Yep. About six months.

Bill McNeill · February 2006

Last summer I took a workshop from Michael in which he demonstrated the rest stroke. It seemed like an effective technique, and I didn't know how else to go about sounding like Django, so I thought what the hell, I'll commit to this for a while and see where it takes me. I got a big fat Wegen pick and started playing exercises from Gypsy Picking.

It was really boring and frustrating at first. My girlfriend was unhappy because she used to like to hear me play, and now all I did was sit upstairs going DONG-DONG-DONG on the open strings. I was horrified to find that my existing right-hand technique quickly vanished, and much of my old repertoire became inaccessible. There were a couple months last autumn where I basically couldn't play guitar with a pick, though I managed to stay sane by learning fingerstyle pieces from Unaccompanied Django.

Sometime in the past month or so, however, it started to click. My rest stroke is still clumsy, but it's no longer alien. It feels like a technique I can use, rather than something I'm just struggling to make my hands do. I'm glad I made the leap.

So to anyone who is just starting with this technique and finding it frustrating, I can offer some encouragement. Elsewhere in this forum I've seen six months cited as the amount of time you have to stick with the rest stroke before it finally starts to pay off, and six months is about how long it took me. If you stick with it, it eventually works.

a · February 2006

Suzuki's book "Nurtured by Love" is also a great book to check out. Especially while learning the Gypsy Picking book. He talks about how the growth of ability is not readily noticeable and can only be perceived in a cumulative kind of way. It's kind of like trying to watch the sun move.