Ask Papa Gates.

[Elton Breaux]

When are the answers coming lol. The suspense is killing me papa gates lol

 

[Daniel Haggerty]

Hi, I’ve been playing for many years and so when I joined up here recently I worked my way up through your beginners section fairly quickly, but then on the start of the intermediate section you begin harping on crossovers and practicing all your exercises both by starting with downstrokes, and then with upstrokes; I believe you when you say there is a difference. Maybe I might have missed it when I started studying how I play because I started alternate picking so long ago.
In short: Does practicing starting with upstrokes ever come back around as a necessary small finesse type thing that helps with higher techniques such as economy picking, or sweeps?
(Reference lesson 44)

 

[Calvin Phillips]

I think so. There are lots of licks where I ask myself should I start with an upstroke here? If you are going down the fretboard i feel you’ll start upstroke.

 

[Jamie London]

What’s your take on some of the more classic simplistic guitar players? Marc Bolan for example. He was far from an incredibly skilled guitar player technique wise but he wrote kick ass tunes none the less. I also see people say Keith Richards is simplistic and while I see that with some older Stones songs, the guy definitely has some more challenging stuff under his belt, and very creative (IE: Dead Flowers). I suppose my question is more so, what’s your take on players who may take a more stripped back approach to guitar playing but can write great songs regardless.
I ask because while Syn and Dime are two of my all time favorites, I’ve always found myself playing and writing more in the style of a Keith, or a Marc. And while I always go out of my way to learn all that I can, my playing style is definitely influenced by a lot of those bands that my parenrs raised me on, which is great, but it can be hard to break some of the habits you learn from players you’ve studied for so long. So any advice there would be cool too Thanks PG!

 

[The Raven]

If you could jam with 1 guitarist from any point in history, who would it be, why would it be them, and what would you want to play?