I’m introducing saw tracking with shoulder/elbow motion now so I could try it
@eric_divers one thing I maybe took too literally or incorrectly from Anton and his student’s videos is the idea of “pushing through the string in a straight line”. Technically that doesn’t mean articulate it as much as possible, or keep the pick angle relative to the strings totally flat, but I have been doing that despite it not being something I typically would. Part of that is because I think the pick grip adjustments allowed me to do so, and I hand’t been able to do so consistently before, so that was good to get under my belt but I may have found myself in a position where I have to unlearn how hard I’m articulating a bit and readjust things.
I think the lessons were more referring to string hopping but I misunderstood the meaning, this isn’t a bad thing, picking with that much articulation is worth developing, just kind of a side track to hitting higher speeds I think. Probably won’t take too long, but something to keep in mind.
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@joebegly Went back and tried out the Rainbow ripoff piece you shared again, I’m palm muting the G string a bit more than I meant to but I think I successfully hit 140 BPM 16th notes for a couple of the bars anyway
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Nice! Sounding awesome and looks nice and relaxed
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Here’s Anton improvising.
You can see and hear that he has also great dynamic control. He switches from very soft attack to hard attack without any problems. Also some great feel here.
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Bit of a flub at 3:07, let me get the whiteboard out
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I definitely think it’s worthwhile focusing on varying attack both in terms of angle and pick depth, I haven’t done this as much because of playing largely with high gain/compression.
That’s the proof that he is realy improvising.
Alright - took a week off in Florida, back to practicing.
I have a motion I keep hitting that feels very controlled, and escapes the strings, not sure if I might be hopping a bit. I made an attempt at filming it, I can try again at a different angle or possibly with my left hand more out of the way, it’s just more familiar to play what I’ve been playing with it. If something’s off with the motion, maybe someone can spot it - the first 10 seconds are full speed, the last 20 are ~50%
I think this may well be a good motion, my issue is I’m not sure if it’ll get to the speed I want it to. Maybe if I practice relaxing more with it. It feels a bit more tense than the “finding a motion” very loose cross picking, but not really much more tense than alternate picking, so I’m hoping I have a good motion I can just focus on here.
Hey man! That’s awesome, sorry - I can’t tell you if that’s the right motion or not, but it sounds like it’s around 16ths @ 120bpm or so? I know for myself I can’t seem to get it out of my head that if i can’t do it at 140bpm, then there’s something wrong. haha That DBX thing… elusive! Can you play it even faster? What does it sound like when it’s a slopfest? Anyways it looks like you have put a ton of work into this, I’m sure you’ll get it! Rock on!
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It’s been about a month so far, for three string patterns I can hit 140-145 if you see my last video above, but I’m trying to hone in on this groove I was feeling with this slightly different motion - kind of feels like the pick is pulling me along, and when I get into the groove of it that I can go a lot faster - but it’s back to the issue of conciously getting and keeping the motion without falling into what I was doing previously. Does feel like if I could get it to relax a bit more I could hit that 140-150 or faster range with a lot more accuracy than I was doing, but I wanted to get some feedback on the motion itself after seeing footage of Troy string hopping at 200 bpm which I didn’t realize was a possible trap to fall into lol
At this point, in some contexts I’m able to incorporate one note per string in the run pretty easily faster than that in little bursts, and I can play odd note groupings much faster than 16th notes at 140 but these picked arpeggio sequences are tough, especially getting across more than 3 strings, it might even be down to practicing tremolo picking and rolls on the lower strings to just acclimate to them.
Descending still feels was faster and easier than ascending but I’ve been closing the gap somewhat. Part of why I like this newer motion is it feels more even when ascending, so I’m hoping I’ve stumbled on a solution. It’s hard for me to fall into the motion still, but when I do it feels about as easy as alternate picking. But it’s not consistent enough to capture on film yet, so I’m trying to get what footage I can where it still feels like the same motion more or less.
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@joebegly So I think this is the right motion, that last 10 seconds I believe I’m hitting a clean 16th notes at 175 BPM (with dog bark accompaniment)
Looks great to me!
Was this in the Steve Morse interview? IIRC that was 190 bpm and triplets, so in terms of notes per second that’s in the ballpark of straight 16ths ~145bpm. I know in that clip, the give away was that he couldn’t sustain the speed.
At 175 bpm I don’t think you have anything to worry about 
Maybe play around with some endurance stuff at various speeds just to make sure. Your motion looks way too flat to be string hopping. I think you’re just at the point where you have to live with the various motions you’ve learned until they feel comfortable because you’ve landed on several that work.
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Yeah today is the first time I had it going that quickly, now I’m not concerned as my end goal was 12 notes per second, and I’m at what like 11.7 NPS at least for some patterns, so the rest of this is like you said, figuring out endurance and getting used to the motions, figuring out whether something works better for one pattern or another and it should just settle into a higher top speed over time.
I’m still curious if anyone has maxed out at 200 BPM 16th notes or higher, I know Troy hit 190 with some limitations, and not a pure one note per string run. Even Anton doesn’t seem to hit that speed with the one note per string runs but I might not have found the right footage, would not be surprised if he does somewhere.
We have Tom’s account of Tumeni Notes, 6’s at 140bpm so that’s up there. We also have the opinion based on guitarenthusiast’s time with Anton that he could go above 200 bpm 16ths. I’m sure Troy could too, based on everything else we’ve seen him do. It would just be a matter of him wanting to do it I think.
So I think it’s definitely possible. Still, that’s a short list. I’m sure there are dozens other of unknown players out there who reach those speeds. It’s certainly easier to just say “Oh I’d never want to crosspick that fast so I don’t even need to worry about that”. Ha.
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Nice videos @cmcgee11235 one thing im doing these days while playing anything or practicing, is leaving my iPad Pro on the photo app and just watching myself play and watching my hand positions the entire time. Its been very helpful with learning new motions
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I’m guessing this is rate limited by accurate alternate picking - 6s at 140 is rarely exceeded by any player alternate picking, 160-170 BPM 6s being the upper end of what we’ve reliably seen. I’m thinking swiping can occur just fine with these one note per string runs as well if you maintain proper form when muting - all strings higher than the current muted with left hand, all lower muted with right. So maybe it is feasible to hit that 16 NPS range with crosspicking, which would be pretty crazy.
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I do that pretty often, either with my laptop or phone for sure
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Yeah same here. It is weird that sometimes a motion doesn’t feel wrong to me but I can see that it looks wrong and make adjustments based on what I am seeing. I think in general I have bad sensory perception though haha
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That’s funny I thought the dog was a sort of pitched metronome you were using at first.
So let me ask a couple of things. Ultimately the goal is to be able to utilize strict alternate picking for everything or just to diversify arpeggio playing?
Also are you putting any of this against an actual click at this time to test accuracy or are you laying off until you are sure you have the movement where you want it?