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 problem you find with a lot of self-taught YJM worshippers, at one extreme, and shoe-gazeing plinker types on the other.
This grip is okay for sweep picking and slurring everything with your fretting hand (or just plinking on quarter notes) but using it for alternate picking is counterproductive and, if left uncorrected, will require some additional bad habits (a.k.a., The Code) to get anywhere.
Beyond the weak grip, 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 have now combined a weak grip with excess pick excursion.
To solve this double whammy we're going to introduce a third, unnecessary element: 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.
This is like going to the hospital for a broken leg and getting sent home with crutches instead.
Here's your new code:
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 sound in his 'slanting primer' video is actually 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.
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 sound in his 'slanting primer' video is actually 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.
In the 80s a lot of kids abandoned lessons and method books in favor of Hot Licks and guitar magazines. The result was that a lot of people never learned basic technique. Watching EVH and YJM on MTV led to a lot of imitation (lots of sweeping, slurring, tapping, thin strings, hot pickups, distortion on top of distortion, etc.). That's fine but once you try to do anything else you discover you've dug yourself a pretty deep hole.
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 half the time. But we'll never know.
Once you've crawled this far up Yngwie's ass you don't need a code to crack you just need to extricate yourself from the crack. If you keep going you won't pop out the other end you'll just be stuck watching guitar technique porn in some dude's Patreon dungeon.
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 half the time. But we'll never know.
Once you've crawled this far up Yngwie's ass you don't need a code to crack you just need to extricate yourself from the crack. If you keep going you won't pop out the other end you'll just be stuck watching guitar technique porn in some dude's Patreon dungeon.
How does one avoid all of this mumbo jumbo?
With a proper transverse plectrum grip and a little practice you'll find that all these problems just take care of themselves. For over 100 years players not mesmerized by YJM or EVH have had no problem picking their guitars -- and they were the inventors of sweeping and tapping long before YJM and EVH turned those techniques into worn out gimmicks. Yes, kids, what you call "sweep picking" was just "gliding" 100 years ago.
Troy also has some other issues on top of problems 1, 2, and 3:
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 fast 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 represents neither the leading edge of guitar technique nor adherence to 100 years of proven guitar tradition. 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 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 all your gimmicks with proper mechanics. Hell, even Frank Gambale with all his ridiculous S\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\EEPING runs knows how to grip a plectrum properly -- and he's an excellent alternate picker.
But I don't think any of the '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 six generations was always, already part of the franchise.
I think Troy's a better pitchman than he is a guitarist and I think he's got a pretty good sense of his clientele's technical proficiency when they show up at his site 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% 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, Ebay.
Slanting is the swindle phase (the essential oils moment) between plateau and apathy.
If you're watching guitar technique videos rather than putting in 20+ hours per week actually playing, I doubt you'll even be playing in another year. But that won't prevent you from evangelizing the marvels of slant picking on Facebook or wherever they teach kids to ride bikes with square wheels.
Cracking the code isn't even about guitar technique. It's just resignation and reducing the horizon of expectations down to a few gimmicks 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.
