Let's examine a couple of stills from the slant picking primer:
First of all, you'll notice that he lets his index finger point toward the strings. This 'fluffer' grip is a classic problem you find with a lot of self-taught guitarists. There are two versions of this grip -- the one you see here that combines a little fingerprint with a little bit of the side of the finger -- and the furious fluffer that is all fingerprint. So, it could be worse.
This grip is okay for sweep picking (and a few other things) but using it for alternate picking it is not only counterproductive but will require a lot more time just to arrive at really conventional results.
Then he gets the pick stuck way down between the strings, and I mean way, way down in between the strings. In the slanting primer what you see below is described as "representative" of the amount of pick that is to be sacrificed to the spirit of inefficiency.
We now have an additional problem created by excess pick excursion.
Let's call these two major errors a "code" and now come up with an equally inefficient "crack" to correct what could have been avoided in the first place:
We've cracked the code alright but with yet another problem: laying the pick on its side then slouching over the hill into another ravine that we'll have to climb out of over and over and over.
So far we have:
1. The fluffer plectrum grip (the actual root of the problem);
2. Excessive pick excursion;
3. Non-linear attack producing linear results (the opposite of what we strive for).
Is this a bit exaggerated for demonstration purposes? Perhaps, but technical extremes often reveal fundamental flaws built into the very foundation of a given approach. If you experience diminishing returns as you push a technique to its limit, that technique might have debilitation baked into it. If, on the other hand, you get better results at the extreme limit, you might be on to something.
Troy's tone in his 'slanting primer' video is good, his schtick TV is entertaining, he's got a great hook to lure in ham-fisted beginners and frustrated intermediates, and he's a legit 80s shredder sub-clone but this 'solution' could have been avoided from the beginning by properly gripping the plectrum and just staying on top of the strings.
Is Troy Grady a bad player? No, of course not. He's good. He has a lot of bad habits built into his 'code' (the code really is just a collection of bad habits) but what I am saying is that he might have been twice as good in the same amount of time.
How does one avoid all of this technical mumbo jumbo?
You don't have to mangle your strings with that much of the plectrum (pick excursion). The tip will do just fine and better enable you to stay on the top half of the string and just glide across.
With the proper grip one can have power, precision, and speed. Players who learned guitar prior to distortion pedals, Yngwie, and YouTube imitation mania never had these problems.
Troy's also got some other issues such beyond the improper grip and pick excursion that I already mentioned, including:
4. Excessive anchoring on the bridge (which is fine in some contexts, however, there are more elegant ways to mute strings while staying in the passing lane);
5. He adheres to a one-dimensional / homogenous approach to the string plane as if there is no radius involved;
6. Sometimes he doesn't know what he's talking about, for example, calling hammer-ons and pull-offs "legato." It's a common problem with guitarists. Legato (the opposite of staccato) has to do with the "full value" of notes. Legato is not actually a 'technique' outside of guitar magazines and YouTube videos.
This entire technical approach is regressive (not that 'regression' is always a bad thing) and does not represent the leading edge of guitar technique. It's just a bunch of bad habits turned into a system for people stuck with bad habits needing a trick to patch the holes in their playing.
Every now and then a kid comes along who can't pick properly and their unique trick or gimmick represents a fabulous development such as EVH's two-handed tapping. While he didn't invent tapping he certainly popularized it. But for every EVH (a one-in-a-million kind of player) there's 999,999 kids who just can't pick and their solution is no solution at all.
Besides, you can still have your gimmicks with proper mechanics.
But I don't think any of this 'slant picking' stuff is even about technique in the same way that McDonalds isn't even about hamburgers any more.
I watched Grady's Steve Morse video and what struck me most profoundly was how everything is jammed into preexisting jargon boxes. Grady is the Ray Kroc of McShred. Everything is homogenized and jargonized into McSpeak.
Franz Borkenau once said where there are two people doing the same thing, it's not the same thing. Well, this is not the case in the land of McShred where everything collapses down into one of the prepackaged jargon boxes, that, like transcendental Platonic forms, have apparently existed since the dawn of time. It was always there to begin with! Every great player for the last three generations was always, already part of the McNoodles franchise.
I think Troy's a better businessman than he is a guitarist (not that he's a bad guitarist) and I think he's got a pretty good sense of his clientele's technical proficiency when they walk through the front door and just how far they're willing to take practice and hard work -- hey, who's got 8 hours a day to dedicate to practice, right? It's not like the fate of your eternal soul depends on it.
Slanting is the new name for underdeveloped technical proficiency and bad habits so it makes sense from a marketing standpoint to create a product that offers a way for players to continue doing what they're already doing. Why do it right if you can just keep doing it while paying someone to stroke your mullet?
Look, 99.99% of guitar owners will never do anything with their guitar (90% abandon it within the first year) and they feel lost and fear wasting time: I only have 20 minutes a night to mess around on this thing, am I doing it right, or what? Sure, you're on the right track (whatever it is, it doesn't even matter) and we're here to elongate your journey down that well-worn path from ownership, frustration, confusion, progress, plateau, apathy, and finally, Craigslist.
Slanting is the swindle phase (the essential oils moment) between plateau and apathy.
If you're watching guitar technique videos and not putting in 20+ hours per week actually playing, I doubt you'll even be playing in another year.
Cracking the Code isn't even about guitar technique. It's just resignation and reducing the horizon of expectations down to musical cliches from decades past. Aside from being entertaining TV, cracking the code is a way to play it safe and feel good about stagnation or regression. At the end of the day, the code is about assurance, certainty, the illusion of progress toward the conventional, and a high-turnover community of the enthused with their own in-group jargon who sacrifice a little of their money to do what they were always, already going to do.
Welcome to McSlanting. What's going to happen has already happened.