Wow Kasper, 
seriously good to listen to. Nothing else I can say brilliant work 
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Video quality was fine in my opinion Kasper. It was your fingers moving way too fast in some section ! 
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Just fantastic Kasper. It was very smooth and accurate, very very high standards. Thank you for posting this and your analysis, I might try it years down the road and will make sure to check out this post. 
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Hey Kasper, man thats some highly professional sound and playing. Very nice lead playing, the ballad one reminds me of a song but i cant put my finger on it… Well my ear lol. Good job man! Something i need to strive for in my lead playing!
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Jeepers Kasper! That’s some incredible playing! 
And a fabulous write up for us all to digest. Watching your fingers fly effortlessly over the fretboard provides a lot of inspiration and so helpful to have the concepts behind it provided as well, I foresee myself coming back to this many times, thank you!
I hate to know what he’d think of the 80s bands I listen to then 
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Nice, Kasper! Love all four of these. I know you said it was quite difficult but you made it look so easy. Beautiful, man.
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They all sound great, Kasper. Out of my sphere of knowledge to comment further.
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Hi Kasper,
Not sure how I missed this one, for while on vacation I have had a chance to check into the community a bit more than normally. Alas I found this just now.
I found it a little hard to pick your guitar out of the first 3 offerings. Perhaps it is my bionic ears (hearing aids). But the level of your lead guitar sounded lower than the backing track. To me your lead guitar came up a bit on the final tracking.
Some great play going on here mate! You make it look effortlessly easy to do, but as you say. It is anything but. I found it interesting to hear you say the second demo about did you in. I have known you for many years and in that time I have marveled at your ability to cover anything you attempted and play it as if the original guitarist had done it. That includes impeccable attention to tone. I can’t recall a time when your tone did not match the original…
It would seem then you have met your match within this book. I guess that is the cool thing about guitar, in that it will grow with you as far as you are willing to take it in study, practice and play.
Very interesting thread and one that should inspire all of us to strive to improve. No matter our level of play.
Thanks and take care,
LB
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Not just me then. Must be something to do with plastic ears!
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Looking forward to hearing what you think once you dig into it!
Thanks! Quite a few has commented that it looks “effortless” on the videos. Watching video recordings of my own playing I’m actually surprised myself at how it looks - because certain sections definitely do not yet feel entirely effortless! That being said, one thing I picked up over the last couple of years when I’ve been serious about improving my technique is how every technically gifted player will tell you the importance of: minimizing hand movements (both left and right), stay relaxed, have a consistent hand positioning etc etc. So it’s something I’ve been working hard on… so I’m happy to see some results starting to come in 
I don’t know, I personally can hear the guitar fine on studio monitors - BUT it’s possible I’ve mixed it a little bit too low, or didn’t have quite enough mids in my tones. It was a quick’n’dirty “mix” job this time around
Excellent, man. Excellent. I’m much closer to the beginning of my journey. I’ll keep watching guys like you for inspiration!
Chris
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Hey Kasper,
I’ve been meaning to query you about how you are mastering these crucial elements.
In the last 12 months, amongst other learning, I’ve been following 2 coursebooks.; one on hand synchronisation, and one on alternate picking techniques. Both books, by the same author Chris Brooks, another very technical player, emphasise the importance of the elements you have mentioned above, re minimum movement, staying relaxed, and having consistent hand positioning.
I have seen some marked improvement in my own playing technically, by employing these concepts and techniques daily, but I am still at a relatively foundational level. Will be a few years yet before I get somewhere near your ballpark 
.
One facet I do find particularly challenging are rapid tempo increases within a piece. I’ll tend to often both lose my technique and tense up, after being seemingly ‘in control’; obviously related.
As an example, I’ve been working Peter Green’s The Stumble. Pretty pacy at 134 bpm, but I’m playing it pretty clean and accurate at 120bpm at the moment. That is, until I hit a 4 bar section full of 8th note triplets running across all 6 strings.
To attack this, I’ve followed the advice, utilising little drills like minimising movement, isolating small sections, working on how to pick different sections, speed bursts, slowing right down to iron out repeating errors etc, and most importantly employing a mindset of relaxation; this above everything, gives the most gains for me. A bit frustrating at times, as I can play the section perfectly about 2x out of 10 at the moment, and have been at it for about a month.
I’d be interested in your thoughts, and perhaps any other strategies/ mindsets you may have employed.
Thanks for any input.
Cheers, Shane
Hi Shane,
Honestly it sounds like you’re doing pretty much everything right in your practice, so overall I would say just keep at it and results will surely come! I do have a few comments and suggestions, hope they can help at least a little bit.
The first thing I noticed is that you mention problems when you come across “rapid tempo increases”. Maybe what I’m about to say will sound like me just being overly pedantic with semantics, but bear with me; the tempo does not change - the subdivisions does! There should be a steady inner clock (like a metronome set to click at quarter notes) in your head, and all that changes for your hands is whether you player quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, triplets etc. I would then suggest spending a lot of time on exercises that practices playing at various subdivisions over a metronome click. And exercises that switches between subdivisions.
Also - if I can, once again, refer back to Martin Miller - he has a course on JTC on picking. And in the first master class he talks about what he calls RDAP; Rhythmically Dependent Alternate Picking. The concept is very similar to what I believe Justin teaches for strumming and keeping the groove. The hand should always move like a pendulum, tightly locked to the tempo, and then we strum chords on some of the downstrokes and some of the up strokes. Martin talks about lead playing and alternate picking as following a similar concept. Internally you’re constantly thinking of the lines as belonging to some “grid”, which can be 8th notes, 16th notes or whatever suits the line. This grid then dictates which notes in the line are played with an up or down stroke.
This is just one aspect of it of course. You also mention tensing up, when you get near the part you know is difficult. You also already know yourself that this tensing up is counter productive, and will only make it more likely that you’ll fail on the execution. Easier said than done, but you need to work on your mindset to change into a “I can do this” rather than a “oh sh#t, here comes the tough part!”.
Record yourself, and see how your technique actually looks on camera. As I mentioned earlier, even lines that I feel I’m struggling with when playing them turns out to look quite relaxed and well executed (if I may say so about my own playing ;)) when I watch the recording of myself. This in itself gives me some confidence.
I also noticed something else in my own playing. Now we’re on details level but take a look at the “Hard rock” example I posted. One of the things I had to change a lot over the last 10 years is the way I hold the pick. Being self taught, I was holding it “strange” when I first joined Justin. I would hold it with 3 fingers (thumb + first AND second finger) and play with a very flat angle to the strings. I had to practice A LOT to undo this habit, and have the “correct” angle of attack on the strings. I still fall back to the weird pick holding when playing things that isn’t technically a challenge. But look at 0:58, just when I’m about to enter the hardest lick in that solo - that long picked descending line over all 6 strings. You can see how I very slightly readjusts my hand position and pick angle to go into “technical playing mode”. This is not something I’m thinking about, but something I could pick up from watching the video. So record yourself a lot!
You mention being able to play it perfectly 2 out of 10 times. That tells me you HAVE the technique to pull it off - but not the consistency. It could be things like a random pick angle / pick slant? Not starting consistently with an up or down stroke? Not being consistent with which notes are picked, and which are hammer-on or pull-offs. The smallest change in pick angle or execution can turn a fast lick from unplayable into being doable. Again - record yourself and see what the difference really is when you nail the lick and when you fail it.
Final advice - have you tried playing it above target speed? Strange as it might sounds, this has helped me more times than I can count. Setting the tempo 10-15bmp above target speed and trying your best to play it. It will sound sloppy, you will fail a lot… But do that for 5 mins, then drop it down to normal target speed - and suddenly that’ll feel “slow” and you can do it.
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Kasper,
Much appreciated mate for a very substantial, illuminating, and very helpful response. Posts like this should be pinned; they’re gold.
Yes, I was a bit loose with the terminolgy here. I do understand what you mean. A reminder though for me to be precise.
Chris Brooks has a section on Subdivision Bursts and Speed Bursts; drills on playing various subdivisions over a set tempo, and on repeatedly increasing the tempo by 10 % each time above ones CTS ( Continuous Top Speed - explained below).
And you’re right; coming back down from these more challenging drills certainly does have the effect of making the lower tempo or decreased subdivisions feel much easier to play.
Chris also introduced me to a helpful and efficient mindset that goes against the idea of starting at a low tempo, then slowly increasing each time etc etc. He calls it your CTS - Continuous Top Speed;
the speed at which you can play a piece comfortably for repeated iterations, error free. So one starts their drills, problem areas etc, once learnt, at this CTS, not at, for example, 60bpm 1/4 notes. I think this has has helped in both accuracy, speed, and confidence; and seems a much more efficient use of time. The other great benefit is it gives me an accurate historical data record of my increasing CTS in different contexts; good for both seeing development, and ongoing challenges.
Great insight into your experiences with different challenges etc. Like your mention of “technical mode” for the challenging section, and how you overcame your pick grip issue.
I’m obviously still at the point after 4+ years of playing where I’m ’ finding my way’ technically, with things like pick grip, pick depth, pick angle, minimum movement; trying to really bed down basic alt picking movements; even how much my hand ‘lays’ across the strings. Just time and focus I suppose; but I’m trying to be precise and repetitive in what I do so it becomes ingrained, and ‘thinking’ about it diminishes over time.
I’ll be keen to tackle Martin’s book and method when I feel I’m ready for it. Some time off yet though. This has reaffirmed though, that I’m on the right general track, and that time will be my friend as I move forward.
Just to end; one thing that I’m focussing on particularly at present is this consistency of hand movement you mentioned. I video myself alot, and one issue I find ( among a few🤪) is ‘reaching’ at times for a string on a quick string change. This obviously throws out my consistent hand movement, my technique, my timing and my accuracy. Again, I think tension plays a big part here, as I’m obviously on some level thinking about getting to that string ‘quickly’ , and end up ‘reaching’ for it. As you know, were talking pretty small distances/ movements here, but it’s certainly enough to throw everything out slightly, and the effect is of course cumulative. This is what happens in The Stumble piece; if I go slightly awry in the first bar or so of the challenging section , it will result in me trying to ,‘catch up’ in the middle section, and of course it all falls apart. So Im working on ‘being in position’ I suppose, so that what you refer to MMs RDAP will remain constant.
Thanks again for some great input, great ideas, and giving me a bit of insight into how much more accomplished players like yourself approach challenges.
All the best.
Cheers, Shane
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