The previous Troy Stetina thread was a complete and total mess. Thank you for getting rid of it.

P.S. I've been studying your material for the left hand for 4 years now. It doesn't cover everything, but it covers the most important things. It is pure gold. Thank you.

Don't know what it covers, but the YouTube-videos would do well to get some sort of categorizing (basic, intermediate, advanved) and indexing (tags or keywords or what they call it) of what each video covers. I've been pointed to videos containing gems I'd never had expected going by the title. I know you put a lot of effort into the videos themselves, so perhaps it could be some community volunteer effort to help categorize and index. I mean, I could watch a few vids over a weekend, and so could probably 10 others, so with a bit of organized effort (i.e not everyone watching the same videos), some cataloging could be possible. Then the painstaking bit of update the vids descriptions and keywords would be up to you, which is a lot less entertaining than watching the vids. Anyhoo, that's a suggestion.

I'm learning this song where the left hand is really busy and the issue I'm running into is that the riff requires a lot of both left hand and right hand muting through a good amount of gain. I'm actually not certain if you ever touch on this topic now that I think of it...

Here is the song I am talking about...

Quote: JoelMedina wrote in post #2

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The previous Troy Stetina thread was a complete and total mess. Thank you for getting rid of it.

P.S. I've been studying your material for the left hand for 4 years now. It doesn't cover everything, but it covers the most important things. It is pure gold. Thank you.

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Thanks for dealing with that, I need to try and be a lot more open minded and less dogmatic...Sometimes I forget how good we have it having found Pebber to tell us how it is, Needing to remind myself that there was a time before that when other peoples ways of going about the neck had a stronger pull on me.

Oh no! I didn't mean it like that dude. Pebber covers nearly damn everything that can possibly be covered on video haha. I meant it in the sense that the topics Pebber talks about have to "become real" to you or "click". Things that can't be covered that come through experience from learning and playing songs 500 times. I'm very interested in what Pebber has to say about the whole left hand muting thing.

edit: Post directed to diego

Cheers!! A reply from the Guru himself makes me a worry-free man.

Quote: pebberbrown wrote in post #8

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diegopaudyal-

No most of these guys dont take ANY paying lessons from me - they all base ALL their opinions and "knowledge" on the FREE youtube videos and FREE pdf's on my website - which as you know only contain a small FRACTION of the material I have. So quite a bit of what they say is based on 1% of the information available. So saying that I dont "touch on a certain topic" is based only on FREE public lessons on YouTube - which of course I dont cover every single technique in video format. One only needs to look at Page 4 of my Right Hand technique exercises to see that it EXACTLY covers muting techniques. But those videos are not free for the public - yet they continue to base their opinions on that.

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Any time I thought Pebber didn't cover something, I ended up finding it in one of his videos.

An example of this is when I bought Guthrie Govan's creative guitar book. Guthrie goes through great detail on tone and I thought this is something that I don't think Pebber covers. Well Pebber does cover tone, in fact he has a video series where he compares the Les Paul to the Strat and goes into great detail on tone. Even more than Guthrie in his book.
In fact after reading through Guthrie's book(I have not done all the exercises, since I use Pebber's system),,,I thought to myself almost everything Guthrie talks about I have found through Pebber's videos or forum posts. So I then thought, man Guthrie is a great teacher ...haha.
At the end of the day Guthrie covered a lot of what Pebber does, however Pebber takes us to a different planet with the amount of painstaking detail he puts into videos and posts. Knowing this though helps me save time by not having to look for another guitar instructor and solidifies my confidence that I am at the right place.

First off, big THANKS!!!! to deltadiscos who hooked me up with the Stetina Speed Mechanics book. Very cool and I've been going through it. Had no idea who Stetina was.

Second,you're getting better diegopaudyal. Just keep pushing forward and practicing as much as you can every day. I can see that your technique is improving. Don't worry about what other people say. You are on the right track.

Third, going back to what student has said and Joel and also on the subject of the Stetina Speed Mechanics book; To improve your left hand and right hand and play the guitar faster there are "general" exercises that are unchanged for decades now. I have a technique book by an old New Orleans jazz guitarist/teacher named Roger Filiberto. The book is called "Guitar Technic" and is published by Mel Bay. It was written in the 60's? 70's? One of the first books of its kind (that I am aware of) and it has lots of the same exercises that all the magazines print, Yngwie, Steve Vai, Michaelangelo, all those REH videos. So, at some point the BASIC (read: VERY BASIC) fundamentals of playing guitar BETTER (meaning MECHANICALLY better ie FASTER) has not changed much in like 40 or 50 years. Maybe centuries. Because the basic premise is unchanged (Pick meets string, finger frets note)

Steve Vai, Guthrie Govan and all those guys I'm sure have gone WAY beyond the basics. But they don't have time to go into all that in magazines, readers would probably find it BORING, not buy the magazine, magazine goes out of business. So, instead, Steve Vai shows you some LICKS you'll never be able to play. Much more interesting right? Hahahahaha

Pebber has taken guitar technique study, cataloged, researched, and applied it in performance and teaching for many years. He has seen what works and what doesn't. He has pushed the research and application to the outer most limits. And that's simply talking TECHNIQUE and not even getting into theory, scales, chords, improv, etc etc.

Anyway, there is nothing I or Frakh or Pebber can do that YOU can't do. It just takes many minutes, hours, days, weeks, years of intense dedication. And time. If you have the patience you WILL get there.

I got a lot out of Stetina's book. As Ursin says, many of the exercises can be found in several places, including Pebber's vids.

The order of the exercises is very carefully planned, I think, so you learn one skill which preps you for the next. Also, many of the exercises are 'in the style of' rock guitarists who I'd like to sound like - Rhoads, Malmsteen, etc etc. Plus there's plenty of good technical advice in there too - economy of motion, etc etc.

All that being said, I think I've probably improved more since I joined this site (what, six or nine months ago?) compared with the two years I worked with Stetina's book. I think the interactive nature of this forum, the feedback, the ability to see others practice and improve, plus the strong ethic of hard work - all of these are valuable things that are hard to get from a book.

After all the stuff said about the Stetina book, I got a copy (thanks delta) and started to go through it somewhat. Then I decided that I wasn't being fair (giving it the time it deserved) so...There are 195 exercises in the Stetina book. So, I decided to dive into it and practice each exercise my usual 10 minutes each. Well, that would take 32.5 hours and there are only 24 hours in a day. So, I had to scale each exercise back to 5 minutes. That's still 16.25 hours. Only leaves under 8 hours for sleeping/eating/bathroom. So, I had to divide it down further into 2, 4, 6, 8 hour chunks.

Anyway, for those of you who dig Stetina's book but feel you didn't get much out of it, I feel my outlined strategy above is the only way you are going to see results. Same with Pebber's Modules. You have to divide and outline a strategy of attack and then put in the time.

OK so Been back to have ago at a few exercises from the Mechanics book.
Found some old bpm's I wrote down
And the difference between then and now studying with Pebber is staggering.
This is not me blowing my owm trumpet just to show the improvement a lot of hard work can achieve.

old / now
Ex.15 : 145 180 bpm
Ex16: 160 / 190 bpm
Ex26: 100 / 180bpm

Ex28: 80 / 130bpm
Ex29 115 / 140bpm
Ex30: 80 / 140bpm
Ex31: 130 / 160bpm

That's fantastic! I can't match your starting speed on most of those exercises, let alone the speed you can now do them at.

I know you put a lot of time into your practice routine. How long would you say it's taken you to improve that much? Also, I'd love to see a vid of some of these if you have the time.

Nearly two years Cliff, A lot of that is 6 hours Picking a day for the first few months.
Gotta say i was a bit amazed at the improvements myself.

May do a Video soon.

Now that is dedication! I guess I've been working with Stetina's book for two years or so, and been a member of the forum for around nine months. I've made nothing like your progress, but then again I've put nothing like those hours in - one to two hours a day for me, with more at the weekends - and I probably haven't focussed as diligently on any one exercise. Congratulations!

Delta, let's see some videos man. Those speeds are certainly up there.

Your post has got my curiosity going so I think I'm going to dig out my copy of Stetina's book to see how I've progressed. I recall going through most of the exercises on 12/31/11 and jotting down my very top CLEAN and repeatable speeds. I did this on purpose because I just started out hardcore practicing (using Pebber's syllabus) maybe a month prior to that. I was only a wrist picker beforehand, and while I already did have some speed I figured that I would measure my progress years later using those exercises. Well it's years later.

Maybe I should just be happy that I haven't lost my dedication... I'm in a rut though. Each stab at Blue Bossa and I Shot the Sheriff sounds basically the same to me.

This got me inspired. Maybe we should all post vids?

Looks like, according to my notes, I stopped recording my speeds around 2 years ago. I know I was still working with the book for at least a year after that. Anyway, for those exercises, here's what I had and what I managed today:

Ex 15: 80 / 164
Ex 16: No timing / 164

These weren't perfect, I'd still need to work on damping the top string better when moving to the lower string to make these timings solid.

Ex 26: 90 / 110 - I don't trust my old timing on this one, I think I always had sync issues here
Ex 28: 70 / 80 - Still a little flaky on this speed, but I reckon I could nail this with just a little practice.
Ex 29 70 / 110 - I've been working on this one recently. I get between 110-120 depending on the day. Today wasn't a good day :)

Pretty humbling really.

I can no longer post links Have uploaded some exercises to youtube

Delta, I watched 27, two takes at 30, and 31. I'm not sure if I can play at those speeds so I feel awkward giving feedback. Keep it up man.

deltadaz on youtube if anyone else wants to have a look.

Yea also check out the dodgy Ami groove muck around
what the hell was I doing with that tremolo.lol