle my pick (I thought of it as “angling the pick” and not “slanting the pick”). After probably 3 months of having a very frustrating time with the pick getting stuck in the strings when I tried to sweep, one day I started angling the pick in the direction of the sweep and it made all the difference in the world!

Unlike alternate picking which I evened very gradually, I went from not being able to sweep pick to being able to do it fairly well overnight! The truly amazing thing is that after some fairly hard practice in refining my sweeping technique for the next 2 or 3 months after discovering angling the pick was necessary, I never needed to practice hard at sweep picking to maintain my ability to do it. I could go for months without doing a sweep and then within 5 or 10 minutes, be right back to doing it as well as I ever did it.

#4

I’m not saying I did not angle the pick, just that I never realized what the problem was and how the pick escapes on upstrokes for downward slants. Yes I realized angled for sweeps go across the strings easier but that’s completely different than escape strokes. The animations in the original CTC series was like a light bulb in my head. I can’t tell you how much of an idiot I feel like for not having come to the realization early. I literally used to practice for 8 hours a day trying to smooth out my pick for many years and it still never occurred to me. I was caught up in the use small motions, and inside vs outside picking theory’s.

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#5

The use of small motions has become quite a controversial topic around her and I’ll admit I’m to blame for a good deal of that. I have my thoughts on the subject and Troy has his. I don’t think Troy and I disagree so much as we just have different ways of describing it and it’s something that can quickly become confusing when all we can do is type back and forth instead of being face to face where we could physically demonstrate what we mean to say.

For most of my 34 years as a guitarist I thought inside picking was far easier than outside picking. I still think so but now I think outside picking is almost as easy as inside picking whereas I used to think inside picking was much easier than outside picking. Sweeping or “economy picking” which is just small sweeps is even easier yet!

#6

I’m not saying there is no value in small movements. Maybe it helped me but if it did it was over time and not that noticeable. Inside picking has always been easier for me also. I was never able to get comfortable with fast outside changes until post CTC. It’s really only in the last 6 weeks that I’m finally almost as solid on some outside motions. I still have to warm up and concentrate to get it though, whereas inside is just always there.

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#7

The single best thing I’ve gotten out of all of it is the conclusion to look at note-to-note transitions and analyze the efficiency of movements to get from one note to the next, rather than generalizing into ‘economy picking’ or ‘alternate picking’ or inside vs outside or types of grips or whatever. Because depending on exactly what is happening, there are different strategies required for each note-to-note change.

Interestingly one of the best/most powerful moments in all the interviews for me was when Jimmy Bruno incorrectly assessed when his pick slants changed. For those of you who didn’t see it, he was claiming, with confidence, that the pressure against the string is what ‘slanted’ his pick during sweeps, and that it wasn’t a change his body was actually activating. The slow mo camera showed him clearly changing slant angles before the string changes he was referring to.

Not to pick on Jimmy at all, but it was a great example of an elite level player who had incorrect conclusions about how his own technique worked. I think this is extremely common and a huge value of CTC as well as teachers and resources in general that are trying to be more objective and data oriented. There are tons of great players who have intuitively put together a lot of amazing things. The ability to play the stuff doesn’t at all translate to the ability to make correct observations, draw useful conclusions from those observations, etc etc. We just see and hear this all the time in the music ed world.

Make no mistake I’m not saying Jimmy is a bad teacher or even that he isn’t good at teaching technique - it was just a good example of the limitations of our self analysis, especially for these fine motor things.

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#8

Man, good question, and I think this is likely to be an evolving one.

I think there are two things, and which is the most important is a tossup.

  1. I think the focus on physical picking mechanics, coupled with the “there are many potentially valid right ways to do this” thing that’s starting to come out as Troy looks at more and more players. As it turns out, my current technique wasn’t all that bad, and with a few subtle tweaks (dialing out some suplination, mostly) it’s starting to get better.

  2. That “big” movements are not something to be afraid of. I’m still trying to sort things out, but my picking seems more fluid when using a full-size Fender pick, and using a “larger” picking motion.

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#9

Probably it is that trying to get good at “everything” doesn’t get you far. It’s like trying to learn 5 languages at once.

Still, sometimes I forget this and get a bit lost in trying too many things, I just like every possible style that can come out of a guitar :sweat_smile:

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#10

Actually, I AM going to immediately amend my answer. I think Troy’s short video on the four different types of wrist motion and how they combine to allow any number of different ways to execute a pick stroke was totally illuminating - to have an understanding of how all the pieces fit together, and then to look down while I’m picking and actually see - and understand - the combination of wrist deviation and extension that drives my pick stroke, and in turn understand how that impacts the way the pick moves through the strings, is pretty damned awesome.

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#11

Yeah that video was a great moment in CTC.

I think, for me, is that CtC and MiM has taught me to be more aware of my picking and where to use legato. It’s made me think more about how I’m playing rather than just aimlessly picking away and hoping for the best.

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#12

I learned DWPS from watching the YouTube videos of CTC.
Since being on the forum I have learned quite a few things in a short period of time:

  1. I was string hopping on a single string. Still working on this via rest strokes but it is already helping my feel on the guitar. My hand feels like its floating over the strings vs. diving at them. The rest stroke technique may be the best single thing I have learned
  2. Pick lean. Another post that talked about the pick catching on the string. When I add a tiny bit of bridge lean in the pick the catching goes away
  3. Being able to let go of “small movements”. When I now pick naturally and worry less about consciously making small movements like we have heard for years from everyone my playing feels much more natural and my hand synchronization feels better
  4. Being able to let go of “playing clean”. Allowing myself to play to learn speed vs. making sure everything is perfect is giving me hope I can actually play fast someday.

I have only been on the forum for about three weeks and I have already learned this much about myself and my playing. Pretty cool!

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#13

I never did, either, but I never had formal lessons. I spent a lot of time picking other guitarist’s brains from the music scene I was a part of, and that included learning how to string the modes up and down the fretboard, but I always stumbled in those spots that required a slant to overcome the transition to a new string.

I came to the faulty conclusion that I simply was not cut out for fast lead guitar, and was relegated to slow, crappy blooze, which I had a great disdain for. So I picked up the bass, instead.

That is until I came across the CTC stuff. Just in a month my playing has really transformed. I can’t wait to see how far I go in the next year with this.

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#14

At first it was obviously DWPS, as I was an UWPS. But really, the biggest change to my playing came from swiping. Which essentially taught me I didn’t have to play ‘perfect.’ to play odd note groupings. Since my left hand muting was already really good, swiping kind of naturally fell into place once I started practicing it.

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#15

The single most important thing was when Troy revealed DWPS on the YJM video! By symmetry this suggested UWPS and 2WPS, and Troy revealed them later, but seeing the pick reciprocate through the string plane in that DWPS video was mind-blowing, it’s amazing that Troy figured it out, and I’m still so thankful (I use 2WPS).

The second most important thing was that a lot of players switch between 2WPS and cross-picking.

The third most important thing is that small movements are not necessary.

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#16

I would say that the Antigravity seminar had the most impact, specifically 2WPS. It got me to realize there was in fact a system to this whole thing, even if I never specifically try to “make” a motion happen. It’s very cool to analyze it all after the fact.

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#17

I was exactly the same as AGTG. I’ve been playing 40 years but am largely self taught. I always thought the pick was supposed to be parallel to the strings. As a result, my single string licks were fairly fast, but as soon as I tried to change strings, everything fell apart. Now I’m trying to fix 40 years of bad habits and it’s a slow process.

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#18

The best thing I got was the escapes.
I watched the videos in no particular order or even all at once so things are falling into place in no particular order of importance.

Hands down the ctc series was what got me. I was just in the right state of mind to sit through it. Honestly it’s kind of a miracle I did because I had mostly lost hope of ever acquiring the mojo.

Didn’t read that this was an old thread until now.
Sorry?

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#19

Yes, I think that if there is only one thing to walk away with, it is the above; most everything else can be derived. Arthur Schopenhauer said, “talent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see,” and the escaping part is the genius. Once the target is visible, talent is sufficient, and the problem becomes much easier.

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#20

for me it is just the awareness of pickslanting being a thing…and the increased mechanical awareness that comes from looking at such details closely

I started playing in '88 (almost 21 yrs old) and bought the Paul Gilbert Intense Rock vhs probably within a year or so of it coming out. I thought “THIS IS IT! Now ill be playing like the pros! He is showing how to do all these 3nps scales!!”

Then I started to work on the “Paul Gilbert lick” and just simply NEVER could get the upstroke to the higher string working with any speed etc. I just chalked it up to the normal excuses such as “im not good enough” “I started too late in life” “he’s an alien” etc.

Of course once I digested some of Troys ideas I realized that I was using DPS and simply was NEVER going to get that upstroke to the higher string because of stringhopping etc

so long story short. I still got to be a pretty good player (unknowingly) working around DPS, but once I became more aware of pickslanting etc, my picking started getting better and better

Im thinking it was late 2014 when i first saw Troys vids. At first i was skeptical and im sure I commented on some of his yt vids lol. Like “wait, this guy says Yngwie plans out every stroke?? huh???” lol

Anyway, I bought Volcano, then Antigravity, then Cascade. easily the best money i have ever spent

JJ

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