Confusion about transitioning from tremolo to picking a phrase at warp three

Hey everyone :slight_smile:

So I’ve made my way through the pickslanting primer and I love how in-depth it is and I was quite liberating to even just try the simple motion tests and get a result that, while not as fast as Troy’s, was still in a motion range that I never thought I could even do. That was a pretty cool and encouraging experience.
And the results from those motion tests held up when I tried this again in the primary motion section, the wrist 2 o’clock thing seems to be what my hand likes and I can, albeit not quite at the speed of the pen scratching or pick scratching test on the table, do a tremolo quickly and comfortably without getting crampy or strained after a few bars. I can see how the hand position looks like the Al di Meola or McLaughlin position etc, so that seems all coherent to me.
But I’ve been playing “badly” for so long that when I try to actually play a line of any sort, even just the ascending sixes with fingers 1-2-3, my right hand immediately wants to shift position and start string hopping. It feels like it’s not so much that the speed “produces” the effect of a different technique, it’s that my hand is so used to sitting in “spring hopping” position etc that the moment I’m trying to do something with my left hand, the bad habit auto pilot takes over and I can either play the phrase properly slowly or a complete muddle at speed.

Anyone got any idea what’s going on here?
It seems like the DSX position is further away from what my hand is used to doing, so maybe trying a USX focussed primary motion might work better, but with my first few experiments, I get the same thing, I can play comfortably in tremolo, but not translate it to a phrase.

Thank you all
Eike

Two things that come to mind for me:

  1. It can take a while to get your tremolo “locked in.”

  2. Have you tried single-string phrases yet? Worth doing that before trying to make the jump to string changes.

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Thanks, that’s a great idea!

I tried that right away and I am actually struggling with that kind of coordination a lot, so I realised I could just start with doubling up the notes to have some left hand motion while keeping the right hand at speed and that works quite well.

What do you mean by “locked in”?

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Oh, just “fully learned,” sorry for the confusion!

You are gonna love the Synchronicity seminar. It sounds like you can use it at this stage of your development.

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