Winter Ballad, Lesson By Sinisa Cekic Options

[Tom51]

Original lesson: Winter Ballad by Sinisa Cekic

Thank a lot Ben, Darius and Gab for insisting on a change in my way of pick holding. Sorry that it took me so long to follow your advise...

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[Darius Wave]

Hey there!

You never have to be sorry for anything! Important changes take time. It's important to not give up on it, no matter how long it takes. I have to say I love what I see - your picking hand has taken a good path and now we will only try to help fixing little details. For example. Everything looks just perfect aside your wrist angle. Essentially it does not have enough motion headroom. Try to keep everything as it is but when for example resting your pick on the 5th string, move your wrist a little lower on the bridge. Your right hand should look like it does AFTER THE STROKE - we move it up to "reach" the string we want to play, and then, by picking we go to a relaxed position. Your hand is having relaxed position before it hits the note, and due to this, it sort of lacks the range of motion. In other words - it's angled too much downwards, instead of being straight with the forearm in "before stroke" moment

Generally I like your culture of playing - sublte, controlled, without unnecessary movements. The way you play at this point, would be great for some kind of jazz/fusion stuff, but not for everything else. You need to free yourself from flattened dynamics "cage". Don't be afraid to hit harder at some moments. Sinisa's picking is visibly harder, it has more bite in the tone, even if it still sounds smooth. I belive that's the case for you to make your nex task.

Keep in mind you're doing a great job and all those things we mention, are to focus you on what's next to make it sound even better.

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[Gabriel Leopardi]

Hi Tom!

I look at your right hand and I'm proud! It's not easy to change an habit like this one and it can be frustrating at first when we don't feel comfortable with the new position and movement. However I can say that this already looks more natural than your videos playing with the other right hand position. I can see that you are getting comfortable and that this is having a great impact in the overall quality of your playing.

There are not relevant issues to improve on this one, you just need to continue playing in this way to get more and more familiar with the new position to be more relaxed and as Darius said, give this more feeling (dynamics, groove, etc).

However this is a correct take, with good timing and perfect bends. Well done friend.

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[Ben Higgins]

Hi Tom, it's great to see that you've managed to make the change on your pick grip - well done

You manage well on this track but Sinisa's phrase are quite sophisticated and can be deceptively difficult. There's a few areas that could be approached differently by re-thinking your finger positioning:

- The sliding phrase at 0:10 could be smoother. Firstly, I would slow down the sliding movement on the G string. It also looks like you're using the index finger for that slide? I could be wrong but if you are, then that is more difficult for you because you just used the index finger to slide down on the B string, so use your 2nd finger like Sinisa. The transition will be smoother that way because you don't have to take your index finger from the B string and put it on the G.

- 0:17, this just needs more work to make the movements smoother. I can't see your fingers but perhaps my previous advice above may also apply.

- 0:21 - 0:29. Try to slow the slides down a little bit so they are more audible. The fretted note is being replaced too quickly and we don't get to enjoy the sound of the slide so much.

- 0:33, the semitone bend is missing here.

- 0:41, this is played excellently. No criticism, just praise here - great work.

I'll leave the details at this point. There's some more little bits but they generally fall under the same observations I've made already. My overall advice is just to have a look at what your fingers are doing and try to approach using them more efficiently. If a finger is already placed somewhere, could one of the other fingers do the job instead etc? Using the fingers efficiently to make string changes smoother is an art that you will naturally start improving over time anyway.

Good work!

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[Fran]

Pass: 6.7

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