It would seem this forum is a bit quiet. Perhaps I shall shake it up with...
the...
Fire Head Jam!

It's fiery. There's some picking, and some scaley stuff. I use a giant V-Picks Insanity Pick... heh Enjoy!

Hi Scottulus,

I was working on too many thing and seeing progress in none. Currently putting 3-4 hours a night into module 1 right hand exercises and working it like crazy. Still writing down the major, arpeggio and pentatonic for positions 1-3 (thats where I got to before realizing I wasn't using Sarod or SP and began Mod 1) of Gmaj Caged on paper over and over during the day at work and I still do the Jedi Mind Trick practice technique... visualizing the notes and seeing myself play them fluidly. Thats so I dont forget them while I'm drilling Module 1. I'm playing along to PB's module 1 videos 1/2 trying to get up to 120 on Am pentatonic and the Am extended form. No clips but I'll post where I'm at with right hand when I'm a little less self-conscious lol.

Ps awesome vid. That tone mate!

I'm still working through the Major scale theory ~ All new to me
Also the 1st right hand exercises ~ can do the right hand bit but having trouble with keeping the left hand up on the A minor pentatonic.
Then I am also trying to learn the C major patterns, got the 1st & 2nd but haven't got the 3rd position stuck in my old head yet.
Thinking of biting the bullet and posting a video in the next day or 2 ~ should be good for a laugh

I like the video, I wish I could do a ¼ as well at the moment

Hi guys

Im practicing Module 1 and 2 mostly together with the 5 position system and recently i started with Scaletone Chords. I post regularly vids but i Scotullus is right (unfortunately) it is a bit quiet here in the forum.

How are you going with the Gmaj caged system in intervals Ray? I gave up trying to work on 3rds after position 3, because I figure its best to get all 5 positions down properly with the arpeggios/pentatonics before trying scale sequences. I'm managing 3-4 hrs most nights, more if I can get time. Hows your practice going mate?

Hey Ivan,

Yes well i nailed the intervals until 5ths in the Major and mel Minor 1st position. Than i left it to avoid bussy with to many things. Later i got the recommendation to start learning the chords that are part of the scale so im bussy with that now. While i practice a lot on picking and left hand stuff. For about the last 15 weeks im at an avarage of 24 hours a week. Due to work im not always i the possibility to practice 3 or more hour a day. I know CAGED in Major, Mel Min and Harm Min including the arpeggios.

My practicing routine for this month is:
- Picking
- Ladders
- Chromatic Scale on one string
- Gmin6 memorization (root on 5th stringn is a nasty chord)
- Diatonic Scale Chord Scales, Mel Min in G en C

I think your right about knowing the CAGED before the intervals. But i think also that when you know all 5 positions in major it would be possible to learn all the intervals on Major. Mel min looks a lot on the Major so slowly you get them all. Next month i think i will go back to the intervals.

Actually i dont know what is the best order to learn these things. I cant understand that from the syllabus or daily practice routine chart.

So hows your practicing going than? What are you doing in those 3 hours? Where are you videos? The last shows you if you make any progress, sometimes you think you dont make any progress but you surely make some progress.

I'm practicing almost daily at least one hour, normally two. I have a very nasty schedule working seven days a week and driving about 14 hours. I'm also looking for a job closer to home to give me more time with my wife and my practice.

I'll be posting videos later today of my known scales and chords. I'm going to record them as soon as I finish my lunch.

I also plan to put up some videos of my right hand and left hand exercises.

The last two weeks I've been doing basically the following:
Scalpel picking exercises
Ladders
Trills
Spiders
Chromatic scale on one string (I use the neo-classical three and four-note patterns for variety)

In the last day I listened to some people explain 5s, 7s, and 9s. I then modified the neo-classical exercise to allow for simple use of 5s and 7s when I am doing picking exercises on one string. That video will come also.

After only about 10 days it's become clear to me why I can't get my speed up. It's my left hand, particularly the fourth finger. At low speeds I keep it very close to the fingerboard, but at high speeds I pull it up slightly, then back further before hammering it down. This causes it to rock inside its base joint and really slows it down. I end up badly out of synchronization. We'll be able to see that at some point, hopefully this weekend. I'd love for everyone to suggest how to correct that.

I believe the answer will be trills, but we'll see.

G'day Guys,

Ray my practice normally goes:

Isometrics to warm up
Harmonics tune up
Right hand picking exercises from Module 1 syllabus (play along with Pebber)
Pentatonic Am working on technique/timing
Chromatic scale
String permutations 1234/1243/1324
Trills for all fingers
Spider exercises (working on just 2 currently)
Ladder exercises all fingers
Gmaj CAGED major scale, arpeggio and pentatonic plus scale sequences in 3rds (I'm up to position 4)
Chords and rhythm practice

I do all my right hand exercises and hours of picking just watching tv or something I dont have to pay attention to and I do my chord and scales practice using my iPad and a little music app called i-Real Pro. It has a big library of loops and backing tracks but it shows you the chord diagrams for guitar/piano and you can isolate difficult chords and jam them endlessly. I also write out the 5 positions of Gmaj on fretboard diagrams over and over at my desk at work during the day and I'm going through the music theory fundamentals lectures online. I'm studying music this semester and those online theory classes are fucken sweet!

The bulk of my practice is on module 1 (about 3 hours) and I spend the last hour working on left technique. I prefer to do it all in one 4 hour chunk at night but sometimes I'll do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night.
Like you I wasn't sure where to start so I jumped right in with CAGED before discovering that my picking technique wasn't letting me get much speed and I couldn't skip strings so Ive gone back focus on sarod and scalpel picking.

I used to spend more time learning songs and messing around but I've been purely working on the PB system because I if I learn new songs now I'm still playing with shitty technique. Better to focus on technique only for now.

Ray I'll post up some clips soon, just picking and technique because I'm keen to get some feedback.

Sound like you guys are serious about guitars!
Practice is the best part of day for me. I wish I didn't have to work so I could put in 8 or even 10 hours a day. I'd do it too!

Great Ivan that looks like a nice practice schedule. I think if you do this schedule consistantly you should see some progress on the way.
I havent learned any new songs in the last 6 monhts as well for the same reason as you. If i play shitty i learn new stuff shitty as well. And when im on work and cant do anything i start writing scales or watch theroy videos as well. I try to put as much as possible time in this to make some serious progress.
I know I-real Pro i have it as well it is a nice program i should use it more to improvise on progressions. I did it last week on a backing track from pebber an dlistened to it then i thought damn i still suck hahah.

I agree with you again on to bad we have to work yes i wish i could play more. Fortunately i have a cool job and can afford once in a while a month holiday while my wife keeps working, during that periods i do like 6 or 7 hours. Than it start to hurt and think its smart to stop. But without our jobs we can play for lessons, strings, guitars etc I try to remember this as well. I have friends in brazil who dedicate their life to music (which i envy) but many times they ask me if i can borrow them some strings (I play 0.012 on my acoustics and that scares them so in the end they dont want anymore :s).

Hope to see soon some videos from you too it would be very cool to see some more action on the forum and see others making progress. It is so quiet here sometimes but a decent amount of people who logges on each day.

That's a cool routine, Ivan. Very well-rounded. I need to balance mine out. I started with a lot of picking exercises and I learned that I need some focus to get mindless at the scalpel picking but I already find it fairly easy even at 10 notes per beat. So I started working on 5s, 7s, and 9s to get those right and then I can start increasing the speed.

Last night I was doing picking exercises in 5s and I was messing with a chromatic run based on the neo-classical 3 and 4-note runs, like this one on the 1st string:

0-5-6-7-8-0-6-7-8-9

Or something like that. I got tired of the sound of that (it's not very pretty) so I modified it using that neo-classical scale and got this one:

0-5-7-8-10

That is a bit of a stretch for the 4th finger but puts fingers 2 and 3 adjacent to each other and makes it easier to play.

I also did a little bit of a minor run in 5s on the 6th and 5th strings playing A-B-C-D-E repeatedly but then it morphed into a twelve bar blues in 5s which really was more of a simple 12/8 run. I'll need to work on that.

Hi Guys,

Ray I hear you. I was a student for a long time and I remember being broke and not able to afford to go see bands or other things I wanted. I'm studying part-time now and working only 3 days a week so I have more time for course work/practice but its a real balancing act. I was talking to friends last night. If you work full time or have a family and kid to think of: when are you supposed to find time to pursue your own goals? I'm such a perfectionist I wont move onto a new scale or chord until I feel I can it properly but it takes AGES! I know we're doing things the right way, but do you guys feel like progress is slow the way we practice? My goal is to be able to improvise and solo over any many styles of music and know where I am. But we have to learn to hold the pick properly and stop myself midway through and check my pinky is not sticking up, thumb is behind the neck haha. I think playing the guitar is a zen exercise. i forget to time my exercises and end up spending 3 hours on trills 1 pentatonic just because it makes me feel happy doing it :D So glad you guys are just as mad about guitar playing as me.

Oh yes, Ivan. I am with you on the difficulty finding time to practice. I work two jobs. For one job I drive 200 miles (320 km) 4 days per week and on the fifth day I work at home. On the weekends I usually work about 12 more hours in a retail position.

My typical workday looks like this:

04:00 Wake up, check mail, write poem to wife, balance checkbook
04:30 Get gasoline, pick up small items at store
04:40 Guitar practice
05:30 Shower get ready
06:00 Drive to work
07:45 Arrive at work, work until lunch
12:30 Guitar practice at work
13:15 Back to work until 17:00
17:00 Drive home
18:45 Arrive home, eat dinner, spend time with wife
20:00 Guitar practice until 21:00 or 21:30
21:00 Bed

With such a packed day, two things are necessary. First, I really need to find a job closer to home! :D Second, I must be very controlled about what I practice. I am working on both of those items. The last two weeks I've been focusing on picking exercises, ladders, spiders, and trills. I am making progress in all those areas.

Last night I decided I had to work on the CAGED major scale positions due to my inability to play all five of them in my video. While my wife and I were watching television, I was on the floor writing out the major scale positions on 5 neck charts using the note names rather than dots. That way I am learning the scale positions and the fretboard notes at the same time. I did that for about 45 minutes while watching television.

Then I grabbed my guitar and silently fingered the scale positions while saying the notes in my head, while we finished watching television.

Finally my wife said she was going to bed and turned off the television. I spent another 45 minutes or so actually playing the five positions and their corresponding chords. I wasn't playing the notes very well because I was trying to be quiet, but the point of that exercise was to learn the note positions and names.

This morning I awoke early, at about 3:15, with the G major scale running through my head. I closed my eyes and spent about 30 minutes visualizing the scale and note positions and singing the notes in my head. Then I got up and started my day.

I'd love to spend more time practicing in a controlled, structured layout of the 7 modules from Pebber, and I will get to that. But I know that while I won't develop incredible skills in one month, I will be able to do it in 2 or 3 years a little bit at a time.

Last year I finished a master degree and the two most important things I learned from that process are that doing a little bit of work at a time can change the world and that nothing you ever do needs to be perfect. If you keep correcting your mistakes and keep practicing the same skills, you will eventually get closer to perfection.

Well i think learning to play guitar GOOD is something that takes a long time. Plus one person is more talented as the other person.

I'm mad about guitar as well and take it very serious I practice as much as possible. Now because i keep myself to the lessons of pebber i can see progress although it is not going fast. Yes and sometimes this frustrates me cause damn how cool would it be i could play what i hear. But that are dreams.

It looks like we all are very serious here about playing and we wish to have some more time to practice :)

scottulus,

Are you telling here that these books "A modern Method for guitar"would be a good instruction book together with what we learn here from Pebber? Does these books teach you sghtreading as well? This is something i really want to learn as well. But with picking and ladder exercises this will not work.
If these books are good i think i will order them.

You are correct, for what you want to achieve, resources like Will Leavitt's are absolutely useless. I would advise you to save your money, and maybe put it towards a metronome that does much higher speeds? lol You are gonna need it with how crazy fast your picking and legato is gonna be...

Keep doing what you are doing, looks like you are making awesome progress.

So no book from Will Leavitt's is your advise?

Well, that series of books is used as a textbook for guitarists at music schools all over the world, Berklee in particular. So if you want to really hone some actual musical skills like reading music, chords and chord construction, position playing, chord progression, voice leading, chord to scale theory, interval studies, positional scale studies, triads, 7th chords, major scale, melodic minor, harmonic minor, wholetone and diminished along with a bunch of other stuff, then it is a great resource to have at your disposal, and use in conjunction with what Pebber is presenting.

But, it will take some time away from the many variations of 1-2-3-4, trilling and all that stuff. And 1-2-3-4 and trills WILL get you the gig over someone who can do all that other useless crap. Lol.

scottulus,

I feel good about doing trills and 1234 now :)
My goal is to be able to improvise solos and improve my musicianship overall. I'll pick up those books you recommended but i'll wait till I've progressed through modules 1-7 to some degree. Thanks for the advice you give on here. Its great!

Thanks Scottulus, well i want to learn all that stuff thats my goal. Though it have to come slowly all so that it makes sense what i try to learn. But starting to sight read cant be to early i think this is a good thing to do.

I have to say here i havent done the thrill for a while it is time to do them again for several weeks/months, who kows i start to get some gigs ;)

BTW Isnt sightreading part of module 5? So we should learn it, or am i understanding something wrong?

I am not a PB student. Lol I do not follow the modules, Although I dabbled briefly to see what was what. I am here to see what, if anything, anybody has learned or can play that is of interest. Y'know, guitar and music enthusiast. Pebber has some neat ideas and a scientific mind hard-wired for complexity. It blows me away how obsessed with speed and picking people are when there is so much more to it...

Anyways, I am not a byproduct of Pebber's method. Just thought I'd clear that up.

Here is a question that perhaps might put things into perspective.

How many friends do you have?
More than 12?
How many people do you know in total besides your friends?
Do you know their names? Where they live?
Can you recognize them when you see pictures of them? Can you recognize them when they are in different places?

Maybe the same consideration should be taken with your 12 new friends/aquaintences? Notes are your friends...


Now go rethink your lives.

I dont get you completely but i do understand that you dont follow his stuff no worries thats fine. But im not here to become a super master blaster fast picker. Im here to improve my technique in playing and learn more about the guitar. The way pebber works suites me a lot but again i dont need to be and yngwie i just want to learn to play cool music.

I agree a lot of people think when you play fast your good well that i dont think. A good musician plays with emotion, dynamics choose the right tone in the right sequence on the right time. And that can be done slow or fast.

Note this is my opinion of what i think is good, i dont want to start a fight here on what is good guitar playing.