After many hours of concerted h4x0ring, we finally launched an awesome feature we’ve been planning for a long time: Platform Technique Critique.

What is Technique Critique?

Since we launched our forum in 2017, the “Technique Critique” section has been an incredible resource. By simply linking to clips of your playing that you’ve posted online, forum members and Cracking the Code team members could offer you strategic advice for improvement.

This turned out to be super successful. Because Technique Critique relies on video, were were quickly able to spot issues which in many cases had gone undiagnosed for years. If you’ve never filmed your own technique, it’s amazing how obvious some issues become once you see them up close. You can watch real-life case studies from this work in our instructional material, like this Primer lesson about stringhopping:

Platform Critique

Forum Technique Critique is of course still available, and still an amazing free resource. But we understand that not everyone is eager to post clips of their playing on a public forum. If that’s you, we have the solution: Platform Technique Critique. This is a way to get feedback on your mechanics that is just between you and us, as part of your subscription.

This new feature includes a wealth of great upgrades:

• The Technique Critique Library, with customizable privacy settings and guaranteed feedback from the Cracking the Code instructor team
• The Video Library of the clips used in your crtiques, and for tracking your progress
• The ability to take and store Cracking the Code diagnostic test results, like our world-famous (ha) Table Tap Tests™
• A brand-new user dashboard to organize all this awesome stuff, complete with customizable profile, alerts, bookmarks, watch history, test results, and more

If that sounds like a lot of work, it was! We’d like to extend our special thanks to Cracking the Code member @joebegly for pitching in on our development team. While he may be better known on the forum for his work on the six-string, on this project he flexed his expert keyboard chops — the Qwerty kind — to lend modern interactivity to these new features.

Meet The Instructors

The instructor team at launch includes me, the amazing Tommaso Tufarelli, aka @tommo, and the equally amazing @Teemu_Mantysaari.

If you’ve visited our forum, where Tommo serves as head moderator, then you’ve already experienced the incongruity of his calm, unflappable demeanor as a moderator and simultaneously brutal chops as a player:

You may already know Teemu Mäntysaari from his work with the bands Wintersun and Smackbound, and of course from his Cracking The Code interview:

If you watched that interview, then you also know that Teemu has years of private teaching experience, with a focus on hands-on testing that is very similar to our own. We’re excited and a little bit humbled to have Teemu, his thoughtful mind, and his searing skills on the team.

Picking Technique Primary Care

“Team” is really the operative word here. Even the most skilled player is still a sample set of 1 when it comes to what worked for them personally. On top of that, impressions and memory are highly selective. A player may think a particular habit in the past led to a specific skill they possess in the present. But unless they can actually rule out other possiblities, how can they really be sure where that skill came from?

With the instructor team we want to bring clarity to the teaching process in a couple of critical ways.

The first is our collaborative approach. Like medical providers working together at a clinic, we can brainstorm strategies drawn from our collective experience. The next TC you create may or may not be assigned the same instructor as before, but behind the scenes we’ll always be communicating to make sure we’re pointing you in the right direction.

The second key is fieldwork. Since our very first interviews more than fifteen years ago, a hallmark of Cracking the Code has been its evidence-based approach. Rather than guess what great players do, we’ve placed cameras on as many of them as we can, to see what expert technique really looks like. Platform TC turbocharges that approach. With video of every critique we do, we’ll have even better perspective on what works and what doesn’t.

To start with, we have decided not to limit the number of TCs you can make. But to continue the medical analogy, we’ll let you know when we need to see you again. It could be right away with a different video angle. Or it could be next month after you work on a specific assignment.

Availability

The best part is that all of this is included in your subscription. Yes, we’ve bumped the prices a little. But keep in mind that these changes won’t affect existing subscribers unless you cancel and restart your subscription. And two, we think this increase is reasonable because all of us on the team must now be on call for personalized feedback.

If money is still an issue, don’t forget about the Cracking The Code Scholarship program. As of this writing, I’m not aware of any other leading instructional site that has placed such a comprehensive financial assistance program at the center of their teaching. If you want to improve your technique, then we want to help, no matter your financial situation.

We’re super excited to begin a new era of teaching at Cracking The Code. So what are you waiting for? Make your critique now!