Uh-oh - am I drinking the Kool-Aid?! (re: practicing)

Ok @Yaakov you are just playing with my feelings now :smiley:

All this time you had me worried that you would sit in a basement for six months repeating the same 1-2-3-4 exercise :joy: :joy: :joy:

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@tommo don’t hate on the Rock Discipline chromatic, I probably played that thing infinity times!

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The way we’ve defined one-thing-only in this thread, it makes sense to me that it could work. I believe the people who claimed it did. People who say they get bored that way and so jump around - again, I don’t disbelieve that they progressed this way. I just… can’t really picture that. Here’s me being hyper-literal, but the former approach is something I think I could do; the latter is like, ‘huh??’

This sounds so true to me. What’s frustrating is… I’m not that intuitive kind of guy. I’m the type who was probably more likely to have success on an orchestra instrument with some regimented, maniacal teacher than on guitar. (But I wanna play guitar!) I wish I could do like Troy did; I just can’t figure out how.

My schedule - a little fretboard, a little scales, a little arps, a very very little progress over years of playing;) Man, I’m sick of it!!

No, no. No worries there;) But seriously, what’s the matter with what @Interestedoz did? Honestly, I’ll bet if he’d posted his intent to hole-up with that one lick for months, people would have tried to talk him off the ledge. Good thing he just went for it!

More proof for ‘perseverative practice’:wink: (Finally, the greats are letting me in on their secret…)

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It very much depends on what you are trying to achieve. @Interestedoz had a very specific goal in mind - to nail one particular (v. Difficult) lick and reports that it didn’t increase picking abilities much beyond that lick and @twangsta’s experience seems more eclectic than just 1 lick (plenty of experimental and switching the lick fingerings etc…)

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@Yaakov I’m hoping you’re not referring to me as one of “the greats”, but I’ll take the compliment lmao

Yep I have a take that’s good enough to put up. Will see if I can improve on it but in lieu of that this take will be posted. Haven’t done a sound slice myself before but will see what I can do.

A couple of points I’d like to make . I have been playing a long time and was starting this challenge from a reasonable level of proficiency. But I am not as good a picker as Troy/ Tommo / Twangsta and many others here. So just to give context to my starting point.

Yngwie alcatrazz is very advanced playing so it was never going to be something I could do without some focus and work. The technical fundamentals discussed here on CTC are required to tackle something like this. I was testing it all! Pick angles, slants, escapes, arm motion, wrist positioning. Because I had to find what would work with my mechanics.

In answer to how long I spent on this from a time perspective a rough estimate is about 300 hours. So that took me from 74% speed 98% accuracy to 100% speed 98/ 99% accuracy. Just to reiterate as well this is a long sequence of 56 notes so it was a lot of fun to learn. A beautiful lick.

The challenge with alcatrazz Yngwie is that not only is it brutally fast - it is flawlessly accurate . It presents a real challenge managing both those aspects as you try to improve. You will find one aspect improves while the other degrades. If Yngwie played fast but sloppy this would be a lot easier. But he does not. His error rate in the Alcatrazz era is extraordinarily low.

This threads timing was great as I could contribute hopefully in a way that people have found value in. Thanks for posting it!

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There’s some high praise going on here that I’m not accustomed to, being mentioned in the same sentence as some of the accomplished players here makes me happy and nervous as the same time, I always suspect a terrible decent after such happiness :joy:

I just want to add that while I work on the small things, I try never to lose sight of the larger picture, I’m guilty more often than not of a myopic approach to levelling up. But I do think the key is my linear plan is the track I’m learning bar by bar, so there’s a very strong context that is established as to where that bit in focus lives within, my sessions most definitely include a healthy dose of full playthroughs up to where I’m at in the track to get the feel and context.

So here in a playthrough I’m repeating phrases I can play up to tempo even, but if I’m targeting a phrase I’m working on that’s not quite yet up to speed, those bits that I can play, I really work on the musicality and feel.

End of the day, it’s all just sequences of phrases, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, as some point every day, it must come together whatever the quality may be.

Most important thing is there are no hard and fast rules, just awareness of things that need attention and managing expectations. Try never to get frustrated at yourself, enjoy the laps & sectors just think know that in time you’ll have this nailed and try keep a positive outlook. Above all, less lip, more clips :slight_smile:

That reminds me, enough talk :joy:

Thanks for those thoughtful responses, @Interestedoz and @Twangsta. Definitely looking forward to hearing more about how you tackle various technical/practice challenges in the future.