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Season 2 Arrives!

By codenews, News 18 Comments

Cracking the Code, Season 2

8 episodes and 2+ hours of groundbreaking technical insight. The Season Pass gets you:
Ad-free, HD downloads of all 8 episodes
Tablature from our episodes and features
Your choice of 1080p or 720p files
Special video downloads, like slow-motion footage of our new “Down Around the World” series
And to catch you up, we’ll even throw in a Season 1 Pass for free!

UPDATE: The Season Pass is now the Pickslanting Primer! Learn more here:

Cracking the Code Pickslanting Primer

We’re launching Season 2 of Cracking the Code, and with it, a truly groundbreaking exploration of picking technique.

Throughout history, great players — much like great athletes — have worked their magic by feel rather than by analysis. These gifted geniuses rely on mechanical optimizations to do things with picks and strings that they themselves may not even be aware of. In Season 2 of Cracking the Code, we’ll dive deep into what those optimizations are, and how they work.

Along the way, we’ll elaborate, for the first time, a complete system for advanced picking that unites a vast roster of all-time great players. Season 2 follows the thread that connects Yngwie and Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson and Albert Lee, Shawn Lane, Michael Angelo Batio, John McLaughlin, Steve Vai, Rusty Cooley, Al Di Mieola, Paul Gilbert, and so many more. It’s going to be an amazing ride. Read More

Unplugged and Overcranked

By codenews, News 9 Comments

The design of our smartphone camera mount has taken a quantum leap of sophistication in its most recent iteration. In fact, it has matured to such an extent that we’ve been using it in our own projects here at Cracking the Code. We recently produced a series of special features spotlighting Season 2 picking techniques in various musical styles. Read More

The Code Crescendo

By News One Comment

Word of the Code has been ricocheting around the Internet, from Facebook to forums to sites like Guitar Noize. We love reading your comments and emails, and following the discussion that’s been happening around the show. Every one of you who identifies with the project validates all the work we’ve put into this. And we’ve recently gotten some pretty awesome further validation from the web server behemoths and Internet at large: we’re now on the first page of Google results for “Cracking the Code”! Read More

Building the Much-Stang

By Features 4 Comments

I sold mens suits in high school. Compared to the stockroom at the dollar store, the clothing business offered a far lower risk of maiming my fretting hand with a box cutter, and of course, took place at the very location I’d likely end up anyway: the mall. It was a suburban sinecure of the highest order, offering fringe benefits like girl-watching and free tailoring, while simultaneously conferring valuable life skills. Full Windsor knot anyone? To this day, I can still spot a neck size from twenty paces. Read More

Introducing the Code Archive

By codenews, News 14 Comments

2018 Update:

If you’re finding this post via search (or heroic blog-dive) please note that the Code Archives are a legacy product, no longer available in the form described below. They were, however, an important predecessor to our Masters in Mechanics interviews — of which you can find many on the Interviews page, with more coming soon!

—The Cracking the Code Team


The Cracking the Code project is the most comprehensive investigation of picking technique ever undertaken. And now, we’re making the raw materials of that investigation available for you to watch, study, and enjoy. Today we’re officially launching the Code Archive, the most unique collection of high-speed analytical guitar footage ever assembled, and a rare opportunity to study world-class technique up close and in action.
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No More Bull: The Moog Taurus I

By Features No Comments

The Taurus had actually been designed by Moog as part of a trio of synthesizers called the Constellation. The lower portion, operated via foot like the pipe organs of yore, would handle bass duties. The upper sections, supplied separately, would present more traditional keyboard interfaces. While the Constellation project faltered, the bass pedal section became a success on its own.  As a rock band accoutrement, its hands-free operation provided guitar-driven songs a keyboard part without, quite literally, lifting a finger.
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Moving Fast, Moving Forward

By News 5 Comments

Doesn’t it feel like just yesterday — or at least just last decade — that Cracking the Code first seeped into your consciousness, blazing riffs and whispers of picking secrets crackling across your computer screen and through your speakers? Well, with Episode 8: “Fast Forward”, we’ve hit our first big milestone and wrapped up Season 1. There’s much yet to come, but we’re proud to close the first folio of this journey and get down to business on the next steps.

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Behind the Scenes: Envisioning the Arpeggio Mystery

By Features No Comments

In the Arpeggio Mystery, we explore the difficulties a person is likely to encounter reverse engineering Yngwie Malmsteen’s arpeggio-based solos in a world populated by jagged trees, wolves shrouded in fog and shadows, and a circus full of little moving angular pick people. It’s a scene that’s become a favorite of mine, but it didn’t just form out of the ether. A lot of consideration went into the conceptualization of this world, and a lot of work went into its execution, so how did we go about making it? And where did the inspiration for the scene come from?

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