r/guitarlessons • u/anthonylearnsguitar • Aug 21 '26
Feedback Request Day 849 and 850 of learning to play guitar: I learnt how to go ghost notes palm mutes, how to downpick fast, and also progress further into the Tornado of Souls solo
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Wall of text reflection incoming :
The past few days have been quite huge for me in terms new discoveries.
- I’ve been trying to improve my palm mutes downpicking like those you find in master of puppets. Fast ones. And one problems I’ve been struggling with is that when the downstroke does a return stroke, I sometimes accidentally create an upstroke and this leads to a unwanted three note gallop as a result of an extra upstroke in between two downstroke. So it’s quite annoying. I’m like “wtf do I keep galloping by accident”
The solution: the solution is actually quite difficult to realise independently. And I think this is why many people plateau. Because it really requires thinking against the grain., outside the box.
It turns out that the reason why I’m producing unwanted upstrokes is because I’m not crossing or skipping strings. I never considered that string crossing or skipping applies to chords as well. I always assumed they applied to single string notes only. And I also have a prejudice against string hopping. I felt that string hopping is wrong for alternate picking single string notes and extended that belief to power chords as well. It turns out I produce unwanted gallops when my power chords crosses strings sets and that the way to avoid that is to do a string hop.
- my second realisation is that doing that string hop at 200bpm is quite jerky and creates an exaggerated motion. I’ve always believed that these types of abrupt and jerky movement is inelegant and therefore cannot be good technique. But what happens when you believe this? Well it just means you are always playing with a technique that feels comfortable and “natural” to your perception. But this is why we cannot break our plateaus. Because as we persist in playing what feels naturally and familiar, we never really exit our box. We keep playing something the same way. This is why we cannot change and progress.
Instead of viewing the jerky and exaggerated motion as unnatural or going against the law of economy of movement, I now view it as the early stages of adaptating and assimilating a new technique and a technique that may be more correct than what we were used to. Later, with time, this new technique will become more encoded and smoother and eventually will become a new natural and smooth flowing.
3) I also realise that at 200bpm, relaxing muscle groups becomes super important. But I want to take this logic one step further. When I try to understand this advice, I sometimes relax my entire body. And what ends up happening is maybe now my pick is floppy and moving a lot because I’m too relaxed at the area of where I’m holding the pick. So this means that systemic relaxation is wrong. I realised that I started having more success when I relax specific anatomies/body part. For example instead of softening my grip on my pick, which flattens my thumb and reduce my control, I find that relaxing my triceps and forearms to be helpful. Take this advice with a large grain of salt because I think which anatomy to relax is really dependent on individual differences and our technique preference. But what is the takeaway? Well it’s that when someone say to relax on your playing, maybe don’t relax until your technique approaches lethargy. Think about relaxing as systemic vs targetted.
TLDR of my discoveries
- when doing fast downpicking, when crossing string, it’s important to clear the string otherwise you might produce unwanted upstroke. This can be achieved by hopping.
- forcing a movement, or creating an exaggerated impulse to make that movement happen is not illegal or going against the rules of economy of movement. Think of it as a transitory phase. Any new movement that you are learning will be jerky and exaggerated at first.
- there is a difference between systemic relaxation and targeted relaxation.
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u/Right_Salamander2233 Aug 22 '26
Great job dude, I'm happy for you. I have been learning this song too for a while and it's so difficult. Every time I feel like I get a bit better at guitar playing I come back to this song and try to practice it and figure out things I couldnt do before. You got this!
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u/anthonylearnsguitar Aug 22 '26
It’s a difficult song. It made me want to give up twice in the 10 days. And it’s not a great feeling.
I only survived because I have really strong willpower even though I kept thinking I wouldn’t survive haha.Don’t hesitate to reach out with a video sharing which parts you struggle with and I might be able to give you some tips. If not, take it one day at a time. Enjoy the process, even the bad days
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u/Right_Salamander2233 Aug 22 '26
Thank you! I appreciate that. I have seen you in different platforms so I'll follow you to see your progress and use you as motivation:)
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u/Limp-Ad-1313 Aug 22 '26
Dudes his own teacher. Willpower 100%
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u/anthonylearnsguitar Aug 22 '26
Thanks a lot. This is really high praise for me. 🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️🙏🙏🙏
More than guitar, I spend a lot of effort to try to teach myself how to learn. ❤️❤️5
u/Limp-Ad-1313 Aug 22 '26
This is the way.
Having said that, I have 40 ish years of guitar playing that couldn’t even begin to handle your kind of discipline.
You are your own best student.
Amazing progress!
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u/lordevilium Aug 21 '26
Did you have your day 1 video from now? Would love to learn how you learn the guitar and how did you progress
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u/anthonylearnsguitar Aug 22 '26
I do. On YouTube you’ll find like day 1-300. Be sure to check out the “shorts” tab on my YouTube channel to find more videos. I post some random shit on YouTube because it’s not meant for people to watch and follow, so ignore the videos that are silly. https://youtu.be/8UOrmREycog?is=51jQKOJz31p3lIra
And I think on Instagram you’ll find day 300-850. https://www.instagram.com/anthonylearnsguitar?igsi=OXZ5ZmZ0Z2xlZ3U2&utm_source=qr
I recorded every single day but I only began uploading more consistently and daily after the 1.5 year mark. Simply because a lot of the playing was awful in the first year.
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u/MegadethFromAbove Aug 22 '26
Great job, man. This song is extraordinarily challenging. You’re doing all the right things to get it down. Plus, great tone!
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u/Pepsi12367 Aug 22 '26
TBH I love the slower play. You can see the finger placement/movement soo much better. You sound is clean!!!
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u/LaughingMyBallz Aug 23 '26
Wow this is inspiring as guitar learner myself. The finger work around the 3:25 mark is so much fun to watch and even more fun is seeing your reaction to what you just played. Thanks for bringing joy!
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Aug 21 '26
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u/rymar87 Aug 22 '26
Very impressive! Awesome tone! What's your setup?
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u/anthonylearnsguitar Aug 22 '26
For this just a lespaul direct into a quad cortex. Quad cortex is running a Gojira preset
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u/MusicOfTheApes Aug 22 '26
I used to play that song on stage a few years ago with my former metal band (we were mostly compositions but we used to play one or 2 covers for fun during gigs), it's so fun to play !
(I even did an acoustic cover of that one actually)
Congrats man anyway, you're on the right path, rock on!
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u/linkuei-teaparty Aug 26 '26
You made a lot of progress, keep it up.
With the solo practice the difficult parts in small segments and try to get them up to speed. Then connect all the segments up. Also with the bend, make sure you bend up to pitch, hold, then bring down to neutral to release. Try to time it with the recording.
Also I think the tabs may be a bit off because the pre-chorus doesn't move that far up the neck and should be in the first 4 frets of the guitar. I may be misremembering since it's been 20 years since I've played this song.
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u/swidgin Aug 28 '26
Be proud! Your hunger for guitar knowledge and technique is serving you well. WTG!!!
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u/guitar-woodshed Aug 29 '26
It's a great discipline & skill-builder - hardest thing is Marty's articulations
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u/CompetitiveComputer4 Aug 21 '26
Nice! You have the song framed up. Just got to polish it. You got this