Another lurker coming out of the closet! ;-)

My name is Jules, 26 years old and I live in the good ol' Netherlands (no, not Holland...) where I spend my time getting my masters in organic chemistry, and practicing and playing guitar of course. I've always loved 70's and 80's guitar, rock / power ballads, some modern heavier stuff, but I first got really excited about guitar like 6-7 years ago when I saw someone with a bucket on his head showing what's possible on a guitar. Needless to say I was hooked and decided to get a guitar. From there I watched a ton of online lessons (Justin guitar anyone?) and slowly got introduced to others, most notably being Paul Gilbert and Pebber, so fortunately I've had quite a bit of top-level influences and none of those 13-in-a-dozen teachers. Also, I'm a pdf/video hoarder, so over the years I've collected a massive database of books, instructional videos etc. through which I dig from time to time to learn something new when I'm not busy with Pebber's work.

I've had no formal training, but I've got an appointment next week with a guitar teacher that lives across the street. He mainly plays flamenco, but I guess that is perfect in order to work on my technique and fingerpicking aswell. If that doesn't work out (or I can afford it) I'll probably sign up with Pebber because he deserves the money more than anyone.

This morning I recorded my first quasi-practice session for everyone to see and criticize. Apparently the sound of my laptop's microphone is horrible, so the next time I'll have better audio!

Spider exercises - all permutations of 4 fingers moving 1 & 2 fingers and all permutations of 3 fingers moving only one of them.


Trills - just a quicky to show the basic mechanics. I'll make a video of one of my practice sessions in case anyone wants to look at several minutes of different trills.


Major scale - a couple of runs through each of the 14 positions. I've only moved from the 7 position system to the 14 position system for a couple of weeks now and they are slowly starting to sink into my memory. This is not a feat of timing or picking but just the fretting hand.


That's all for now - please don't hesitate to comment because I need plenty of feedback.

your technique looks fine...Just stick with it and you will get better and better. really is as simple as that.