Hey CtC community, my name is Nick and I am new here so thought I would do as I am told and introduce myself.
I have been playing guitar on and off now for about 22 years. For most of my guitar career I mostly played bass guitar but for the last 2 years or so I have been really focusing on the 6 string.
I am mostly into metal and hard rock from the 70s and 80s but I pretty much like anything with a cool riff, lick or solo.
After all these years of playing guitar I am only now starting to really get into playing faster licks and getting into shredding. I have now made sure to set aside at least 1 hour a day for guitar and have been doing so almost religiously for the last 6 months or so.
I went for lessons for about 6 months when I started out but have been mostly self taught. Although I have spent many hours scouring the web for lessons over the last 6 months, also how I found out about this site.
I have never thought too much about technique, in fact, I found out only 3 months ago that I have been holding the pick wrong my whole life so that has been some getting used to. I used to hold the pick between the flat part of index finger and thumb, this was always a problem for me as holding the pick this way causes the pick to move about in the hand and creates major inconsistencies in tone and volume as well as picking accuracy.
I have watched most of the Cracking the Code material which is available on YouTube.
Currently I use the 7 positions of the major scale to warm up and I am playing these fairly comfortably in 8ths at 160bpm. I have started to get quite comfortable at playing one round of 4 note per string chromatic 16ths at 160bpm in between 8ths but when I try play two rounds in a row my left hand falls over and my hand synchronization falls apart. changing strings at this speed is also a problem.
I am really working on getting comfortable playing at high speeds and that is my main goal at this point.
I look forward to learning and contributing where I can.
Nick
