You can also get feedback on your playing from community members on the forum, in the “Technique Critique” section.

If you don’t have a membership, or would simply like to share clips of your playing for discussion with other players aside from Cracking the Code instructors, the Technique Critique section of our forum has you covered. By creating a thread with a link to a publicly viewable YouTube or Instagram video, you can get constructive feedback from other members of the Cracking the Code community, and everyone can collectively get better at demystifying our own playing.

First Steps

The Technique Critique process works best after you’ve gone through the introductory steps in the Pickslanting Primer, including the table tap tests, tremolo tests, and the process for identifying your joint motion and escape. This will give you the basic terminology you need to ask really clear questions using language everyone will understand.

Please be as specific as possible. If you just ask us to “analyze” your playing, it’s hard to know what kind of feedback you want. Instead, show us a short video of something you are already working on, and include specific questions about the help you need.

Filming Your Video

Including a short video of your playing in your forum post is really the only way to know what is going on. Once you’ve got your camera ready to go, here are the most important guidelines to follow:

• Keep your video short — 20 to 40 seconds is a good ballpark
• If possible, please include regular speed and slow motion, not just one or the other
• Try to film from two angles: a “down the strings” angle, so the pick/string contact is visible, and a front-facing “audience perspective” angle
• Use plenty of light, and avoid shadows, so we can see what’s going on
• Don’t narrate the video; instead, include questions and comments in the forum post itself, to make it easier for readers to respond in writing to each point

For more details and photos of good camera setup, see the following help page for pointers on filming technique critique videos:

Linking To Your Video

To share your video on the forum, upload the video to YouTube or another video sharing site. Make sure the video is public or unlisted — private videos won’t load on the forum.

When you create your post, please do NOT use the ‘link’ button in the forum editor. Instead, just paste the link to the video on its own line, with a blank line before and after it, like this:

That’s it! Forum members and even Cracking the Code instructors may stop by and offer guidance. For guaranteed feedback from instructors, and to create a more organized case history that you can use to track your progress, consider creating a platform Technique Critique.

Get started with efficient picking motion using these targeted instructions.

One of the most powerful tools for instrument technique learning is speed. If you can do a motion quickly, with minimal feeling of physical strain, then the motion you’re making might very well be worth perfecting through more deliberate practice.

In this section we’ll give you specific instructions for performing a tremolo using the most common efficient picking motions. We’ll also show you how to translate the performance from your joint motion tests directly to the strings using the actual picking motions that those tests are based on.

Wim Den Herder’s amazing compositions fuse mechanical curiosity with rare melodic sensibility.

If you’ve followed Wim online over the years, you may remember the old skool viral videos of his seemingly impossible Oscar Peterson transcriptions, or the blistering 3000-note marathon of a solo he composed over Gershwin’s venerable “I’ve Got Rhythm” chord changes.

But it’s really his compositions where all these prodigious skills come together. Given creative free reign in a song format, his sound is a really unique and appealing combination of intricate interlocking lead and rhythm parts, hooky melodies, and deft dynamics that transition from whisper quiet to funk fury.

In a process he playfully terms “Wimpicking”, Wim’s basslines leave strategic gaps filled by upper register notes. Like images in a flipbook, when played up to tempo, melodic lines and rhythmic contours emerge that aren’t apparent when the same phrases are played slowly.

Wim visited our studio prepared with three song-length compositions featuring his signature “Wimpicking” lead-meets-rhythm approach: “Mad Max”, “Karoshi”, and the eponymous “Wimpicking”.  The interview contains complete transcriptions of all three songs, as well as a collection of valuable insights on motor skill learning and practice that helped him develop his enormous chops.

Acoustic and electric performer Bill Hall delivers multi-mechanic virtuosity.

We sat down with Bill ostensibly to discuss his use of elbow motion as a cornerstone of his technique. But what we discovered instead was an unexpectedly diverse array of motions. Effortless Vinnie Moore-style scalar flow? Check. High-speed Yngwie-style pedal tone lines? Also check. Blazing Eric Johnson pentatonic sequences with sweeping? Those too!

Just as engaging as Bill’s playing are his stories about learning all these techniques in an era before the internet. Gleaning scraps of actionable advice from magazines, teachers, and local players in the hopes that some of it would click was practically a treasure hunt.

No matter whether you’ve just begun your guitar journey, or if you’ve been playing for long enough to have unboxed your own Atari, Bill’s impressive array of techniques and infectious enthusiasm for developing them will bring out the wide-eyed beginner in everyone.

Escape motion is a type of picking motion that moves away from the body of the guitar during part of its travel. This allows the pick to break free from in between the strings and escape, avoiding the surrounding strings, and making clean string changes possible.

The discovery of the fact that the world’s most celebrated players were subconsciously tailoring their musical vocabulary to their escape motion is one of Cracking the Code’s early breakthroughs that made clean picking possible for players who never thought they’d have Malmsteen, McLaughlin, or Johnson levels of sparkling clarity.

The specific terminology we created to describe this phenomenon — including the phrase “escape motion” itself — didn’t exist yet. Our original interviews with picking pioneers like Steve Morse, Albert Lee, and Michael Angelo Batio represented the first systematic attempt to observe and categorize the different escape motions that expert players make. For more background, you can read about that history here.

The good news is that most joint motions used in picking technique already possess some type of escape. For many players, this amounts to a freebie that can be unlocked simply by becoming more aware of the type of escape motion you already use, and pairing it with the right phrases.

In this section we’ll take a look at which kinds of escape motion are available, and how they are used for basic string-switching tasks.

With so many possible picking motions, how do players know which one to use? Amazingly, they figure it out subconsciously.

The tendency to choose one type of joint motion over others is a universal characteristic of picking technique. It is a product of the subconscious approach used by the motor system to simplify the vast task of coordinating the nearly limitless motion possibilities afforded by nerves, muscles and joints. In this section, we’ll learn how primary motion works, and apply a few simple hands-on tests for learning which kind you’re making.

Test drive common picking motions with Cracking the Code’s hands-on speed tests!

In this section, we measure your raw joint motion performance on a battery of hands-on tests that don’t require a guitar at all. With nothing more than a flat surface and a few common props, you can try your hand at several common picking motions to see how they work.

These tests provide important baseline information on how well your technique is working. We’ll definitely be looking at your results if you choose to make a Technique Critique.

On each lesson page below, you’ll find a box to enter and save your result. After watching the lesson, be sure to scroll down, type it in, and hit ‘save’!