Anyone care to explain this to me?!
I donāt know what that is, but Iāve wanted to do it for the longest time (the first 25 seconds) of just moving thumb and forefinger together! so jealous.
1 Like
Wow it works great for the petrucci chromatic lick.
On the other hand, it doesnāt seem to work very well for the Gilberts, maybe because the picking motion is so small that it is not easy to combine with frequent string switches (which instead require a movement bigger than the inter-string distance)
1 Like
@Troy Have you filmed anyone who uses circular picking (thumb and finger movement) like this?
1 Like
I donāt see circles. I see Proximal and Distal Interphalangeal Flexion/Extension and some metacarpal action but it doesnāt seem very effective anyway. His string crossing is the weak point and with the Gilbert lick you can clearly hear the different rhythm heās forced to adopt when switching back and forth between the B and E strings. The 3rd and 4th notes are longer to give him time to change strings. Watch at 1/2 speed and itās pretty all over the place.
3 Likes
Look at Takayoshi Ohmura, he uses this technique, and he is good !
1 Like
Yeah it was just super interesting to see. Iāve never seen anyone play like this before and I almost donāt know how it is even possible. I tried it and couldnāt for the life of me get it.
1 Like
My weird thoughts on the āCircleā-Picking-thing - long post!
First please excuse my English 
Second: I can fully understand, why some (a few) people prefer the finger motion to move the pick. I started with classical guitar at the age of 7 and got my first electric guitar when I was 13. The first thing I did, was to move the pick with my fingers - because I tranfered the movement from the acoustic to the electric guitar while holding a pick. The only obvious difference I noticed was that you pluck the strings of a classical guitar with two or more fingers in a row. And on the electric, when flatpicking, you donāt have this possibility, because you (probably) hold just one pick in your hand, so you compensate this by the back-and-forth-movement.
Anyway, this consideration made totally sense to me, but then I was told by my teacher to use the wrist and/or elbow, because BECAUSE (?) Donāt forget - that was before CtC 
I was and I am big fan of Jimmy Page and I watched some Led Zep-Videos and that was kind of a confirmation of this sacred rule for me, because everything Jimmy Page did had to be right! Even when sounding awful, it must be right and good. Same about Hendrix. My next teacher also said: āUse wrist or elbowā and I stayed an UWPS-Wrist-Deviation-Player and everything was and is fine (except for the damned pentatonics when I started them with a downstrokeā¦ I knew nothing, especially nothing about pickslanting)
Every now and then I tried and still try the finger-motion, likeā¦hmmmā¦clandestinleyā¦ in fear of musician police (kidding ). I didnāt know anything about the Japanese shredders, but I could spot it at some guitarplayers like Rock ānā Rolf, singer and guitarist from German band Running Wild. (see below)
Third: I just like the idea of moving the pick by fingers. Itās so obvious, but I guess there are good arguments against it, although I donāt know what arguments exactly. The guy in the video above is maybe just not yet trained and tasty on guitar enough and the mistakes donāt lie in the finger-technique itself but in his overall abilities. Who knows? To be fair, I personally like his pickingsound! Every note can be heard while there is a legaot-coloring. I assume, finger motions could involve some aesthetic facets that are unknown (to me at least) and remain to be explored!
Fourth: āCircleā maybe describes a blend movement, when fingers AND wrist work together. Maybe that is kind of a circle? I once read on the internet, that for circle picking you could imagine to draw tiny circles āonā the string with your fingers and your pick (the āpencilā) The result seems to be a blend motion of wrist and fingers, too. The question is now: what moves the wrist then? You, to support your fingers and for accents or the fingers while executing ācirclesā? I also donāt like the idea of circles. I canāt get it. Yngwie also uses finger-motion-mechanic for scalar sweeping, but definetley back and forth and not in circles as the clip in the volcano-seminar shows.
Last but not least: Troy said something about Yngwieās finger-technique like āif itās there to be hadā, why not? Maybe Iāll try it one entire week and report here (or let it be in case of total failure).
(Quote: āItās not hard work to do thisā 
)
1 Like
I agree with JudasPreister, the circle terms comes from combining it with the wrist motion, that describes a pretty obvious circle.
I was playing around with that when trying to use finger motion to escape the strings (which was not very successfull for me).
I think finger motion are probably the most uncommon approach to get speed in your picking, but Iād say if you practice enough thereās just no prolem with that.
When it comes to crosspicking every motion can be of help, cause you get one more option to use different muscles to escape when changing direction, so I wouldnāt judge it as good or bad, just decide if itās good or bad for you.
Just for completion, hereās one who gets that to incredible speed (and accuracy):
2 Likes
Yeah, but that dude is a fake. He speeds up video and plays out of sync with midi that dominates the audio.
3 Likes
Thanks for pointing that out, didnāt know that.
Now listening to it focusing on it, that midi thing is pretty obvious, i wonder why I didnāt notice that before.
Iām not that sure about speeding up the video, the body movements seem to be real for me, on the other hand the clock in the background might be used to edit that fair enough.
Anyways itās a shame to do those things, eventhough if itās not edited in speed the finger motion is really fast which was the main reason to post this.
1 Like
Itās conditioning. Heās conditioning you to the fakery bit by bit as the speed is increased. The clock can easily be added in another layer of video.
Probably Iām to naive for that kind of youtube videos.
So thatād mean he still plays at 320 bms or so?
I simply donāt get the point in doing that, probably on faking this at all.
What is his benefit on that?
I mean of what I can see I still assume that he has a pretty good technique and probably he is a good player.
What is driving this guy doing this shit, moving numbers around (in a small percentage) instead of sharing music with the rest of the world?
Same reason anyone cheats: the need of respect or spoils not yet earned.
1 Like