Online lessons

[wombcannon]

So here is the scoop. I picked up playing after a long hiatus (tendonitis) and have been playing a bit over the past 7 years or so however, I still suck. 7 year olds on youtube blow me a way and im at a loss of what i need to do in order to get better. Im not the greatest self starter so Ive been considering taking lessons. However, as we all know, in person lessons are sort of out so that leaves with the whole online thing. Im not really opposed but does anybody have a low down where to find a teacher online. Im sort of at a loss for this.

[Chris]

https://www.angelvivaldiofficial.com/lessons

[wombcannon]

https://www.angelvivaldiofficial.com/lessons

yeaaaaaaaaaaa i need someone thats NOT gonna laugh at me or cost me tons of $$$$

[Drew]

Angel will only laugh at you for you for your fashion sense, he's hands down one of the nicest guys in the guitar world I've met.

If you want quality non-personal-instruction. I've found the Cracking the Code site tremendously helpful, both for the quality of their instruction (the Pickslanting primer is really helpful) but also the forum where the feedback and analsis you'll get of your own picking technique, for free, is amazing. I've gone from someone who basically gave up on alternate picking, to actually being semi-proficient at it. Just figuring out why some things work and others don't has been helpful.

[Lozek]

Angel will only laugh at you for you for your fashion sense, he's hands down one of the nicest guys in the guitar world I've met.

If you want quality non-personal-instruction. I've found the Cracking the Code site tremendously helpful, both for the quality of their instruction (the Pickslanting primer is really helpful) but also the forum where the feedback and analsis you'll get of your own picking technique, for free, is amazing. I've gone from someone who basically gave up on alternate picking, to actually being semi-proficient at it. Just figuring out why some things work and others don't has been helpful.

I'm struggling with Cracking the Code a little, the information in there is absolutely stellar but I'm not sure how much more explanation I can take before I want something to tell me how to do it.

[Chris]

I'm struggling with Cracking the Code a little, the information in there is absolutely stellar but I'm not sure how much more explanation I can take before I want something to tell me how to do it.

I tried to get through this as well and it just wasn't for me. I really liked Rock Discipline. A lot of the little exercises in there are interesting enough that I actually want to practice them, but not so finger-destroying that I feel like I need a third hand to ever get proficient with them.

Plus, all these years later you can go back and see where a lot of the DT melodies came from.

[metalheadpunk]

+1 on Rock Discipline I try to do a few lessons a year with someone new, especially for technique stuff it is really helpful to have someone who can watch what you are doing and point out what you can do to get better.

[Drew]

I'm struggling with Cracking the Code a little, the information in there is absolutely stellar but I'm not sure how much more explanation I can take before I want something to tell me how to do it.

The inital web series with seasons and episodes is fun and pretty interesting - made me feel like a kid again getting my mind blown by a new guitarist when I popped a CD into a stereo for the first time - but does take a long time to get to the point, and complicating matters, Troy Grady hasn't exactly stopped analyzing players and has gotten a lot of feedback now that this stuff is "in the wild" so to speak, so a lot of the language has evolved with time. Easy example- they've abandoned any discussion of "pickslant" because the angle the pick is actully held at doens't have a ton to do with rather or not the trjectory the pick moves at escapes the plane of the strings on upstrokes or downstrokes, it just happened that the two players Troy started with, Yngwie and Eric Johnson, both hold their picks with a pronounced angle with the tip dragging behind the fingers a little, and also rely on upstrokes escaping to facilitate string changes.

I guess I'd suggest one of two things:

1) Roll the dice and eithert become a paid member, or buy their "Pickslanting Primer" video series (pretty cheap, as I recall), and start with their "test driving different picking mechanics" video (if it's not behind a paywall, just go there directly - might be worth poking around Youtube first) as that's a pretty good nuts and bolts "this particular wrist motion is efficient, it functions exactly like this motion you do off the guitar you can "test" it wth, and when your arm is held in this orientation, it will produce escaped downstrokes." As someone who already thought he'd figured out what his picking hand was doing reasonaly well, it still clarified some things for me, and was instrumental in figuring out how to get a fairly efficient Yngwie/EJ motion going (I tend towards a more wrist deviation with little pronation motion, which yields escaped upstrokes, for the most part, though with a bit of wrist rotation thrown in to allow the occasional escaped upstroke, which i've been aware of for YEARS but thought that litt;e "winding up" motion I could feel soometime was a source of inefficiency, not efficiency).

2) Just sign up on the forum, and post some close-up footage of your picking hand in action. There's a lot of members who have gotten extremely good at analyszing technique, and Troy and his moderators are pretty good at responding to basically all requests for analysis regardless of whether or not you're a subscriber. It's actually kind of interesting to me - I'm not sure how seriously they're actually trying to make money off their material (I wonder if this is a retirement project for Troy?) because there's basically no effort to keep any discussion behind a paywal.

Ben Eller has worked with them in the past too, thanks to his invlvement with Andy Wood, and some of his YouTube lessons get pretty heavily into CtC concepts.

The whole thing definitely sounds like an infomercial - "this one weird trick will help you play faster!" - but there's actually a lot to it. The hard part of alternate pickig isnt moving the pick back and forth on a single string, it's moving it up to move over one string to go back to another on string changes, and every high-level alternte picker has developed some sort of a mechanical solution to this problem by either utilizing a slashing, angled pickstroke so every stroke in one direction is escaping the plane of the strings and string changes occur then, or (especially in bluegrass) the pickstroke is ciurved, so it escapes in both directions. Even then - Andy Wood is a great example - often times players with smooth, fast double-escaped techniques still revert to a single escaped motion for their fastest single-note lines, so it seems like this approach might be theoretically faster.

[Lozek]

I have signed up to the subscription and started the pick slanting primer about six weeks ago. I've learned a bunch of interesting stuff about ways different players move across strings, but I've run out of patience waiting for the point where I actually start approaching it myself. So far, it's like trying to learn to drive a car by someone describing how other people do it, plenty that's good to know but pointless without actually trying to drive a car.

Funnily enough, I was talking to a friend who is a teacher and he gave me some excercises that have helped speed up on a single string. The one issue I've run into is something that people on the old site told me didn't matter, pinkie flail.

[Snoop Travvy Travv]

Steve Smyth probably still offers lessons too. I took a few with him a while back. He's really cool.

[Drew]

Funnily enough, I was talking to a friend who is a teacher and he gave me some excercises that have helped speed up on a single string. The one issue I've run into is something that people on the old site told me didn't matter, pinkie flail.

Picking hand or fretting hand pinkie flail?

If fretting hand, there's a great thread in the CtC forum where a regular is doing some really deep-dive stuff on Shawn Lane's fretting hang and what he terms "efficient digital cycles" that I'd say is STRONGLY worth a look. The short version is at extreme speeds it's sort of a non-point, because you're either doing a lot of 1-3 stuff like Eric Johnson and the picking hand isn't actually moving all that fast, or for the most part you want to rely on sequential 1-2-4 or 4-2-1 fingerings and it's your ring finger that's predominately out of the action, not your pinkie. There's some bimechanical reasons for this related to tendons and mechanical independence.

Picking hand, I'm less help there, but I'll say I've instinctively over the last ~2 years I've been a subscriber over there gone from picking with an open hand and my fingers splayed, to a much more closed one, which was absolutely not conscious.

[mpexus]

Ola was taking lesson with this dude, Jon Bjork

https://www.youtube.com/user/JonBjorkMusic/videos

https://www.patreon.com/m/guitartechniques

[Leon]

+1 to Angel. Great teacher, greater dude.

I also took some lessons from Mike Martin, and had a great time! He ranges from performance to theory, and we mostly talked theory. Or rather, we'd break-down different tunes and kinda talk about what's going on in them. Sort of like what Rick Beato does on his channel.

[Lozek]

Picking hand or fretting hand pinkie flail?

If fretting hand, there's a great thread in the CtC forum where a regular is doing some really deep-dive stuff on Shawn Lane's fretting hang and what he terms "efficient digital cycles" that I'd say is STRONGLY worth a look. The short version is at extreme speeds it's sort of a non-point, because you're either doing a lot of 1-3 stuff like Eric Johnson and the picking hand isn't actually moving all that fast, or for the most part you want to rely on sequential 1-2-4 or 4-2-1 fingerings and it's your ring finger that's predominately out of the action, not your pinkie. There's some bimechanical reasons for this related to tendons and mechanical independence.

Picking hand, I'm less help there, but I'll say I've instinctively over the last ~2 years I've been a subscriber over there gone from picking with an open hand and my fingers splayed, to a much more closed one, which was absolutely not conscious.

It's my fretting hand. It seems to happen when I play the first finger, my fingers instinctively make a wave motion and propel the pinkie away, which slows down my ability to synchronise at higher speeds.

Funnily enough, my picking is plenty fast enough after years of death metal, I just didn't realise I needed to use the same technique and previously I had finger and thumb movement that was causing me a speed limit. I've had to learn how to slow it down as my muscles only understood reducing tension to picker lighter but not slower.

So yeah, I have a pretty fast right hand that struggles slowing down and a left hand that's got a speed limit due to movement issues, I'm trying to get them both to meet in the middle.

[Drew]

Just try to use your pinkie for everything. I'm only half joking.

[d8200]

I’ll throw a vote to “Uncle” Ben Eller. He’s got a great natural teaching style and breaks things down into explanations that players at any level can understand. His point of view encourages players to practice for the sake of increasing their enjoyment of music and the instrument, while at the same time building up their chops...it’s never a high and mighty “practice this, and one day you can be as good as me!” kind of attitude I get from other online instructors. He also gives a lot of detail and back-story to the music theory behind each lesson and how it can be applied and expanded upon. This gives the lasting impression that the subject covered has applicable value, not just a practice drill for the sake of drilling.

Personally, I’ve broken some bad habits and learned a ton about picking, finger and hand position, and posture to help build up skill and speed, rather than the typical “practice this, increase the metronome, practice again, repeat” style that a lot of teachers use.

Plus, he’s pretty fuckin funny sometimes. Helps lighten the mood when you’re frustrated or struggling with a part.

[lespauled]

I find the finger flying thing happens when my playing gets sloppy. To counter it, I do a simple, yet tough, exercise that helps.

I put all four fingers on one string, like the high E (any position). I play the note. As soon as I play that note, I release the pinky, and move it to the B string, same fret number. I continue on, with the ring finger, then middle, and finally the index. At no time is a finger not fretting a note. I continue across the fretboard.

Going up is slightly different. You start with only the index finger fretting a note on the low E string. Play it. Then add the middle finger, then the ring, and finally the pinky. As you play the pinky, you move only your index finger to the A string. All other fingers remain on the E string. Do the same with each finger.

It is tough, and just doing this for a few minutes helps tremendously.

[Lozek]

I find the finger flying thing happens when my playing gets sloppy. To counter it, I do a simple, yet tough, exercise that helps.

I put all four fingers on one string, like the high E (any position). I play the note. As soon as I play that note, I release the pinky, and move it to the B string, same fret number. I continue on, with the ring finger, then middle, and finally the index. At no time is a finger not fretting a note. I continue across the fretboard.

Going up is slightly different. You start with only the index finger fretting a note on the low E string. Play it. Then add the middle finger, then the ring, and finally the pinky. As you play the pinky, you move only your index finger to the A string. All other fingers remain on the E string. Do the same with each finger.

It is tough, and just doing this for a few minutes helps tremendously.

Thanks mate, I'll give that a go. I've been working on it by just being conscious of it up until now but a dedicated exercise is a better way to go.

[Megametal7]

This guy dose Skype lessons. I never had one on one with him but i learn from him from YT.

https://skypeguitarlessonsonline.com/skype-guitar-lessons-information/