The Spider Lesson on JustinGuitar

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It seems that there is a mistake in the TAB: unless I am mistaken, in the #2, the ā€œ9ā€ of the 5th string should be a ā€œ8ā€ in the 4th string.

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My question is what year is this video? So young! Love it.

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2005 (!), according to the Tab in the resources.

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Nope, youā€™re not mistaken, in the video it is the 8th fret at the 4th string. The staff reflects the wrong note too.

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@isvo @akabanov Thereā€™s also a missing tab entry, for sixth note in #3 (while staff note is right this time). It should be 8th fret, 3rd string.

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I went looking for drills or exercises that would focus on RH picking technique and found this lesson. Itā€™s been great mastering the spider and has helped me develop some mysterious 6th sense of position for my picking butā€¦

Iā€™m now working through grade 3 of the course, and thereā€™s not been much said about RH technique. Maybe thereā€™s a good reason for that, or maybe itā€™s coming later. Anyway, what Iā€™m struggling with is RH accuracy when switching between strumming and picking individual strings. Also with picking on non-adjacent strings - skipping strings.

Is there anything I can do to practice building up these skills? Sorry in advance if Iā€™ve missed this somewhere on the siteā€¦

:slight_smile:

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Hi @XavierMacAroon

I struggle quite a lot with pick accuracy as well. I have been wondering if it is common, since I see a lot of folks do play demos that seem to not have trouble.

I have found that doing the regimented practices like the spider walk donā€™t give me the accuracy when I get into a riff that has the pick skipping strings or changing directions. I seem to need to practice each riff with plain old brute-force repetition. I start slowly, disregarding most of the tempo, and once I have the sequence of strings fairly clean, then I put timing back in and start to speed it up. Works ok, but would like to learn faster. :slight_smile: Some riffs I can get with a few 10-minute practices, some take me a couple weeks to get just to a sloppy state.

Thatā€™s my perspective so far (as of about mid-way thru Grade 3). I will be interested in seeing what others have experienced.

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@sequences Thanks for your feedback! Speaking with other guitarists face-to-face, the common response is, ā€˜yeah, it takes a bit of time.ā€™ Like yourself, I would like to focus on this area in my daily practice to try and build up the muscle memory for accuracy. In other words, yeah, I want to learn faster too! LOL. Iā€™ll be very interested in othersā€™ experiences. @JustinGuitar is great at managing expectations and often gives an idea of how long something should take to nail down. Be good to know if this is something that takes months or years to become competent atā€¦

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Hey Al,

Iā€™ve found that, as a general rule, (after getting the basic mechanics down) working on techniques/ skills in a musical context provides the fastest progress.

ie. Find songs/solos/riffs etc that utilise the skill and/or incorporate it into things you know.
Thereā€™s something about the pressure of being musical, re the melody, timing etc that helps it all along.

Cheers Shane

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@sclay Thanks for your response. Yep, Iā€™ve been told, ā€˜Just practiceā€™ for years by players and it used to frustrate the hell out of me because I would think, ā€˜yeah, but practice what?ā€™ Now Iā€™m maybe a bit wiser, it makes sense to just get on with playing and let nature take its course. Saying that, itā€™s a bit frustrating trying to play something and sounding crap so I would prefer to practice scales/arpeggios to try and build up skills before trying to take on an actual song.

Thanks again for your input. Much appreciated.

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