One must find comfort in humility when learning Eric Johnson

[Deleted member 3520]

Any good tips or position advice? I’m nowhere near good enough to learn Eric Johnson stuff, but I figured if I try genuinely and fail righteously then I can go up from there. I was watching him play the song a while back and I feel like he implements some slides in the chorus piece.

Anyways, as always, bad recording with too much reverb, but here is my day 1 honest attempt, I think Um about 20% there!

https://youtu.be/P5ggSuafpzk

 

[Rick Lee]

I don't know that song, but it appears you have the basics of his technique down. I have never heard him use close to that much gain, which means you need to play it even better to make it sound right, when there's less distortion to hide behind. He has a weird, stabbing-like picking technique and also uses his thumb joint like a cam lobe for up and down picking. There is a good video out there showing this by some kid who explains it better than EJ does. But it's not a natural feeling.

 

[Deleted member 3520]

I’ll look it up, thank you! Yea, I don’t have it nearly as clean as he, this is a very early fumbling-my-way-through learning attempt. I definitely have way too much gain, I have a spark running here and I normally don’t, had a cool feel! Thanks for the feedback, any and all is helpful. Cheers!

 

[stratjacket]

That’s a pretty Engl sitting behind you

I joined Troy Grady’s Cracking the Code and he breaks down Eric Johnson really well. I would highly recommend joining for at least 1 month ($25 /mth) and checking out the Picking Primer and then the Eric Johnson videos. He breaks down others too, lots on Yngwie. I’ve spent the last month completely redoing my picking and I’m starting to get used to it, it works.

 

[ClintN667]

Definitely try Troy Grady. He breaks things down on a technical level that most overlook.

I've only tried to learn cliffs of dover and I have it under my fingers but not to speed. I kinda hit a wall around 90% and that's completely to do with mechanics.

I usually use my crunch channel on my orthos with delay and reverb. Then split my pickups and I'm close enough tone wise to be in the ballpark.

 

[SpiderWars]

Also watch the old ACL videos of him playing it, he has a tendency to play things "the hard way". I also cheat and play the main riff with the open G string like you but he plays it the hard way. The beginning of the chorus is all on the 3rd/4th strings sort of alternating between sliding down with index and sliding down with pinky (almost all pinky). I play that high D note in the chorus on the 1st string/ 10th fret but he jumps up to play it on the 2nd string/15th.

And for that super fast repeating 5-note descending thing at the end of the intro...the one starting at 3rd string/16th fret and ending on 5th string 17th fret...try NOT picking that last note on the 5th string/17 fret...just hammer it hard. That keep the picking an even number of notes so you always can start over on a down.

 

[SpiderWars]

This one, I love the intro (and the drum major outfit