Presenting a collection of classic meetings with a pioneer of virtuoso guitar

Rusty Cooley is not just a pioneer of technical guitar playing, but also of guitar technique investigation. He occupies a special place in Cracking the Code history as the first player to test each generation of our slow-motion technology: the original computer-controlled ShredCam, and the earliest version of our smartphone-powered Magnet. On display throughout is Rusty’s rare combination of attributes: incredible technique and unflappably chill demeanor in the face of technical roadblocks.

The 2005 meeting was a test flight of our first high-speed video rig for filming musical interviews, and Rusty was its Chuck Yeager. He gamely navigated an awkward assembly of mounting arms and FireWire cables to find playable fretboard space. The 2014 session alleviated some of these challenges, and added new ones with an early, non-adjustable prototype of the Magnet. The new design offered more limited fretboard access, but added vastly more recording time, allowing more natural capture of unplanned moments.

Also included is a special collection of clips filmed with a point-and-shoot camera, amazingly, in 2003. This wasn’t a formal interview, and high-speed filming was still just an idea. But the inability to discern Rusty’s movements in these brief videos helped crystallize the need for more capable tools.

With their experimental equipment and numerous software crash interruptions, these meetings were more like prototype field tests than traditional interviews. The edits include extensive behind-the-scenes gear setup and troubleshooting conversations as a document of the early days of musical mechanics fieldwork.

Painstakingly reimported, edited, and transcribed from the original twenty-year-old footage, the collection is over two hours of interview time and a massive 190 musical examples with tablature.