3nps ascending problems

Technique Critique
#32

No problem, and of course I could be wrong! It could also be a very flat USX where you change to the next string one note too early and catch the muted string on your way. Or it could be something else :slight_smile:

If your phone has a “slow motion” mode use it, and watch back maybe at 1/8 speed (making sure audio and video are in sync, so you can really compare what you see & hear)

PS: and just to clarify, we are doing high level nitpicking here. Your playing is great, and when we reach a better understanding of what you are actually doing you’ll be even more powerful :slight_smile:

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#33

2 cents from the peanut gallery (I haven’t viewed the latest clips yet) but I noticed from the Technique critique that I did a while back that whenever I viewed .25 speed in the YT player that I was pretty certain the audio and video drifted. That was one of the reasons I had to send things to Troy so he could sync it up in his video editing software.

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#34

Yes, I believe you are correct. I’m currently trying to shoot in slow mo mode on the iPhone and upload it already slowed down to see if that works better.

#35

So here’s one at moderate speed using iPhone Slo mo so it’s already slowed down and apparently synced. This shows nothing other than I am starting with USX. Standby for the floored version. It will be a train wreck lol!

#36

Interesting plot twist… I don’t think it does :wink: Notice how the end of the pickstroke is curved, almost as if you are about to escape on the downstroke. And notice how on the upstroke string change the motion trajectory looks significantly different - to my eyes at least!

EDIT: maybe this does not happen on all downstrokes, but quite a few of them defo look curved to me.

Nothing wrong with curved pickstrokes of course! But it’s important to notice that this is not the simple, “linear” USX you were perhaps expecting to do.

It looks like this motion may even allow for one-note-per-string phrases, because of its curved nature on both ends. Worth a shot when you have time!

Again…please double check all I’m saying by rewatching a few times!

Looking forward to the floored version :slight_smile:

#37

Okay, here’s a floored one, warts and all.

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#38

Ha this looks great! I counted 6 pickstrokes on each string with proper upstroke escapes! Only the low e had 5, maybe you hammered the last note.

Still, I wouldn’t say this is warty :slight_smile:

#39

Thanks! Seems the curves straighten out when floored eh? Weird… maybe the curves on moderate are exaggerations.

#40

Wow! This is great! The cool thing is that, although the pick seems to be double trapped during the pick strokes of each string (you can see that the pick occasionally rest strokes both on down and upstrokes), you manage to do completely clean string changes every time.
First I would even say that the strokes had more of e DSX lean to it so maybe you could even do fast string changes after downstrokes too.

Anyway, your body seems to feel things out perfectly when it comes to this playing style and I think you could do great this with this level of alternate picking now that you are more aware.

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#41

Thanks, man! I can’t say I’m happy with it at all but I’m glad it seems decent. I’ve dedicated a stupid amount of time to all this over the last 18 months.

One thing that occurs to me looking at these magnet-like angles is that my pick depth is no where near what Troy has. Sometimes I barely touch the string. I wonder if that’s something that should be corrected.

#42

EDIT: I was typing this up while @tommo was replying. I see things a little differently. I’m not changing any of what I wrote, because if I’m wrong, I’d love to see exactly where so I can get better at these and (hopefully) help people out!

This is interesting to me, because it reminds me of what happens when I tried flooring things attempting USX.

  1. Elbow is driving the motion
  2. The trajectory/escapes are a mixed bag. There are times where we see USX, but on the D and G string, your upstroke hit A and D strings (respectively). So, double trapped. In true USX, like EJ, Joscho and Troy do, the path looks the same on every single note. where every upstroke goes up in the air. So even if you’re sometimes clearing, the fact that you aren’t doing it every time, to me, indicates the motion is not totally consistent. As I understand it, we consider that lacking a smoothness that can be the big difference between normal fast and really fast :slight_smile:

I guess if we back up a step and get back to what you want to be playing (economy, ascending), does this motion work for that? I’ve never attempted economy at fast speeds myself. So for me in playing critique, the conclusion was sort of a square peg/round hole thing. I was trying to play USX stuff with a motion that was pretty flat, and inconsistent in its escapes. To dial in more smoothness I needed to fully embrace the escape that an elbow motion drives, which is DSX.

For you, the fact that the escapes are pretty flat (even when you clear on the USX string change), I’d think this could be usable for economy because you’d never really be ‘stuck’. So if you do have a problem at all, I’d first address hand sync on your full economy ascending lines. I think chunks would be the easiest way to do that:

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Then

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Then

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As others have said, youe playing sounds pretty great. If every single note is not crystal clear, which I think is the case, the remedy is hand sync perfection. You’ve got the nice problem of being 95% of the way IMO :slight_smile:

EDIT EDIT: @qwertygitarr posted too while I was typing lol! I need to speed up not only my picking, but my typing I think. At least my sound slice typing, for sure!

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#43

Thanks for this! I am glad you acknowledged this exercise as being somewhat removed from what I’m really trying to accomplish. Not that I think it isn’t useful, of course, but it doesn’t come up specifically in my experience. So I just sorta learned it for the purposes of this thread and it’s showing a lack of generalship in my playing. Maybe now I should post a similar POV but for the 8 note Blitzkrieg runs? I wonder if that would be revealing.

#44

Go for it! That’s what brought us here, right? Honestly, just filming it and looking at it yourself might give you all the insight you need. You’ve seen the general stuff the reviewers look for, so take that and run with it. That said, I’d like to see your Blitzkrieg runs up close like this!!! Keep it up, man!

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#45

Glad you and @qwertygitarr jumped in, because watching it again I agree with you two! I do see the fully trapped strokes and the “potential for dsx” or however we want to call it :slight_smile: But of course the upstroke string changes are very well done in the appropriate places. So what we may be dealing with, in this EX2 scenario, is a “primary-plus-secondary-motion” approach:

I think it’s showing that you have more motions up your sleeve than you thought. Just worth keeping this in mind in case you want to explore different playing styles in the future. E.g. high-speed downstroke string changes might become available to you with little effort :+1:

Totally! As I said before, you/we can now try and figure out exactly what is happening in the biltzkrieg runs using the same “filming + analysis + debate” methods :slight_smile:

Since the picking hand is just 3nps ascending, you can also replace the fingering with something simpler like 5-6-7 on each string, or an A major scale or whatever 3nps thing comes easy to you. This is just a suggestion to make sure fretting errors are non-existent, but not necessary if you prefer to shoot for the real thing straight away.

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#46

Here’s the Blitzkrieg scales at full speed going with the backing track. They’re played lower on the neck to make room for the camera. I generally have an easier left hand time in the lower positions than where the scales are supposed to be played.

#47

Ok thanks for this clip! This is now correct economy picking at full speed. Great work!

The problem I see is that the pick travels too fast into the next string during the “sweeps”. Can you see that every string change, the pick is not really sweeping but actually attacking both strings at the same speed as a normal downstroke which is causing those two notes to be twice as fast as the rest? This is what’s causing the rhythmic inconsistency as well as the sync problems. If the picking isn’t rhythmically even, the fretting hand has a hard time syncing up to the pick strokes.

What I do, and what was the big AHA-moment for me, is using a lot of slant and edge picking so that the pick is sliding on the next string. Before CtC I had worked on economy but with very neutral slant and no “sliding” and this gave me a lot of problems and very inconsistent results. I can see that your motion is similar to what I used to do and this setup makes it very hard if you want to “slow down” enough during the sweeps so that the rhythm is consistent. There is nothing that’s holding back the pick’s momentum, so you have to slow down and speed up the pick yourself. It can surely work but it caused my arm to tense up a lot, trying to micro manage that at full speed.

Here is a video where you can see how much more slanted my pick is. The motion itself is also more of a clear upward escape motion. It’s actually hard to see from this angle (although I did my best, holding the camera with the left hand to come close enough, and is also why there are not fretted notes heard, only open strings) but the upper part of the pick is sliding on the next string right after string changes. Therefore the pick is stopped by the string itself and this helps separating the two downstrokes and keep them even rhythmically.

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#48

Brilliant! I’ll give that a try right away! Thanks!

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#49

Okay, here’s a try with more slant. Might be like a placebo but I might detect easier sync.

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#50

Ok great! So in the slo mo runs I think I can see slight improvement on some of the reps but the sweeps still seem a bit rushed compared to the alternate picked notes. But I have to be honest about the first two reps at full speed - you can clearly hear only six picked notes per run. It should be eight, right? So some pick strokes are gone.

It’s hard to see what’s really happening since the sound seem to drift when played in 25% speed. But what I think is happening is that the sweeps are actually swipes. In other words, the pick is plowing through both strings at the string changes instead of articulating two separate picked notes.

I might already have suggested this in another thread, but what’s crucial to get economy picking to work, is to really pound on the problematic part, which is the timing of the sweeps. I think you can use much more of an downwards slanted picking motion to get the pick to slide on the strings.

Here is a video from a players POV where I only practice and isolate the timing of the sweeps. This repeatable lick also forces upward escape picking trajectory. You both need the pick strokes to escape on upstrokes but also benefit from the down strokes being angled in towards the guitar body. I more or less just push the pick quite forcefully inwards the body at full speed and let the strings tension break the speed and through that get the articulation.

It’s still hard to see because of bad focus, but I hope the huge amount of sliding on the strings is a bit more clear and apparent.

#51

Yeah, I should’ve edited out those non Slo mo takes. Just red light syndrome I had to work through. A lot to digest here. I’m working hard and totally appreciate your feedback. I’m gonna try to further modify my slant and examine my rushed sweeps phenomenon