Volcano practice regimen

[AriBoiangiu]

Hey, I am working through the volcano seminar. Geez theres a lot to do here. Some of this i find myself doing already and some really need work. Any advice about how fast/slow to go through the seminar excercises? Do i do all of them or just the “MAIN” sword/volcano/Black Star licks 5 minutes each etc? Thanks!
Ari

[Troy]

If you’re working on learning a new picking motion, I recommend checking out the Primer first, and not the seminars. The seminars are really like an upper-level class for the kinds of lines you can play once you already have a basic idea how to do the core techniques themselves.

When it comes to learning new picking motions, I like a “basket” approach where you have a large variety of musical phrases you can play, in no specific order, where they all start out a little awkward and sloppy, and gradually become cleaner over time. We’ve discussed this a bunch, but here’s a good general overview of how this process works:

Is this stringhopping, crosspicking or

Hi Tom! This actually looks great. You can already see how different your form here is from the other clips. Are you intentionally doing the classic “two way pickslanting” approach for this or is that something your hands are doing on their own? This is similar to what David Grier does when he plays these tunes at a faster clip, like his version of “Wheel Hoss” that we filmed recently, where you can see similar form changes depending on the line he is playing: [ sorry, hit “enter” there be…

Again, this is all about taking hand motions that are unfamiliar and making them more accurate over time. The working assumption here is that you’re trying to learn a technique which is new to you, so you have limited ability to do it perfectly accurately. Which only makes sense. So it’s a chicken and egg problem, and that’s why this process starts out with the smoothest / fastest version of it you can manage, even if it’s not so accurate, and then works backwards to get to the slower more accurate version of it as the technique comes together over a period of months.

Edit: As far as assembling the basket of stuff, the seminars are great for that since they contain lots of phrases. So once you’ve worked on the motions themselves, then yes, totally, checking out something like Volcano is a good move, since we have tons of Yngwie-style examples you can use, if that stuff fits your interest.

[AriBoiangiu]

Ah, I should have clarified. I am working through the pickslanting primer, and am working on downward picklanting in the Yngwie section, if that makes a difference as far as my question. But I think i get what you’re saying as far as the individual techniques. THANKS