So glad I found this dude. 95% of instructional videos are all fretting hand technique. People don’t realize that fretting is only half the battle. This guy definitely cracked a huge part of the code by just acknowledging that! Game changer. If you don’t know how to attack the strings, or which picking patterns to use, you’ll never break the speed barrier. Efficiency is king. And Troy is badass for dedicating his life to one of the most important aspects (and insanely overlooked) of guitar playing. Once I started focusing on my picking hand a lot of troubles and barriers got smaller. The only speed bump I have now is unlearning my bad technique and forging ahead with the new. 🤘🏻
By giving the techniques a name and recognizing how or when to utilize them it facilitates the learning process, it`s unreal. One thing that i think most of us have taken from CRACKING THE CODE is that you can`t go against nature, you just have to find a way to work with it. Keep the videos coming Troy!
As Troy says, merely having these parameters and core Cracking the Code concepts in mind allows us to experiment in a much more informed way. Of course there will be individual differences in physiology, as well as choices we might make for stylistic reasons rather than for purely mechanical optimization reasons. As with many athletic pursuits, integrating theory and practice allows us to adapt our way into effective movements. I think Troy is giving us infinitely more useful guidance than some high profile players who when interviewed about technique, give equivocal non-answers like "I've seen lots of great players all doing it differently, so just find something that works for you". Regardless of whether that sort of typical non-answer is driven by their possible lack of analytical insight into solutions they reached through intuition, a philosophical desire to be non-prescriptive, or some other motivation, answers like that don't give aspiring players much to go on. In contrast, Troy has identified key principles and given us a framework for understanding our explorations relative to the tendencies found in elite performers. Great stuff. Excellent point about the ultimate requirement to feel your way through the technique. Otherwise you're sort of like The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper, ostensibly teaching yourself to swim without actually getting in the water. Or, to complete the analogy: making the mistake of trying to consciously micromanage all your movements once you get in the water.
I had this issue exactly recently, i was trying to play the last section of the solo in Bark at the moon (The little shred run into main riff), i`m used to playing in a Malmsteen picking style. E string Down, Up, Legato, Down on the B String etc. I had utilize Alternative Picking ala Paul Gilbert but i had not done that technique in a while. I found my self wanting to upward pick slant when i start it to increase the speed because i disregarded the DOWNWARD pickslanting rule. Once i caught myself upward pickslanting going down the B string, i quickly switched it to Down only and now i could increase the speed and not loose control. I was so frustrated until i realized (Thanks to your videos Troy) that i had to re examine my approach for that certain lick. It seems every time i`m stuck on something you release a video on that subject, LOVE YOUR CHANNEL MAN and your Website. THANK YOU!
Created a monster indeed. I am almost going to have to refer everyone to your videos if I am going to give them guitar lessons. I can't even begin to imagine how good the next generation of guitarists are going to be.
man , this stuff absolutely works ... im totally greatful man... i never got the results from a metronome plus flat pick , i got sum speed and sum slop with my flat pick ... thanx man , doubled my picking accuracy n speed ...
How do you deal with playing the low strings? specially the low e? I feel is really hard for me to play there compared to the middle or high strings, because i dont have mi hand resting the same way.
Hey, Troy! Nice videos and you did some good research on picking. Could you shed some light on ultra-sound Shawn Lane type of picking? That would be really interesting. Thanks!
Surely Eric Johnson himself would be willing to have an interview with you! I'm sure he would appreciate all the technical analysis you do on your channel.
Good general advice. Learn it, then don’t get analytical as you are playing as it will get in the way. True for more than guitar. Learn it, then get out of your own way.
i have trouble keeping pick accuracy on the strings unless i let my thumb float accros the upper strings...... how to solve this? Looks like your thumb is floating above the strings and only your palm/wrist is touching guitar?
Troy, I love these vids! But, can you please summarise your "set up to do all the time and not have to think about" that you mention @4:20, because there's so much about the different slants, analysis of different players, concepts like chunking etc... what's the bottom line of what's in your mind & technique, which allows you to feel your way through new (unrehearsed) licks, with unpredicted pick-slanting requirements... is it just " knowing that pick slanting matters" and seeing how it goes? is that the 'thing' to practice for months? ;P
I've been playing for over 40 years. About 20 or so years ago I got really frustrated with the fact I could do descending scales super fast, accurate, and effortlessly but ascending scales felt slow, messy, and very tiring. For a long time I just "tried to do it the same way harder". Finally I got analytical about it and tried really hard to see what was going on. Much to my surprise I realized I was sweeping (did not even know the term back then) on descending runs but not on ascending. It was just a style that had evolved naturally somehow without me even being aware of it. From that point I tried to force myself to do it on ascending runs too. Eventually, I was able to do it, but to this day, it still feels "natural" on descending runs and "forced" on ascending runs. Not sure why.
Donald Parker I think ascending runs are much harder on the left hand. I have been playing for a long time as well, chasing this type of technique and not really getting there. I find I can play descending Joe Bonamassa/Eric Johnson style runs using sweep/economy picking, but really struggle with ascending patterns, with the left hand 4th finger being a major stumbling block. I also think you tend to practise right hand technique like this much less on the lower strings.
Donald Parker I've been thinking, gravity means a lot. I have a fairly heavy arm and I find my picking settles down a lot if I don't get too frisky with the whole thing, especially ascending. Not because of balance but because of too much momentum, not from excess muscle movement, simply from "carrying the weight" while doing fine little movements. There is a different muscle dynamic to raising and lowering a "weight", just like with a dumbbell. I've been getting into more of a sweep/alternate combination lately and I find that for me reducing lower arm movement makes a difference on fast runs - simply because there are less dynamics goin on besides the picking movement. I think the impact of lower arm weight is often neglected when analyzing different picking positions. I don't know if that makes sense
Hello Troy, I have a little question for you, if you have time to answer. Obviously, it's about pickslanting. I am practicing it a lot and I thank every second you made of "cracking the code" for my improvements, but there's a little aspect that puzzles me. It's about "edge picking". I mean, when I use pickslanting, I never hit the strings with my pick flat, but it is always a little tilted to the side (i do this with my thumb), is this wrong? I find pickslanting faster this way than with the pick flat, what do you think is best?
No matter what type of picking i'm using, until i get the muscle memory in my fingers for a particular lick, or scale, going fast isn't going to happen, if you can't play it without looking at it, you don't have the muscle memory to that part yet. Once you get the piece locked in your muscle memory, then you can start building on speed and picking style, as said, it needs to feel natural.
Slimjim I think that's an important idea that might sometimes get overlooked when people describe "economy of motion". In my mind, economy of motion isn't just about minimizing distance or energy expenditure, it's about developing reliable repeatability of movements. A lot of the things Troy teaches in Volcano, Cascade, and Antigravity can be viewed kind of like drum rudiments, that once mastered can be applied in a myriad of ways. Specifically in terms of the left hand, it's interesting how when a player with a mature individual style (e.g. Marty Friedman), wants to play something bland for illustrative purposes, it feels unnatural to him because his stylistic variances have been so deeply ingrained through repetition. I think that's part of the reason people like Friedman and Satriani (among many others), encourage people to focus on practicing things that sounds like music. Still, these are tools that can be used for good or for evil. Especially for young players, learning how to mimic players you admire can dig you into a kind of rut creatively. But that's one thing that's great about the internet age. For a person who's motivated to go looking, there's a seemingly endless variety of music in different styles from around the world that's only a click away. One good thing about Cracking the Code, is that in making the road to guitar idol mimicry quicker, maybe more players will advance to the "what else is out there?" stage more quickly as well. Then we'll have a generation of guitar players ready to apply their technical wizardry to new musical ideas.
Also i should have mentioned that one of the most important aspects of playing would be dynamics, if your playing everything at 1 tempo, same picking attack, it can get a little tiresome to the ears, to me that makes a player more interesting than just speed. Some of the top speedsters out there, start sounding repetitive after a few songs, because they have no feel to there notes, or it's a blur of notes, they don't let the notes breath, but if you have both, speed and feel, then you have a well rounded player.
Slimjim Well said. Where things get testy in guitar circles is when people try to argue that it's an "either/or" problem. There are some monster shredders who are still well rounded. Probably my favorite example is Joe Satriani, but even for people who aren't fans of Joe, there are other examples. In a recent video where a guy won a private lesson with Satriani, one of the specific things Joe talked about is not using the same pick attack for everything you play. My comments in my original reply talked about concepts involved in economy of motion, but of course economy of motion is only a consideration some of the time. It shouldn't be the goal for everything you play. The number one priority should be making whatever movements will produce the sound you want at any given time.
So, I've been trying to get used to the two way pick slanting thing with a simple three note per string lick but I feel like I'm doing something very wrong. When you talk about switching to upward pick slanting, it looks like the knuckle of the thumb moves in toward the pick but when I move the knuckle of my thumb in towards the pick, the pick simply becomes perpendicular to the strings and takes away the edge picking. In order to do upward pickslanting I need to drop the base of my thumb to the strings and this feels like a lot of uncomfortable movement. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?
SomeDudeOnline It sounds like dwps is comfortable for you but uwps (or at least switching to uwps in 2-way pickslanting) feels awkward. I don't know if this will help, but I'm a "natural" downward pickslanter, and my most comfortable uwps mechanic does have the base of my thumb on the strings. For me, the switch between uwps and dwps isn't just a strict forearm rotation, but also includes flexion and extenstion, i.e., when I do uwps with the base of my thumb on the strings, my wrist is slightly extended. When I switch to dwps, I not only rotate my forearm slightly, but also flex the wrist slightly. This compound movement feels smoother, faster, and more economical than a pure "rotation". I also keep the ring finger or pinky braced against the pickguard at all times (though it's free to slide along the surface of the pickguard). Since dwps feels very natural for me, I've been approaching 2-way pickslanting with the mindset that if I can get a handle on the uwps part, adding the dwps part should come more easily than approaching it the other way around. I.e. I want to find a way to get into a groove with the technique that is less natural, so that in the "tricky" part, I'm relying on a movement that comes more naturally. To that end, I've been doing a lot of practice on pure even-number-of-notes-per-string uwps, and when I work on 2-way pickslanting, I pay particular attention to making adjustments that make the uwps part feel smoother, again with the mindset that the more natural (for me) dwps part will tend to take care of itself. I'm also trying to use a fairly small amount of pickslant in either direction in 2-way pickslanting so that the switches will be less drastic, but to the degree that one direction might be more slanted, I'm allowing more slant in the less "natural" slant for me, uwps.
severalpaperclips Cool! Thank you for your detailed insight. I've got to run to work but I will definitely read this more thoroughly and experiment later.
Hey Troy, are you ever going to do something for Shawn Lane and/or Allan Holdsworth? I'd love to see in depth stuff on Shawn and Holdsworth's crazy stretching, and the fact that they only used hammer ons even when descending (I know Marshall Harrison does that as well). Thanks for all the awesome videos, and keep up the good work!
From 3:00 on all he's doing is saying "look at how I'm doing this." But then he goes too fast for you to see it- Lol And wait at 5:47... your "random experimentation is more intelligent" than me showing you? But you're asking people to pay you to show them how to do something. Then you say go figure it out yourself?
He is showing them something. Some things being shown are technical and out of personal experience, other things are words of wisdom like this example you brought up here. Get your head out of your wide ass.
Best technique teacher ever? Thanks Troy for all that you've done for guitar players! I was totally stuck until I found your videos.
his way to me is soooo awkward. it's the complete contrary and natural way of me.
@@christineblack4654 how fast is this on metronome?
So glad I found this dude. 95% of instructional videos are all fretting hand technique. People don’t realize that fretting is only half the battle. This guy definitely cracked a huge part of the code by just acknowledging that! Game changer. If you don’t know how to attack the strings, or which picking patterns to use, you’ll never break the speed barrier. Efficiency is king. And Troy is badass for dedicating his life to one of the most important aspects (and insanely overlooked) of guitar playing. Once I started focusing on my picking hand a lot of troubles and barriers got smaller. The only speed bump I have now is unlearning my bad technique and forging ahead with the new. 🤘🏻
By giving the techniques a name and recognizing how or when to utilize them it facilitates the learning process, it`s unreal. One thing that i think most of us have taken from CRACKING THE CODE is that you can`t go against nature, you just have to find a way to work with it. Keep the videos coming Troy!
I love this dude.. Seriously..
Thanks for your amazing work Troy! You deserve the Nobel Prize!!!
how fast is this on metronome?
You're a genius dude, thanks for your hard work. Very useful content.
Excellent advice! Thanks Troy
Awesome video....everytime. This conscious approach combined with Alexander Technique is a lethal combo. Cheers.
As Troy says, merely having these parameters and core Cracking the Code concepts in mind allows us to experiment in a much more informed way. Of course there will be individual differences in physiology, as well as choices we might make for stylistic reasons rather than for purely mechanical optimization reasons. As with many athletic pursuits, integrating theory and practice allows us to adapt our way into effective movements.
I think Troy is giving us infinitely more useful guidance than some high profile players who when interviewed about technique, give equivocal non-answers like "I've seen lots of great players all doing it differently, so just find something that works for you". Regardless of whether that sort of typical non-answer is driven by their possible lack of analytical insight into solutions they reached through intuition, a philosophical desire to be non-prescriptive, or some other motivation, answers like that don't give aspiring players much to go on. In contrast, Troy has identified key principles and given us a framework for understanding our explorations relative to the tendencies found in elite performers. Great stuff.
Excellent point about the ultimate requirement to feel your way through the technique. Otherwise you're sort of like The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper, ostensibly teaching yourself to swim without actually getting in the water. Or, to complete the analogy: making the mistake of trying to consciously micromanage all your movements once you get in the water.
Nice Video Troy!! Keep up the good work!! You've been a great help in my picking technique.
I had this issue exactly recently, i was trying to play the last section of the solo in Bark at the moon (The little shred run into main riff), i`m used to playing in a Malmsteen picking style. E string Down, Up, Legato, Down on the B String etc. I had utilize Alternative Picking ala Paul Gilbert but i had not done that technique in a while. I found my self wanting to upward pick slant when i start it to increase the speed because i disregarded the DOWNWARD pickslanting rule.
Once i caught myself upward pickslanting going down the B string, i quickly switched it to Down only and now i could increase the speed and not loose control. I was so frustrated until i realized (Thanks to your videos Troy) that i had to re examine my approach for that certain lick. It seems every time i`m stuck on something you release a video on that subject, LOVE YOUR CHANNEL MAN and your Website. THANK YOU!
Troy...you’re incredible!
These videos always make so much sense.
👍 video... watched a lot of guitar videos lot of TH-cams... it's the little details that you throw in that makes your channel so good.
Thank you Troy Grady!
The controlled experimentation idea has really helped me lately. I see now that the metronome is really a speedometer and nothing more.
Created a monster indeed. I am almost going to have to refer everyone to your videos if I am going to give them guitar lessons. I can't even begin to imagine how good the next generation of guitarists are going to be.
man , this stuff absolutely works ... im totally greatful man... i never got the results from a metronome plus flat pick , i got sum speed and sum slop with my flat pick ...
thanx man , doubled my picking accuracy n speed ...
How do you deal with playing the low strings? specially the low e? I feel is really hard for me to play there compared to the middle or high strings, because i dont have mi hand resting the same way.
Hey, Troy! Nice videos and you did some good research on picking. Could you shed some light on ultra-sound Shawn Lane type of picking? That would be really interesting. Thanks!
Love that he mentions he created a monster with this terminology. My guitar teacher also really got a laugh out of that.
Surely Eric Johnson himself would be willing to have an interview with you! I'm sure he would appreciate all the technical analysis you do on your channel.
Good general advice. Learn it, then don’t get analytical as you are playing as it will get in the way. True for more than guitar. Learn it, then get out of your own way.
Hi Troy my name is John. I really love your channel. l just moved to Hicksville. . are you living on long Island? and do you give lessons?
i have trouble keeping pick accuracy on the strings unless i let my thumb float accros the upper strings...... how to solve this? Looks like your thumb is floating above the strings and only your palm/wrist is touching guitar?
Troy, I love these vids! But, can you please summarise your "set up to do all the time and not have to think about" that you mention @4:20, because there's so much about the different slants, analysis of different players, concepts like chunking etc... what's the bottom line of what's in your mind & technique, which allows you to feel your way through new (unrehearsed) licks, with unpredicted pick-slanting requirements... is it just " knowing that pick slanting matters" and seeing how it goes? is that the 'thing' to practice for months? ;P
Hey Troy, do you prefer a certain gauge of strings? I know for instance Yngwie plays the smallest gauge available.
Nice vid man
I've been playing for over 40 years. About 20 or so years ago I got really frustrated with the fact I could do descending scales super fast, accurate, and effortlessly but ascending scales felt slow, messy, and very tiring. For a long time I just "tried to do it the same way harder". Finally I got analytical about it and tried really hard to see what was going on. Much to my surprise I realized I was sweeping (did not even know the term back then) on descending runs but not on ascending. It was just a style that had evolved naturally somehow without me even being aware of it. From that point I tried to force myself to do it on ascending runs too. Eventually, I was able to do it, but to this day, it still feels "natural" on descending runs and "forced" on ascending runs. Not sure why.
Donald Parker I think ascending runs are much harder on the left hand. I have been playing for a long time as well, chasing this type of technique and not really getting there. I find I can play descending Joe Bonamassa/Eric Johnson style runs using sweep/economy picking, but really struggle with ascending patterns, with the left hand 4th finger being a major stumbling block. I also think you tend to practise right hand technique like this much less on the lower strings.
Donald Parker I've been thinking, gravity means a lot. I have a fairly heavy arm and I find my picking settles down a lot if I don't get too frisky with the whole thing, especially ascending. Not because of balance but because of too much momentum, not from excess muscle movement, simply from "carrying the weight" while doing fine little movements. There is a different muscle dynamic to raising and lowering a "weight", just like with a dumbbell. I've been getting into more of a sweep/alternate combination lately and I find that for me reducing lower arm movement makes a difference on fast runs - simply because there are less dynamics goin on besides the picking movement. I think the impact of lower arm weight is often neglected when analyzing different picking positions. I don't know if that makes sense
Hello Troy, I have a little question for you, if you have time to answer.
Obviously, it's about pickslanting. I am practicing it a lot and I thank every second you made of "cracking the code" for my improvements, but there's a little aspect that puzzles me. It's about "edge picking".
I mean, when I use pickslanting, I never hit the strings with my pick flat, but it is always a little tilted to the side (i do this with my thumb), is this wrong? I find pickslanting faster this way than with the pick flat, what do you think is best?
Luciano Gerace Hi Luciano. We've addressed this a couple different times in the show. You can check out S1E8, and also S2E3 as well!
What size neck is on your les Paul?
No matter what type of picking i'm using, until i get the muscle memory in my fingers for a particular lick, or scale, going fast isn't going to happen, if you can't play it without looking at it, you don't have the muscle memory to that part yet.
Once you get the piece locked in your muscle memory, then you can start building on speed and picking style, as said, it needs to feel natural.
Slimjim I think that's an important idea that might sometimes get overlooked when people describe "economy of motion". In my mind, economy of motion isn't just about minimizing distance or energy expenditure, it's about developing reliable repeatability of movements. A lot of the things Troy teaches in Volcano, Cascade, and Antigravity can be viewed kind of like drum rudiments, that once mastered can be applied in a myriad of ways.
Specifically in terms of the left hand, it's interesting how when a player with a mature individual style (e.g. Marty Friedman), wants to play something bland for illustrative purposes, it feels unnatural to him because his stylistic variances have been so deeply ingrained through repetition. I think that's part of the reason people like Friedman and Satriani (among many others), encourage people to focus on practicing things that sounds like music.
Still, these are tools that can be used for good or for evil. Especially for young players, learning how to mimic players you admire can dig you into a kind of rut creatively. But that's one thing that's great about the internet age. For a person who's motivated to go looking, there's a seemingly endless variety of music in different styles from around the world that's only a click away. One good thing about Cracking the Code, is that in making the road to guitar idol mimicry quicker, maybe more players will advance to the "what else is out there?" stage more quickly as well. Then we'll have a generation of guitar players ready to apply their technical wizardry to new musical ideas.
Also i should have mentioned that one of the most important aspects of playing would be dynamics, if your playing everything at 1 tempo, same picking attack, it can get a little tiresome to the ears, to me that makes a player more interesting than just speed.
Some of the top speedsters out there, start sounding repetitive after a few songs, because they have no feel to there notes, or it's a blur of notes, they don't let the notes breath, but if you have both, speed and feel, then you have a well rounded player.
Slimjim Well said. Where things get testy in guitar circles is when people try to argue that it's an "either/or" problem. There are some monster shredders who are still well rounded. Probably my favorite example is Joe Satriani, but even for people who aren't fans of Joe, there are other examples. In a recent video where a guy won a private lesson with Satriani, one of the specific things Joe talked about is not using the same pick attack for everything you play.
My comments in my original reply talked about concepts involved in economy of motion, but of course economy of motion is only a consideration some of the time. It shouldn't be the goal for everything you play. The number one priority should be making whatever movements will produce the sound you want at any given time.
So, I've been trying to get used to the two way pick slanting thing with a simple three note per string lick but I feel like I'm doing something very wrong. When you talk about switching to upward pick slanting, it looks like the knuckle of the thumb moves in toward the pick but when I move the knuckle of my thumb in towards the pick, the pick simply becomes perpendicular to the strings and takes away the edge picking. In order to do upward pickslanting I need to drop the base of my thumb to the strings and this feels like a lot of uncomfortable movement. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?
SomeDudeOnline It sounds like dwps is comfortable for you but uwps (or at least switching to uwps in 2-way pickslanting) feels awkward. I don't know if this will help, but I'm a "natural" downward pickslanter, and my most comfortable uwps mechanic does have the base of my thumb on the strings. For me, the switch between uwps and dwps isn't just a strict forearm rotation, but also includes flexion and extenstion, i.e., when I do uwps with the base of my thumb on the strings, my wrist is slightly extended. When I switch to dwps, I not only rotate my forearm slightly, but also flex the wrist slightly. This compound movement feels smoother, faster, and more economical than a pure "rotation". I also keep the ring finger or pinky braced against the pickguard at all times (though it's free to slide along the surface of the pickguard).
Since dwps feels very natural for me, I've been approaching 2-way pickslanting with the mindset that if I can get a handle on the uwps part, adding the dwps part should come more easily than approaching it the other way around. I.e. I want to find a way to get into a groove with the technique that is less natural, so that in the "tricky" part, I'm relying on a movement that comes more naturally. To that end, I've been doing a lot of practice on pure even-number-of-notes-per-string uwps, and when I work on 2-way pickslanting, I pay particular attention to making adjustments that make the uwps part feel smoother, again with the mindset that the more natural (for me) dwps part will tend to take care of itself.
I'm also trying to use a fairly small amount of pickslant in either direction in 2-way pickslanting so that the switches will be less drastic, but to the degree that one direction might be more slanted, I'm allowing more slant in the less "natural" slant for me, uwps.
severalpaperclips Cool! Thank you for your detailed insight. I've got to run to work but I will definitely read this more thoroughly and experiment later.
Hey Troy, are you ever going to do something for Shawn Lane and/or Allan Holdsworth? I'd love to see in depth stuff on Shawn and Holdsworth's crazy stretching, and the fact that they only used hammer ons even when descending (I know Marshall Harrison does that as well). Thanks for all the awesome videos, and keep up the good work!
That first lick has the same progression as the music of Final Fantasy VII after fight scenes..
From 3:00 on all he's doing is saying "look at how I'm doing this." But then he goes too fast for you to see it- Lol And wait at 5:47... your "random experimentation is more intelligent" than me showing you? But you're asking people to pay you to show them how to do something. Then you say go figure it out yourself?
He is showing them something. Some things being shown are technical and out of personal experience, other things are words of wisdom like this example you brought up here. Get your head out of your wide ass.