No, I don't think so. You sign up, and you follow his curriculum. I'm not sure why you would want to limit yourself by pre-defining what you think you need. If I were you, I'd let the master show you what you need.
I randomly came across agreat example of scalpel picking in action. Search youtube for Babymetal's performance of Gimme Chocolate on the Stephen Colbert show. The cameraman catches scalpel picking at the beginning of the guitar solo roughly 2:30 minutes in. The lead guitarist is supposedly very well known in his home country of Japan as being a virtuoso.
Thanks for the replies, you guys. I think I am going to take the arduous journey to try to change my picking style to Pebber's sarod-scalpel hybrid. My wrist cannot even make that damn sarod motion as of right now!
Hey all, I've been playing for a while, and I originally did not learn scalpel or sarod picking. My preferred picking technique--which I'm not in love with--is rather stiff and inelegant but, for the most part, gets the job done.
In one of Pebber's Daily Practice Routine videos, he makes the claim that your picking method, in the end, does not matter. There are hundreds of different methods, and they can be developed to be fast and accurate. See, for example, Rusty Cooley. What matters is that you practice picking every day for more than just a couple minutes.
I wish my picking was more elegant and relaxed but I feel like trying to change my picking, at this point in my guitar playing career, would be counter productive. I DO practice picking everyday, though it is picking in MY style, not sarod or scalpel.
Yes, I had a teacher who taught me the modes this way. I was initially surprised to learn that Lydian was the most inside-sounding (knowing nothing more, I would expect Ionian). But my ear agrees with the list; I definitely prefer the sharp-4 sound of the Lydian scale over the natural fourth in the Ionian. I guess the half-step clash with the fifth is more appealing to me than the half-step clash with the third.
My teacher would have me play the modes in the way most learn: Playing the relative scales so that each scale has the same key signature. But then he would also have me play in parallel keys: Keeping the tonic the same, e.g., G Ionian, G Dorian, G Phrygian, et seq. In this way, you really start to become aware of the relationship between the modes. I would start with G Ionian, then play G Lydian. Go back to G Ionian, then play G Mixolydian. That helps to relate the major modes—loosely speaking—back to Ionian. Then play G Aeolian, then G Dorian. Go back to G Aeolian, then G Phrygian. That helps relate the minor modes back to G Aeolian. In this way, for example, you can view the Dorian mode as a minor scale with a natural 6th instead of the usual way of a flat-3, flat-7 scale.
Jerry C's Canon Rock plays on this idea of parallel keys. The song, primarily in D Ionian, changes ("modulates" ?) to D Locrian in a bridge near the end of the song. In comes back to D Ionian before the song's end. If you haven't heard that song, you should check it out. (I play a cover of it on my youtube channel.)
Get an instrument with lots of sustain, say a square-wave synth or a heavily distorted guitar, and hold a G note. Then play all seven parallel keys with G as the tonic and hear how they all sound over the G.
You're spreading yourself too thin. Spending five minutes on an exercise or learning a song is probably not enough to make any headway on the exercise or song. An hour is not a lot of time, so don't divide it too much. As a rule of thumb, my minimum block of time is 20 minutes to spend on an exercise and, even then, I don't feel good about only spending 20 minutes on something.
Pebber's preferred picking technique is a combo of scalpel and Sarod. In theory, if you were able to get these techniques down, I suspect learning alternate picking wouldn't benefit you too much. I would do away with practicing alternate picking AND Sarod AND scalpel. Spend 20 minutes on Sarod picking, with 3-to-4 minutes on each string, without fretting anything (see Pebber's Daily Practice Routine Videos). Then, try to double-up on your exercises: Spend 20 minutes on chromatic exercises WITH scalpel picking. Spend the last 20 minutes on scales. As you pointed out, the trills, spiders and ladders are conducive to television zoning-out, so do those then, if you must watch television. Do this for several weeks, and do not change what you are working on. After that, perhaps switch out the 20 minutes on scales with 20 minutes on songs. Do that for several weeks, then switch back.
An hour isn't much, so there will be some compromise (e.g., not learning songs when learning scales, and vice-versa). But don't compromise on the picking exercises.
Hi Eric123, You must subscribe to Pebber's online video lessons for, at its cheapest, $15 per month. This will gain you access to Student Level 1 videos, including Music Theory For Guitar Vols. 1A through 1F. The rest of the music theory videos (I think there are six parts) will be released to you as you progress and demonstrate your knowledge.
Hey guild1978, I think it is best to tackle all of the modules everyday instead of putting all that time into one module and forgoing the others.
Also, vis-a-vis uploading your videos, you don't want to send them to Pebber via dropsend, and you can't upload them here. You should upload your videos on youtube and mark them as unlisted. From there, you can email the link to Pebber and/or post the link or embed the video to the forums.
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