A cautionary tale (avoiding stringhopping)

Playing Technique
#21

lol Not that anybody is really reading this, but I thought I’d keep adding to it just in case someone is running into the same or similar issues! Maybe they stumble across it and can be like “Man, I thought I sucked - but at least the playing isn’t THAT bad!” Here’s some more thoughts on hopping/etc, correct me if I am wrong (I often am!) but I feel like I pretty much have hopping and swiping nailed! :grinning:

1) So that up/down motion of the wrist (flexion/extension) is where I need to be careful; when that movement is present in my picking it’s almost always coupled with a slower tempo, up to about 16ths @120bpm-ish and then results in an inability to progress tempo-wise.

2) Practice discipline and sheer repetition is not always helpful here in my experience. One might be tempted to take it right to where it’s successful, let’s say 120bpm, and then do a ping-pong type practice where you go back and forth from 120 to 121 in an effort to progressively “get used” to that tempo, but guess what? That doesn’t work. It’s a completely different muscle chain, and approaching this like a bodybuilder or something won’t “train” it string hopping out. I can really only speak for myself, but I would say that there’s a lot of evidence all over the CTC page as well as the forums. Sure practice it a lot if it’s correct, but don’t waste time on it if it isn’t - I am learning this!

  1. So if the ideal environment for stringhopping is low tempo and bad form, then we need to take the low tempo and/or the bad form out of the equation. Easier said than done! Painfully obvious to someone who doesn’t have this issue, but to those who do - maybe stringhopping was the way our bodies dealt with that string change issue; it succeeded that one time and we equated that success to be “the way” and then proceeded get to work playing music the only way we knew how… And a big part of the issue is that it works great, and will sound just fine up to about that tempo - 120bpm (give or take). And you know, I personally knew DECADES ago that something was up - for some reason 112-116 felt pretty comfortable to play to… ugh

  2. “But I can play some fast stuff? How can I be a stringhopper!?” Well! There’s a lot of ways around this… First of all, even number of notes per string really enables a single escape to do some quick stuff without too many hangups in regards to string changes. And of course, the more time spent on a single string, ie less stringchanges (avoidance). There’s other strategies as well; sweeping, legato, hybrid picking, tapping etc. And you know, all of it can work well together to create a pretty functional technique that overall, gets the job done. I did. And another thing to keep in mind is that swiping is a reality for a lot of players. It may even be an involuntary reaction to trying to do stringchanges at a tempo that our bodies just don’t know how to activate the muscle chain to make happen. It’s small, hard to see and a lot of this is intuition and assumption so at the end of the day, we want something passable, and I think that after working really hard on a thing to get it “up to tempo” we may subconsciously choose to ignore that there’s a swipe, or a hop and just accept it as part of our particular “playing recipe” and then just go on and attempt to make it as musical as possible.

Challenging. This picking thing is ambiguous in the details as it is simple in it’s execution. Sure, just down-up-down-up, right? Nothing could be easier! hahaha Yeah, right! Also, despite all of the really awesome info available - it’s STILL a very personal journey requiring a lot of work.

So some takeaways from my grind, and ensuing failures this week are these. This is just me, so mileage varies I guess…

  • Don’t be afraid to say “Hey - does this simply just NOT work”? Worst case scenario is you just have to start over. Me personally, I have nothing better to do.

  • Starting with speed doesn’t necessarily mean somebody else’s fastest speed. Just practice at a speed that is uncomfortably quick and prone to error. Don’t worry about the slower tempo, that won’t yield any progress/feedback.

  • Change the situation and the environment. Play along with tunes, a metronome, guitar pro, and just by your self. try to play different guitars, and maybe even different instruments. Mandolin, bass, ukelele, and drums for me.

  • I am personally not good at ambiguity. I need to solve stuff, so it drives me nuts when I get someone telling me “just don’t do that”. Oh gee, thanks lol But the bad thing here is that in an effort to solve something I may really expend a lot of effort on a thing while I try to understand what I am doing wrong. Barking up the wrong tree so to speak… When what I REALLY need to do, is step away for a moment and think about what’s really going wrong. I am really quick to associate the effort and time put into practicing a thing with a sort of “checkbox” where it’s “done” “done” “done” and the reality is that this situation is fluid, and needs constant review and revision.

  • Embrace the positives, even when it seems like there aren’t any. Myself; I am extremely negative about my own playing. I have endured lots of extremely harsh criticism in my time playing music, and I suppose that it has resulted in me being very demanding and quite critical. I have a tough time seeing any positives at times in regards to a playing challenge, so don’t be like me.

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#22

I’d agree with this. I’m no expert when it comes to 1nps alt picking stuff, but it looks like, in your close up magnet shot, that it would be very hard to get that motion much faster than you are doing it.

I could be way off and don’t want to confuse you further or add to your frustration.

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#23

Naw, I am not frustrated at all at this point; more in the “acceptance” stage! hahaha As always, any input is always welcome! Thanks, man!

Of course, it could also just be a matter of physical ability; it may be possible that some people can’t pick well! Similar to how everyone can run to some extent, but not everyone is olympic level sprinter material lol

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#24

I had a couple of weeks to play, review my playing, let Tommo and Troy review my playing, think about said playing and the comments/direction from the team and I had a few thoughts that I wanted to add here. I think it’s important, and hopefully someone can benefit from these posts, therefore I am sharing my experience and viewpoint. Still lots of work to be done to get to where I want to be as a guitarist in regards to my picking/playing strategies go, but it definitely feels like a few major challenges have been met and are in the process of being mitigated. So although the tone of the thread might feel negative, there’s definitely positives - I understand this picking thing a lot better than I used to and I can really recognize my errors much more efficiently! Thanks Tommo and Troy!

  1. Practice, and the topic of “how to practice”. :grinning: I am a slavedriver. I can practice circles around anyone (In my own mind) , and I take pride in my work ethic (Too much). Give me a thing to work on, and I will smash it (Or so I think). “Putting in the time” as it were. But here’s the thing I realized; I thought I was putting in the time, doing the research, exhausting every avenue but… video doesn’t lie. If one is having the same recurring problems, it must mean that there is a commonality between methods that is allowing said problem to occur. Some habit that needs to be removed or altered, and if one can’t see what it is then it’s time to make some changes, get some help, something lol…

Firstly, and as mentioned in above posts - for me, I learned from my footage that I was doing this weird sort of “dive down” after my escape stroke on my single escape (DSX) method. Despite this, my DSX works pretty good - it’s very fast and reliable and I could “live” with the resulting swiping that this ‘diving down/trapping’ causes. Sort of. lol It bothered me to no end, actually - mostly because I had no idea that I was doing it! It took 120fps video and a Magnet and Troy Grady to flush out that “divedown” issue.lol But knowing what I was doing now meant I needed to know why I was doing it. I knew it was some kind of squeezing type pressure that I apply with my picking hand. Not doing it was a very, very tough habit to break - it’s almost subconscious and I do it with pretty much every technique/setup I use on guitar. I took a break from my single escape playing for about 2 months, and focused on my “Herring Cyclone” mixed escape/double escape thing. After a few very positive steps forward with my Herring Cyclone, I decided to solve the "inner pressure issue, and by solve I mean figure out why…
I play violin also, so I was curious if my bowing suffers like that also. All good on violin lol that one is safe! But I played my mandolin and the pressure with the picking hand is there as well, plus I beat the crap out of the strings and have humongous, wild, untameable pick-strokes. Thought I’d try bass, and well I don’t pick on a bass when I play it, but since this day was about solving some stuff I thought what the heck! Sure enough, I could feel it - the 'ole “inner squeeze”. BUT here’s the thing, it happened almost always as I was speeding up and muting. 1/4 and 8th notes, I tend to squish the strings “in” to the body on bass. Hmmm. I thought I should record a line and see what’s going on with the pitch. If I am doing that in accordance with an articulation, then every time I do that sort of thing then the notes should be sharp. So on a 3 minute jam of all kinds of random things, sure enough - there I am doing the squeeze as a sort of muting articulation. Jump back on guitar and well, since all I practice are 16th notes, often times with no breaks whatsoever in between “reps” (Endless loop) sure enough that’s exactly what I am doing.
My DSX motion setup is pronated, with a trailing edge grip. Muting is now… very different! lol But starting out as a kid, I used to play with a more supinated grip, probably still DSX, but I just didn’t know it at the time and was working against myself. Starting with downstrokes, doing 3nps scales… So decades later, that “muting feeling” is ingrained for whatever reason, and even when doing it is counterproductive, I find myself doing it. But now knowing the problem and why I do it has enabled a new level of confident execution.

So to make a long story short, knowing just what I was doing (In regards to the diving down), but also why had an immense impact on my playing. Troy and Tommo didn’t solve this for me, but they provided the environment and the feedback as well as references to other players doing similar things to assist me in solving this. So big thanks to those guys. And the guys on the forum here as well, there’s a ton of information once we’re ready to receive it.

  1. The “Endless Practice Loop” is not conducive to improvement. I learned this VERY recently, and it came from trying to solve an issue I was having with something that I am, for the most part, successful at (DSX). In trying to learn this mixed escape thing I have done endless repetitions of all kinds of different string change problems, and by endless I am talking like, 3-4 hours a night on the same thing. For months. Years even. It doesn’t work. Especially if you are at a tempo that invites string-hopping, and you are hoping to somehow brute-force yourself into adapting to getting faster by acclimating to a lower tempo and then speeding up. For some things, starting slow and working your way up is great, but not alternate picking - there is this sort of changeover tempo in between 120-140 where things are transitioning from the muscle chain that allows string-hopping and the chain for non-hopping tempo. Also, I could not tell the difference between hopping and not hopping, swiping and not swiping, but now I can. I can hear it even and it’s very powerful to be able to identify. I’d say it’s crucial. Tommo told me this about 5 times probably, but I couldn’t figure out “how” to figure out how to learn to identify it besides playing, filming said playing, review the playing rinse repeat.

I realized that a very large part of the problem for me is the “endless loop”. No breaks doesn’t allow for feedback or an opportunity to change ergo “trial and error” isn’t happening at all. No opportunity to evolve. So really, I put in hours/days/weeks/months/years of practice, but I wasn’t really “putting in the time”. Yes, it’s a gross amount of practice, and yes it’s time spent but I realize now that this approach left no opportunity for me to really have a happy accident. Perfect recipe for frustration, though. lol SO… I made a change. On my mixed escape stuff, when I am searching for optimization and accuracy and higher tempos I do about 3-4 notes of a longer passage at a time with an 8th or even a quarter note rest and it has actually really helped out a lot. Better yet, I figured out what the tempo ceiling is of the player that I most closely resemble so that I have a finite goal with the mixed escape stuff! And my DSX stuff can be used for the much faster stuff as needed.

But why did I practice in an “endless loop” sort of manner? Not sure. May have stemmed from things like reading about Steve Vai’s 12 hour practice routine, trying to survive music school (gruelling experience) hearing from endless player about how they toiled away on the instrument… And sure, practice is important but I guess it’s like an all you can eat buffet - at some point you need to digest. Can’t just endlessly eat lest it end in Monty Python fashion (lol Bring me the mint…)

Okay, speaking of practice, I should go do some.

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