I love Mr Fastfingers! I used to watch the videos daily. Now that I’m a member of CTC, I have solely been working on technique. In fact, my beginner students are being taught what I learn here. I believe that technique and mechanics are essential for today’s guitarists. I don’t know if I will ever reach Yngwie style levels, but I still endeavor to have great technique and mechanics. I believe one day very soon I will wake up and things will be different in my playing. More ease, speed and accuracy. When that happens, I will move into a more creative mode of playing. I think what I did was go back to the drawing board in my playing. I’m not really doing anything about playing in bands or live right now. I’m more in a woodshedding mode. In a way, the passion I used to have has long since gone. Not that I don’t love playing guitar anymore. I’m more into building strength, stamina, knowledge, etc. It’s hard to feel excited about exercises. Kinda like working out at the gym. You hate it, but you know in the end it will pay off. I already know how to record songs from my computer. I’ve played in front of thousands. But I’m in a season of going to the next level in so many ways. And not just on the guitar. I’m researching about financial independence, mental well being, being at peace and being grateful for what I have and not worrying about what I don’t have, repairing relationships and make the ones I do have even stronger. So many things! I’m keeping my mind focused on becoming stronger and better. Guitar has always been important to me, but my reason for being a guitar player was self-serving. I’ve changed that train of thought. I’ve always wanted people to like my guitar playing, but it was so my ego would be fed. Now, I want people to receive enjoyment from my guitar playing because this world is so full of evil. I want people to leave a show feeling good and that they were a part of something special. For example, I once went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert and Paul Rogers came out and sang a few tunes with them. I was shocked and so in awe. His voice was so incredible that I began to weep. That is how I want people to feel. It was such a powerful moment in my life. I have never forgotten the chills, the tears and the awesome power that came out of him. There is a responsibility that one would have in that kind of power. I heard him once say that he had long since given up drinking and partying in order to maintain that kind of voice. It was more important for him to serve his audience and deliver a great performance than to indulge in self-gratification. Much respect for him!
I don’t find it hard to believe. 
There’s a difference between developing the technique required to play guitar well and developing your voice as guitarist/musician/anything. So Ygnwie probably wouldn’t have come up with “I am the Viking” at age 9, but playing it? You see kids playing really tough stuff on YouTube everyday! CtC mentioned it in the Li-Sa-X YouTube video.
For technique, we now know pretty much what is required to move the pick quickly around the strings and music overall with loads and loads of material accessible. So if you’re willing to put in the hours it’s rather straightforward. Is it tough? Sure; after all you need not only to build the technique, but also the discipline and resilience to practice day in day out for hours on end and challenge yourself to push your limits every single time. But it is straightforward.
The cool thing about technique is that once acquired, it stays and requires less time to maintain it than to acquire it. Obviously to sustain your best level you still need to practice tons of hours, but less hours to maintain a base level of technical fluidity.
Here’s results in my case. 4 years of 2-3 hours of practice a day. It sounds like this.
I realize there are mistakes, some sloppiness but I’m not stopping.
It will probably take me another 4 years to sound like YJM.
Hope this answers your question, in practical terms.
Cheers!
Ohh necrobump thread.
Well I can say, this me after a couple years of playing at maybe 17-18
I wish I had more from then, this is just a random messing around with some multitracking I found a few years later and saved to a SoundCloud account.
Then some improv from the other day - a year and a few months after getting really into serious practice again after over a decade with only minimal messing around here and there
One other data point j can provide is - although I lost a lot of picking and fluency from lapsing in practice for so long, I never really lost tapping/legato or the sweeping motion I had originally, I’ve refined my sweeping a lot this year but I could always do fast five string shapes even way out of practice just noodling around (circa 2019)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvxc2h5Fofn/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=
Is the 10,000 hour thing true, or just a meme? If its true, I am definitely not willing to put in the time to get good. I don’t enjoy guitar that much, and I already wasted a huge chunk of my life learning bad technique and getting a chronic RSI which took an absurd length of time to heal. If I could get there with 1000 hours of practice, that’d be enticing. But definitely not 10,000.
honestly i am pretty certain most of us have played close to that in our lives. so yes i would say it probably is a meme. you have to find the right method. the only thing i can ever find where the best players/composers came from was having been taught italian solfeggio, and i think the improv thing also has a method it is called partimenti.
I think talent comes in at that point, in terms of how fast you’re going to get there both with physical skill and the mental/ear training aspects.
If you really just want to play a handful Yngwie covers for fun, I know that’s possible for a lot of people, and if you look at 1000 hours as 2 hours a day on weekdays only that would be about 100 weeks, so about 2 years. Maybe you’d get there with 2 hours a day of perfectly consistent practice for 2 years. Maybe it won’t be 100% but I’d bet you could get pretty close on some of it.
If you want to be as good an overall guitar player as Yngwie - there’s no way you could do it without vastly more time. I’ve never met anyone that was like pro level at something they’re passionate about that was anything but obsessed with it, guitar or whatever it is.
Can I ask what is it you don’t enjoy? Guitar in general? Or the frustration from having learnt some bad habits?
Basically all of the wasted hours from practicing ineffectively, combined with chronic pain from an RSI. When I was a teenager, I practiced 3 hours per day during a summer, and got nowhere with because I was string hopping. Also I was just practing non-musical exercises because I mistakenly assumed it would lead to me being able to play anything w/ minimal practice once I put in the hours. I just didn’t know how to practice or what to practice.
So basically, I practiced a lot and got nowhere and injured myself.
Yeah, probably not willing to do even do 2 hours per day at this point in my life. Actually, now that I think about it, I made the most progress when I only played 45 min per day. And even that was a chore, LOL. I just don’t like drilling stuff over and over, but that’s the price you have to pay for greatness.
I would like to be able to play a few Zakk Wylde solos, but writing or improvising is no longer something I want to do.
I still love watching people play and listening to guitar which is why I"m here. I found Troy’s stuff back in 2014, but it has taken me until now to finally overcome the chronic pain from my RSI which I’ve had since 2005. And now that I’m finally over it the motivation just isn’t there anymore.
But who knows, maybe one day the desire will come back. In which case I have the knowledge on how and what to practice.
I feel that, I had/have issues with sciatica from a lifting injury that happened when I was super into lifting/bodybuilding a couple years ago and it hasn’t been the same since then, and with guitar like I said above, I dropped off the map for over a decade. The motivation will come back at some point.
which zakk wylde solos?
just curious so i can see how complex this task is going to become. 
here is something to think about utilize youtube to its fullest, find players like us that have done the solos. see if you can find one with a clear shot of the fingerboard and picking. use youtube to your advantage if you are having trouble transcribing it slowed up. i would suggest though only using this tactic when you are feeling anxious, and impatient. if you are ok with proceeding slowly then do it by ear a phrase/arpeggio/sequenced fragment at a time.
Oh man, all of the No More Tears album, LOL. I’ve listened through that album probably 50 times. AVH, Party with The Animals, Time After Time, No More Tears…all of his playing sounds amazing on that album.
Crazy Babies, Miracle Man, and Devil’s Daughter for the first album.
And yeah, I’ve actually watched a lot of Zakk’s videos of those solos, so I can clearly see the fingerings. That, combined with some AI audio separation, should make the task easier.
man you can learn it from the man himself thats a no brainer get that course off riff hard.
this guy seems to outline it with the right stuff.
however taking a peak into zakk’s form it definitely has that gypsy wrist slant vibe big time. looks really similar to marty friedman, and the only difference between doing that on an electric and an acoustic is with gypsy jazz they don’t really palm mute so its more in the air and not so close to the strings.
Zakk’s motion is a bit of a mystery since on paper it shouldn’t ‘work’ (i.e. visually obvious elbow motion BUT it’s USX)
Troy actually says, after demonstrating the motion that he (Troy) doesn’t quite know exactly how he’s making it work. Possibly rotator cuff or something.
Any USX mechanic will get you similar results though and allow you play Zakk’s licks. Great player! I love his early Ozzy stuff.
It sounds great but FYI this doesn’t look to me like Yngwie-style technique.
And by Yngwie technique I mean USX-economy = every string change is either after an upstroke, a downstroke sweep or a hammer on / pulloff.
Your technique looks to me more like primary DSX with little bits of mixed escape. And I think you alternate pick everything in your scalar runs.
Nothing wrong with that of course, sounds great!
I think the important thing is also momentum and keeping it up - if you can commit to 1 hour a day you will keep making forward progress.
There is also a such thing as over practicing which I have a problem with.
Back when I was 15 and got into Van Halen and Vai and Malmsteen I did the whole practice like it’s a full time job thing for about a year and a half and it payed off - I can’t find much material from around then, mostly it was on myspace music lol so that’s gone, but I was able to play the Serrana sweeps in highschool, some portions of Mediterranean sundance on acoustic, and got to the point I was working on some jazz standards, chord substitutions, modal improvising etc. preparing for music school - which did not materialize for better or worse.
On the flip side, now I don’t have teenager recovery and joints, if I play for hours a day, it’s much more obvious I needed to give my hands a break after I go on vacation or have a busy work week.
6 months. Average 9 hours a day. Then it kinda clicked one day, kinda.
Bloody hell 😵💫, I think that would drive me insane!
It took a while longer to figure out a more efficient way to practice. But I don’t think there is any substitute for the initial rigour needed. I went through some crazy pains in my picking hand. I cat remember if the started at the fore arm and move up gradually to my neck, tor the other way around, but the just vanished at some point close to the end of six seven months.
The odd thing was the pains would go away the minute I started playing, and start right up after putting the guitars down. I had to get a track ball mouse as it would kill me to use a regular mouse.
That clip if just at the end of six months. I could start to string things together in the fly.