There is an issue here of awareness that needs to be understood, because most players trying to transcend the possible(in their case), are just ending up expanding the known but not reaching anything new. I have done this for DECADES, so I understand this to well. This is finally changing and I have something to offer that so far I have never seen spoken of directly. This is only a brief sketch.
This is what I have experienced so far:
Tempo is not a fixed quality increased or decreased at will. If we think about this it does make sense, how could it be otherwise. This means as some have said already playing slower tempo’s well is for masters and in fact playing faster is actually easier because of momentum generated during the action. I have seen this DRAMATICALLY demonstrated with alternate picking increasing in speed both with wrist and elbow once the relationship between the adjacent strings is understood so that the boundaries between strings on both sides will Self Correct the activity of single string picking on all six open strings, something I had never accomplished before.
There is inherently a strength and stamina issue with the activity alternate picking - and I am not speaking of rotating forearm so called “tremolo” picking(which is itself transferable to piano as trills or tremolo as it called for non adjacent to note movement),- and that is with just open strings. This was a major undertaking and took years to develop because of the lack of clarity of what the activity really was/is.
This however is NOTHING compared to trying to alternate pick eighth notes at tempos above 100 bpm like say “Gas lighting Abbie” with mixed open and fretted single string playing at the moment the simple O 1 2 1 (repeat) digit combo’s for all finger ascending and descending and of course all the 3 finger possibilities(as consecutives). The actual picking motion with the laying on and adding and removing fingers complicates matter tremendously. If no one else will admit it I will. The reason for this is that when the string is fretted it increases the tension drastically, so one can work near the nut where the action is lower but the tension is much more obvious in that the pick must move across the string with much more force(at first), or higher up on the frets where the tension is less but the action is higher, so which way to go at first is a personal choice. The fact is that much more force must be applied to the string in order to generate enough momentum to create a cycle that can lead to lasting results(in other words learning). The three finger grips work well at first so that the pick doesn’t fall into fake uwps position which is really a pick control deficit in this case.
The other thing to consider is that there is at first a HUGE difference between 1 2 4 and 1 3 4. This is because the way the middle finger(2) and the ring finger(3) engage the string to fret it arrive at the fret in a different plane(best description I can do) and thus although playable by themselves as 1 2 4 2… 1 3 4 3…, trying to play them consecutively( 1343 1242 repeat) at tempos of say 100 bpm and above will show what I am saying is true for players who are not “there” yet.
One must be able negotiate the tension to get a good motion of alternate pick strokes consistently expressed with the changing fretted consecutive fingerings. I would say the many players abandon the notion of 1 3 4 3 all together because the motion seems impossible to get even the well known ones tend to use 1 2 3 2(the first three digits) whenever possible. For example (1 3 4 3 repeat)the picking of the string vibrates the string so the ring finger has to gauge this whenever it is fretted and this is only on ONE STRING that is being discussed here imagine the issues across two or three adjacent strings going 1 2 4 switch 1 3 4 and vice/versa.
This all lays hidden of course because the tempos that would allow these issues to present themselves are not conceivable to these players in the way they have allowed instrumental expression into/through their consciousness. But the way is open to allow this now perhaps some dialogue here anyone?
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