I recorded a video this morning of myself playing circular 6’s at my maximum speed, and I noticed that my hand was moving slightly faster than my forearm was rotating to an upward or downward pickslanting position and it was causing me to miss strings. I’m interested in hearing what you guys think.
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You are a much faster and more accurate player than I am so feel free to ignore my thoughts if they don’t help you. It looks like the sync is just a tad off from what I am seeing, I would try using Troy’s chunking idea to focus on and accent the first note of each string first. Then after getting comfortable with that I would try slowing it down just a little and chunking the note that you want to change your slant on. Also, I can’t follow your exact slants that well, but you may want to try using a slightly more pronounced DWPS. I can’t tell if your upstrokes are actually freeing you from the strings or not. Thanks for the practice motivation! Hopefully one of the more advanced players here will help you out too.
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Thanks for the feedback! I hadn’t noticed the lack of synchronization until you pointed it out; I was too busy looking at my slants. Definitely going to work on making my hands more synchronized
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Definitely going to work on making my hands more synchronized
Hi Danedbrown98, to get the more pronounced pick strokes that Sguitar is suggesting, may I also suggest that you work on the pattern on a different string set first? Getting the feeling of a rest stroke helped me a lot, and without a string to bump into it’s harder for me to get the DWPS mechanic going properly. Are you able to play the pattern with all DWPS and all UWPS? I’ve never had much luck with trying to directly synchronize the motions. They either feel like one motion or they don’t, at least to me.
If it were me I’d make sure that I really had the two mechanics working and then marry them, with the focus being on the subtle adjustment between the two. A benefit of the techniques is to not miss when switching strings. If I feel tentative about something I’ll slow it down and make sure I really have it.
If I may ask, by what percentage was this video slowed down? It does look like you prep downward, but then perhaps start the line with the pick in the half way position and then slant again. At the point where you rotate (first note) I think I’d want to already be in the downward position.
To be taken with a grain of salt as always… Peace, Daniel
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One of the things that I think is interesting (I regret not putting this in my original post) is that I can play this lick
both ascending and descending just fine at the speed I was attempting in my original video. I only have difficulty with the circular 6’s lick. That’s what led me to believe that the timing of the transition between uwps and dwps was what was off in the first place; because I could pick that fast and move from one string to another as long as I was doing only dwps or only uwps, it’s mainly switching back and forth that’s an issue. As far as playing the circular 6’s lick with only dwps or only uwps is concerned, I couldn’t play either way nearly as fast as I could in the video, but I could play both about as fast as each other.
About the synchronization, I agree with you when you say
But when I looked into it, I noticed that my left hand is slacking in terms of timing. I find licks like 10-9-8-7-10-9-8-7… on any string to be challenging at high speeds.
The video was slowed down to 40% of its original speed.
I don’t know why I start the lick in a dwps orientation and then move into an “in between” orientation, it’s a subconscious thing I guess because I hadn’t noticed it until you said so.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll look into rest strokes and trying this lick on different strings
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Interesting, and I’m glad you found the feedback of use.
I don’t know why I start the lick in an dwps orientation and then move into an “in between” orientation, it’s a subconscious thing I guess because I hadn’t noticed it until you said so.
When I alternate pick I’ve no conscious notion of a constant right hand motion or pendulum the way I do when experimenting with DWPS/TWPS. Thus it’s quite possible that I do the same out of a need for readiness to pick in either direction. Cheers.
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I’m having trouble hearing that “triplet” and the “straight” feel of 6s. On thing you might want to do is slow this down even further…sounds like you’re 60’s… maybe go down to 56 bpm? Or even 48…
One thing that’s helped me is I try to count with the metronome first… 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 … etc I’ll use the metronome to get up to speed (pun intended). I’ll also shift my hearing between a straight feel and a triplet feel. It’s actually helping me on circular 4s as a sixes pattern as we speak. Once you can get it really slow, up it by 8bpm… try it and see what you come up with
If that all makes sense to you…
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Actually, I was intentionally playing 5 notes per beat. Due to the fact that the lick is a 10 note long sequence, I figured it was easier to keep in time with the beat and finish the lick every other metronome click at 5 notes per beat than it was to play 4 or 6 notes per beat at a different tempo (which is hard to feel at this speed).
I will definitely go slower when I practice, but for this video I wanted to push it to my absolute maximum, if not past my maximum, to see what was I was messing up on. I’m confident that I could play the lick perfectly at a slower tempo, but watching myself play perfectly would get me nowhere.
I really like your idea on shifting your hearing from a straight feel to a triplet feel.
It should also be noted that the video was slowed down to 40% of its original speed. The video was originally recorded at 192 bpm. Thanks for your input!
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One thing my teacher compliments me on is my ability TO slow things down if I run into problems. If I know it’s a specific area, metronome is always there by my side. I’ll take it to 40… add 8 when i know I can play it perfectly… if I know I can play it perfectly at say 96 but I can’t get it at 104… then I’ll set a timer for 2 minutes on my phone and practice that lick 2 minutes straight at 96… then I slow right back down to 40… or 64…or slow enough where my brain and muscles can comprehend what’s going on. The slower speed imo is accuracy. You have to treat just practicing licks and phrases kind of like working out… anyhow, that’s just from my POV
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