Lessons

Our latest YouTube feature is a deep dive into the surprisingly terrifying shred technique of a younger Joe Pass. It’s a collaboration with peerless transcriber and guitar educator Levi Clay, who supplied the musical and historical erudition, while Cracking The Code handled the plectrum plumbing. It’s a mammoth 40-minute investigation that is one part documentary and one part instructional video.

Here’s the bad news: The individual lesson chapters in our awesome Synchronicity seminar contain zero pranks and ASMR. How is that going to work on YouTube?

Our latest lesson tackles an incorrect assumption at the core of one of the most commonly repeated pieces of musical practice advice of all time: Go slow and get all the notes right. How could this possibly be bad advice?

Are you stuck with a very low maximum picking speed, below 150 beats per minute sixteenth notes? If so, this case study from our latest Pickslanting Primer update is for you!

Today we’re going to take a look at one of the pioneers of bebop guitar: the amazing Tal Farlow.

Our Cracking the Code interview with the legendary Albert Lee is a great example of why it’s important to go out and gather raw data with an open mind. You can only really see what you know, and at the time we did this interview, we “knew” what downward pickslanting was — or at least, we thought we did.

It’s one thing to know about chords and harmony, and another thing to access that knowledge on an actual guitar. Unlike sight-reading approaches, which are designed for quickly locating specific pitches on the fingerboard, guitar improvisation relies on a system of shapes that work in any key.

Bright red. Extra pointy. Yes, it’s an iconic pick!

In our poll about which picks Cracking the Code viewers use, the Jazz III was an overwhelming favorite. Despite the name, this pick is popular in many genres, including rock, metal, prog, fusion, and really any style where single-note lead playing virtuosity is on the menu.

What about the Jazz III is so appealing to great lead players? It all comes down to geometry — specifically, its impact on edge picking and tone. For an important lesson on pick point geometry, and how pointy picks compare to those with more rounded points like the classic 351 design, watch here:

Quick:  what’s the most influential guitar pick design of all time? You can picture it: the elongated, isosceles triangle shape, with the flat top and the rounded over point. That’s just… you know, a guitar pick, right?

It’s more than that. It’s the model 351, a design that guitar pick industry pioneers the D’Andrea company produced in the 1920s by way of collaboration with another guitar pioneer, Nick Lucas. This is how that all happened: