I have Teemu’s video. I watch it regularly. For the past 25 years I have been a using my index finger, thumb and middle finger to hold the pick. Yes, 3 fingers and I regret ever starting using all 3 to begin with. Teemu said that holding a pick with two fingers kind of puts your position naturally for DWPS and that’s what I’ve decided to switch to. It’s been a real hurdle switching to two fingers. It’s almost like trying to throw a baseball left-handed when most of your life you have been right-handed!
so how about you guys? what’s been your biggest change/challenge since encountering CtC?
For me, something that’s been almost a negative, is that I’ve been fixated on “wanting it all” with my picking hand, and not spending as much time as I perhaps should on the Albert Lee “play musical stuff” approach. I guess it’s partly because I had done that for many years previously, and new insights into picking experimentation is “the new toy”.
As far as the biggest “challenge”, I’d say wrist-oriented 2wps with a decent sounding attack. Though I’m still wondering if some 2wps guys don’t have as snappy an attack as I think they do, and benefit from amp gain and/or a compressor. I think I had actually written off some things in the past that might have helped me with 2wps because they just sounded too quiet to me unplugged. And when I do my interpretation of MAB’s technique, I can definitely get that very strong and sharp “robotic”-sounding attack that he’s known for (and it’s probably my fastest “controlled” technique), but I’ve found it more difficult to get clean slant changes with an MAB style technique. I mean, it’s a nice problem to have, but I do feel like I’ve sort of come back around to the kind of problem @Hanky_Pooh was having in another thread, where the possibilities of multiple techniques have made me less motivated to woodshed really hard on any single one, especially (for me) in terms of putting in the time to really lock down two-hand coordination with position changes and/or string skipping with a given picking technique.
Edit: I guess an even bigger challenge is fast and controlled crosspicking, to the point that I haven’t spent much time even working on it. I have some ideas for how my wrist-oriented 2wps technique can be made more cross-pickingish (it’s similar to what Ardeshir Farah does), but it’s a big enough challenge that I haven’t made a hard run at it yet.
Concentrating more on raw speed on one string rather than practicing multiple string licks. In my 20 odd years of playing no one ever told me this until Troy mentioned it a few weeks ago!
CtC tought me and continues to teach so much stuff.
But the biggest change for me was to discover that you can’t play any lick regardless of the number of notes per string without committing to some specific mechanical choices.
Maybe for some of you this is obvious. But for me, I have always thought that the only key to blazing speed is practice. But after a few years of practice, I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. I even gave up the guitar for a few years because I wasn’t interested in playing just chords. I wanted to shred!
Today, I am still not a “shredder” but at least thanks to CtC, I am going somewhere. I am improving everyday. And I am definitely doing some more interesting things with the guitar. I now found some mechanical solutions that help me with improvisation. So that’s something that I never thought I will be able to do.
Now I can try my hand at some Batio and Malmsteen licks. While back in the day, I thought these guys were doing magic and dealing with the devil
I still think they are geniuses for figuring out this stuff intuitively. And they will always be legends to me.
That’s only because it was what you personally needed to do, to kick the stringhopping habit. For someone who was already moving quickly, but sloppily, the advice might be different. Different (pick)strokes for different folks!
I’ve put wrist deviation mechanics on the back burner and am strictly focused on mastering the downward pick slant forearm rotation driven mechanic. I take my own advice to be able to tap notes with the left hand more seriously, and suddenly even Paganini seems approachable.
Having started on classical and adopting strict alternate picking (a la Al Dimeola) since I picked up the electric guitar, I spent most of the years since I started thinking I would “never be a fast player.” Building on three plus decades of dedication without as much to show for it as I’d like, my facility has at least doubled on the instrument and I feel much more optimistic going into elder years.
I think a lot of fast players rely heavily on their equipment. IE- Axe FX’s and other units that will give them good compression, and distortion tone, so they can play light as a feather and still have uniform picking/tapping notes. When you play light as a feather, this allows for super low action also. There is a tradeoff though. You lose dynamic range in your guitar tone. And the finger element to the tone, what people identify your playing by, is squashed out. Sterilized.
I used to play really technical and fast guitar stuff when I toured with Rob Rock. Back then I used rack gear that compressed my light playing, had lower action. I was never 100% happy with my tone. And if I didn’t have my rig, I sounded like ****.
Now I play hard with higher action. Yes I’m not as quick and nimble as I used to be. But I have good tone and sound consistent through most amps. On SRV’s guitar through a pawn shop amp a hard player will destroy your ***. Just my 2 cents on tone.
Totally with you on tone, Hanky. Back in the day I could legato widdly-wee all day long but had to have a tube screamer, compression, and my low-action, perfectly set up guitar. Sure I could play pretty fast but it didn’t have the sound I wanted. It was missing the aggression and attack of rock n’ roll. Couldn’t play someone else’s guitar to save my life either. I’m sure I’m not the only one but if I hate playing if I can’t get a good tone.
I’ve always wanted that DiMeola/Yngwie sound of aggressive fast picking and CTC has really helped getting me there. It’s the how and what to practice. Not playing scales up and down like all the books and teachers said but focusing on short fragments, concentrating on what works best for you. As a kid on my best day picking every note maxed at 16ths at 120-130 bpm. In 6-7 months with CTC that’s practically my warmup speed
Heck yeah. Well, some music calls for the blistering fast seamless legato, tapping, etc. So you gotta be picky on the guitar setup and gear choice/settings. Hope the airline doesn’t lose your rack when you do that fly date, you’ll be making due with a beat up JCM 2000 from the backline. How are those Holdsworth riffs gonna sound now?
Hope the airline doesn’t lose your rack when you do that fly date, you’ll be stuck with a JCM 2000
LOL. I would have loved a JCM2000 back then. Had a Carvin head that would blow out the tubes like clockwork every two weeks. Used an early 70s Sunn Solos II 120 for clean tones and backup. Still have that bad boy with the leather cover. It doesn’t have a ground but there’s a polarity switch. Fun times when you don’t get it right and grab the mike!
same here. For a lot of the people contributing here, the content of their posts and ability is so out of reach for me that I don’t even know how to respond if I wanted to!
but I thought one of the parts of the “code” was playing lighter??!! Since I’ve always been into thrash and DM, the aggressive nature of the music has made me want to punish my guitar. But since Ctc, I’ve been much gentler and my speed has increased as a result. Can you have your cake and it too?
With strict dwps, picking “lighter” (i.e. putting less pick on the string) shouldn’t really be necessary. I can pretty much pick about as hard as I would ever want to with forearm-rotation dwps, especially when I use a gypsy-style wrist flex. With 2wps and crosspicking, the more pick you put on the string, the less margin for error you have in crossing strings.
I will say that it might be easier to get the hang of fast picking with less pick on the string, and then start to put more pick on the string as you get more comfortable and confident with your picking motion.
I think a big part of speed with dwps is not so much limiting how much pick you put on the string, but keeping that “pick depth” consistent from pickstroke to pickstroke so that the amount of resistance is predictable and your picking motion can get into a groove. Edge picking comes into play as well: when you use a lot of “edge”, small changes in the amount of edge have a relatively small effect on the amount of resistance, while when you have a very flat attack, the resistance is greater, and small variations can cause you to hit the pick completely flat, or even with the opposite edge, which will result in a more significant deviation in how much resistance you feel. These days I’m consistent enough that I can get away with a fairly flat leading edge approach when I want to, but when you’re getting the hang of things, a large amount of edge (whether leading edge or trailing edge) will be more forgiving.
Which brings us to: PICK SHAPE!!!
Using a pointier pick like one of the Jazz IIIs variants, Ultex Sharp, TIII, or something else pointy makes it DRAMATICALLY easier to get a reasonably bright sound out of the strings with a shallower attack compared to a more traditionally shaped pick tip. Recently I’ve been experimenting with wrist-ish 2wps, and was spending some time with a “standard” Tortex 1.0mm, and had to use a very flat attack to get much brightness. At high speed and shallow pick depth (and a lot of edge picking), the traditionally shaped pick has a tendency to more want to “push” the string away rather than “pluck” it. Even with a pretty flat attack, the Tortex “standard” 1.0mm was quite dull sounding. Switching back to a pointier Tortex pick after using the “tradtional” for a while was like night and day. Playing unplugged, switching to the pointier pick sounded so much brighter it was almost like I had removed earplugs when I switched. Huge huge difference.
Edit: And you don’t even have to buy pointy picks if they’re hard to get in your area. Taking some sandpaper to sharpen of the tip of any pick will do in pinch. Paul Gilbert said he used to rub the edges of .60mm Tortex Standard picks on carpeting to sharpen the tip.
Teemu addresses this issue directly in his interview, and what he says about this is totally on point. Specifically, it will make things harder to learn if you’re applying aggressive amounts of force at the same time. Imagine trying to learn to throw a ball by throwing as hard as you can - it’s just going to be awkward, because you haven’t learned the movement yet.
Instead, just use a moderate level of pick attack and focus on making the movement smooth and natural. Once you learn the movement, you will then be able to throw the ball harder, for effect, and retain your coordination and smoothness.
Just my 2 cents on tone.
