If you need to thank anyone , it is you - for your very hard and consistent work. No word of mine could lead you here without that much of work and your will to trust and even change yourself at some point.

Congratulations to Monica and huge appreciation for your kind words guys.

I'm not leaving GMC I'm just not able to deliver my "activity" on a regular basis anymore.I will still deliver lessons and review the forum to see what are you guys up to currently

I hope my REC feedback was something valuable, even if sometimes harsh and honest to the bones. I'm sure Monica is the right person in the right place. Give hetr a warm welcome at REC

Seen this lately and overall concept is awesome. I think they got it run over wi-fi or bluetooth but I'm not sure now. The thin cable was definitely not a best solution. Will watch this evolve

Hey there!

Don't be too cruel to yourself. You right hand is a well known topic for years now and I think there is no need to rewrite observations you already know. Most of players get the speed and reasonably relaxed movement from their wrist but still there are some, like John Petrucci that use mostly forearm even for hi speed |(it's more complex but let's not go into details now).

You get really nice results with your right hand anyway. You are capable of playing in time and achieving equal tone of your picking. Maybe some day, with your current attitude you will get "there".

I'm slightly opposite in thinking. When I feel I'm stuck with something and I can't make it work for a long time, I'm able to redo things. IT is always a nightmare becasue it demands to do things very different and makes you not able to play all the stuff you already could. It's one step back for two steps forward rule. I've been there few times, I know sometimes there is no other way.

but as I said...some players succeeded to play very fast with forearm so I will keep watching your progress with interest and I wish you very best

As for the take I have a good overall impression. If we need to go into very little details I thikn you got more tight in the middle part. In the first half things are just a little blurry - mainly the part with more position shifts. It;s all marginal of course.

I like your toen match. I think just a 1 or 2 dB would make some good for guitar placement in the mix.

Besides these little things it's a solid take with proper ,neoclassical vibe. Well done!

I think youtube is doing pretty everything these days...to make us go away. Years ago, most of us would predictit will not be advertisement-free forever, but the thing it became now has come to the point, where ridiculous. It was very clever to let people allow these to play to get some little money - everyone needs money - even the little one, especially when the can come regularly but...amount of these advertisements and current policy (now youtube can do it on every video, without your permission)...is just sick. I think they ask for it...

Maybe it kind of depends on how advanced your usage of PC is. There more things you are used to do on old machine, the harder is to switch to new one - especially considering the fact they started to change some stuff radically - for example direct X, and you may not get some of your old, well working soft to work on new system. I know there are still some legacy drivers but it not always does the job.

Usually when old systems get ultra stable they decide to push them out of the market. I was ultra satisfied with efficietcy of Windows 7...I was angry and made the switch to win10 painfully. Now when I hear about 11...I don't even consider to touch it within next 5 years....

That's a great point here. We need to use chunks among our regular playing/phrases. Our mind needs to learn how to use them in practise.How they kombine with our typical hand behaviors etc

That is actually more a problem of fret finish. Many guitar go out from the factory with little sharp fret crowns. That's becasue:

1. They don't want to risk lowering the top and loose fret level

2. It takes time of individual work to get it nice and smooth being very careful at the same time.

In other words it's most often a "factory compromise" but when you give your guitar form individual setup/fret leveling etc, luthier will make you get nice and smooth fret surface no matter on the material. These days I get a lot of this kind of work. There are also some kind of weird frets in some of cheap guitars. They tend to "loose the grain" whiel they get lot's of heat (due to sanding process). You can polish them all day and the will still feel like a metal file for the strings. You need to wet sand them or use a steel wool. Endless topic.

Anyway....that should not be considered a different feature of stainless frets

As for wear off...there are also different models of stainless frets. I don't want to point the brands to hurt anybody in anyway but I had experience with stainless that were not wearing off fast as regular frets. At the same time other brand can really last forever if you are average player. There are people who need to refret stainless frets after 2 years! I don't know how it's possible but some do play that hard.


Sooo...still very hard to make any hard rules.

Happy Birthday Kris!

I wish you to keep having strength and energy to keep doing your great work and collecting so many great people around. You managed to make a special place that is not just a raw "download center for tabs". I wish you health and more great ideas comming!:)

I guess...lack of honesty is a stopper for progress But...as you said...it needs to be all in a friendly mood So....it will encourage instad of making you loose the attitude

Main trick in chunking is generally to start from doing everything exactly the same every single time of repetition. Fingering, picking direction etc. It really need to load into muscle memory. Later you\ll think of it as a single note

Gibson is still "reasonably stable in his offer" when compared to Fender. I feel like Fender has gone crazy last few years. I've never before noticed so many different series and single, short period models being in and out within such a short time. Look...for example AM Standard series have been for such a long time. Then We had Professional I and....a year later or little more...a Professional II. That's and "easy" one. offset models come and go within months

Funny thing that so many guitars look strat-alike but at the same time soo many details can make you feel a totally different guitar, than it's expected I like the 50's vibe brought by the finish and white pckups covers Looks kind of...candy

For me they do - It's even more noticable in reality than in video comparisons. They have some kind of "fizzy" transient in tone...nto sure how to call it. But it's not tham much critical difference. Personally I prefer the tone of regular nickel/silver frets but I think for the instrument that is constantly in use, especially for practise and live gigs, steinless steel is a good choice.

Such an awesome moment to see You guys notice such a huge Monica's progress

It took years and it keeps "growing" all the time. But nobody can better say how important is discipline and proper attitude. With all the time Monica spent on developing the skills, she also developed her character. Ther were days we were arguing and days we struggled to skip through a hard things but she never gave up. These days I feel she fully trusts me and knows everytime I'm stuborn or push her to do something, It's for her own good.

These days she does colosal progress and can suprise me within a week of time. Let me say this loud, ad let us all smile someday going back to this message but...you'll see...she'll be instructor here...someday

Hey there Victor!

First of all You need to realize that rhythm skills are the basis for lead playing. For rock and metal playing, some riffs hardly differ form solos, when we consider how advanced they are technically - "He Man Woman Hater from Extreme as example). The path you took is most common mistake. Some players believe there is a shortcut and the will play solos sooner if the start straight from playing...solos.

Learning to play rhythm guitar makes you prepare the ground for any way, any path further you would like to choose. If you skip this it will "revenge" some day and will stop you from making even bigger progress. It is very important that you choose to rethink your priorities of practise Will definitely help you get better including your solos!


As for the take - first thing is weird tone. It sound like you play on neck pickup. You need to know that some techniques in metal or rock are specially "designed" for articulation response fo bridge pickup and they will not work well enough on other pickups - especially palm muting and pinch harmonics. Bridge position would make your palm muting more crunchy, tighter. No matter how much practise you do, you will not be able to get THAT kind of tone you imagine, if you not use proper position of your pickup selector. That's a simple fix and can immediately boost your performance.

Timing - most often you tend to rush (play in front of the beat). Try to start playing with your foot hitting thge pulse (quarter notes), like a metronome. It often helps when you need to hold the time without a support of metronome or drums (like a middle part here).

Try to imagine that most of your strokes should cover some notes of other instruments in the recording. It's like two players playing different parts but some of their notes are perfectly in sync, because the cover the same rhythm values.

You play "resonably" being carefull so the is some very little "bite" missing in it, but that's what defines pro players.

From good things I can point out your descent control over unwanted strings/noises and your hand shaping. I see nothing critical heree to fix. I guess it will become more relaxed once you'll start to feel more comfortable with slightly more difficult stuff. Well done!

Hey Victor!

I went through your take a few times, as well as through original video and I think you got it really close. It is a simple lesson, made to keep you focused on timing and giving you enough time between position shifts/chord shifts. You tend to be just a slice more noisy just at the moment of shift and sometimes you are late just a little bit. See what Lian does - even the return of his right hand is related to the timing of the song - just like he would be strumming with a quarter note pulse. I think this kind of regularity and constant "in touch" with the song pulse, would help you even better, though it's nothing ciritical in your take, to fix. Well done!

Hey there! workign hard as usually and great choice of lessons as we're used to in your case

Very first few notes give impression you do not have enough highs to make clear difference in tone when you differ the notes with different articulation or dynamics. This is why Guido's take seems to spread across wider range of sensitivity. His veyr soft strokes get the warmth and stronger ones cut with more crisp. I know you are quite good at dynamics but maybe not with this tone configuration.

...sometimes tone affect the way we feel more or less inspired while playing.

For me in this one you got too square using mostly medium nad hard picking while Guido goes really low with his ultra soft touch on some notes - remember that it also requires some angle of the pick adjustment.

For me that's the point here. At other fields you did some great work. You really need to just brighten the tone with more presence and start to use way more softer pickign as well.

Hey there!

I think you're doing the most common mistake at the very beginning of learning process. From one point you go through the lesson to learn something new - to get some new skills. From the other point you do only a draft and let most important thing to happen randomly.

When you try to learn some technique you should be really solid on details of hand work. Notice how instructors hand looks while playing. See where the resting points are, how the angles are set, how the motion looks in his take compared to yours. Most important - WHAT IS EXACT PICKING DIRECTION.

You didn't copy exact picking direction so you are not getting the poitn of this lesson. Remember - if you pass on bad habits at this point, it will take twice as much time to fix this in the future. Put some trust ins solutiosn proposed by instructors in original lesson videos

Exactly...that's what I always think of at first. Will the "system" slow you down while passing another car even if different one is comming towards you on the other lane? There is too much unclearance to me at this point...

I have some kind of hope that car-business lobby will fight back to not allow this to become reality.

Things went too far but since we have to much ease on getting the reference tone, we start to "normalize". I guess at some point even if someone wanted to copy exact tone of his idol, there were too many factors between player and the tape that made difference. There was also more common to see live the same rig player actually used to record on his album. It all had it's charm.

These days I guess it's hard to avoid so much similarity in tone since everytime you hear something sound better,m you want to get to that point. Very often player's taste meet at soem point. I start to pass on judging this. That's just the point we're at now. Some players do stand out even if they would use the same "preset" as most of others

Exactly. That's why I prefer to have my desk space narrower than the "ears" with monitors. Even in a small room you can have reasonalby flat low end response in the spot you sit in (further you will experience wall reflections and bass boost anyway but as long as you know the physics of sound, you can avoid some mistakes in mixing


BTW - really nice post Todd. In general at this field saving money most often ends up as frustration on things now working as expected. Mic stands the most funny of this but soo right ....Cheap one can't handle overheads casue the loose the grip and let the mics fall.

Acutally the target has been achieved...it made me feel positive There so much great stuff in the net that I think the life is just too short....to do anything other than surfing the internet )))))

Threre's plenty of factors affecting bridge stiffness Mainly the type and number of springs and the strings gauge you use. There are also "point zero" systems. I had not much experience with teh jem itself but I do service lot's of Ibanez guitars. I think that their zero point system makes the bridge quite stiff. It's a compromise. From one side we have better tuning stability on bends but from the other side some of the fluency in whammy bar motion is gone.

Sometimes reducing the number of springs to 2 and using something really serious like Gotoh PSP springs will give great results.