Consistency still sucks after a little over a year of work

Technique Critique
#11

I’m no scientician but to me, you appear to start off with a somewhat ‘wrist’ based motion in the beginning stages of your tremolo and then near the end your entire arm kinda ‘locks’ up when you try to spool up the speed and I would HAZARD a guess that suggests a more DSX style elbow motion (since no ‘helper’ motions are visible in this example once you’re doing a straight fast tremolo)

So as for why you’re having so much difficulty doing EJ syle USX escape licks at speed, I’d put a DECENT chunk of money down on the fact that when push comes to shove, your ‘default fast’ motion is a downwardly escaping elbow motion (more or less) instead of the upward escaping one you’d need to play those lines smoothly.

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#12

:rofl:

Same impression!

I’d invest some time in exploiting the strengths of your (probably) elbow motion! I.e. you can start by trying a variety of licks that only change strings after downstrokes.

This slightly boring example is what I usually suggest to get started. Of course, feel free to change the fretting into something more musical, provided the string changes are the same :slight_smile:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------etc.-----------------------------------------------------
-------------------5-6-7-5-6-7-----------------------------------------------------------------
-------5-6-7-5-6-7------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-5-6-7----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 D U D U D U D U etc...
#13

Thanks for the tips @tommo and @JB_Winnipeg! I’ll definitely see if I can make some progress with some elbow motion DSX stuff. Would it be worth it to keep working on my USX stuff though? I would hate to throw out all the time I’ve spent on that stuff and not to mention I love the sound of that kind of stuff so I’d hate to not be able to play it at all.

#14

I would keep working on USX as well. Before CtC, I didn’t know what my single note technique was (I don’t think anyone had mentioned the idea of “escapes” before), and my default was DSX elbow. Even now, I would guess that DSX elbow probably feels the easiest and most natural. However, all of the stuff that I like to play is not really possible with DSX, and it feels much more limiting to me compared to the DBX that I’ve developed by pushing USX with “helper” motions.

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#15

I think you should look through the USX specific technique/learning videos Troy has made and try to adopt a technique SIGNIFICANTLY different than what you’re already doing. You’ve clearly put in a tonne of time and your body is still trying to shoehorn you into a DSX ‘process’ likely because you’re using a form that’s so similar all those motor pathways just default to what’s already baked in.

Something extra wild like a 3 finger grip EVH style or weird claw hand Marty Friedman (I think he’s a mostly USX player) style of motion and see if you can’t generate a more consistently USX feel.

Or do what @Pepepicks66 said! Who knows!? Learning is weird and often unique to the individual. Having said that though… like by the sounds of things, the actual ‘motion’ learnings should take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, with it becoming noticeably more consistent after a week or two of ‘goofery’ and not… years ya dig?

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#16

One thing I’ve been thinking about trying was the gypsy style position that a lot of USX guys use. Something like that is very different than how I’m used to playing so maybe that’ll help me find a more reliable USX motion. I’m also hoping that if I incorporate more chunking practice into my routine that it’ll fix a lot of the issues I’ve been having. After going over some other types of licks today I realized it’s not necessarily even picking stuff that gives me trouble, there’s several technically challenging licks that use techniques that are unrelated to fast picking that I can’t do consistently and I think it’s because I haven’t worked on them enough in small chunks. Plus I haven’t been playing nearly as long as most guys I compare myself to so I probably just need to relax and go at my own pace and quit comparing myself to other players lol.

#17

These are all great suggestions that everyone has made on this thread and I would try them all!

I’m a big fan of the middle finger grip wrist motion thing since it’s one of the more obviously “different”-feeling things. So it’s a good way of breaking out of a rut and trying something new.

I wouldn’t worry about “throwing out” work you perceive you have done. It’s illogical. If it’s not working, why keep doing it? If you could do something different which would work amazingly well right now at this moment, you’d do it immediately.

On top of that, if it makes you feel any better, the experience of having done whatever you’ve done over the past year or so has given you perspective, and that makes you smarter. So you don’t really ever “throw out” anything. If I had a nickel for every 2-5 year period where I didn’t change my technique much… I’d have a small pile of nickels!

The EJ licks don’t sound terrible, and there are a few instances in there where it sounds really good. So that’s something which you may come back to and who knows you might find some way of doing it better. But not if you don’t fill the tank with other experiences first.

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#19

My experience with fingerings is that it just takes time for my body to learn them. After about a week or so it really gets sunk in, but I also feel that to many licks or patterns can overload my brain. This is why improvising is a must for myself to learn new phrases. If you are pressed for time even a simple drone note to solo over is better than nothing. This is sort of a plus and a curse of the string being open as opposed to a piano where the string is hidden, but the keys are so simply laid out. You get incredible dynamic ability and control in playing the frequency with guitar. Piano just doesn’t have this sort of dynamic control, but this got better with that new synthesizer, osmose by expressive e, but even it has its limitations.

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#20

Thanks for the great replies everyone. I actually experimented a bit earlier today with a pinky anchor in my picking hand like @tommo and it seems like that might help a bit. Probably need to take a break from the fast picking stuff for a few days though, I’ve worked a lot on this stuff over the past several days and I’m starting to feel it in my wrist so I imagine it needs some rest from that stuff lol.

#21

It looks like you have too much tension in your hands.
Right hand middle finger extends and contracts, it seems to be mimicking your left hand.
Take a look (study) Eric Johnson’s right hand fingers when he’s picking
VERY RELAXED.
Your left hand fingers could be a lot more economical also.
Cheers

#22

I’ve thought about that being the cause as well. The problem is I don’t know how to fix it lol. Any time I try to make an effort to relax when going fast I usually play extremely sloppily (is that a word?) since it feels like I’m concentrating too much on relaxing instead of on the lick I’m trying to play. Maybe another side effect of not doing enough chunking since I have to focus on the entire lick rather than smaller sections?

#23

It might help to grab a screenshot of the tab/GP file to let us know what lick you’re working on. Some short segment like the EJ Atom. Then, you can post another video. It will be easier to zero in on the challenges (fingerings, pickstrokes, hand setup, rhythm, timing, grip, etc.).

#24

Here’s a specific lick that I’ve been working on since around January of this year:

Here’s a video of me playing through it a couple times:

And here’s a small snapshot of what it usually looks like when I practice something like this:

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#25

Personally I think you sound really good. I get what you’re saying about the consistency aspect - I’m dealing with that in a completely different area of guitar technique right now and it’s incredibly annoying. It “sounds good”, but “sounding good” is not really the only piece of the puzzle. You really want that relaxed professional control that enables you to use a lick in any given situation no matter the level of pressure.

I’m not the best with the technical CtC jargon since it always seem to change so much and I’m way too behind at this point, but from a raw practicality standpoint I would recommend maybe dumbing the move down to this:

Screen Shot 2021-09-04 at 1.35.40 PM

Does that feel okay in a loop? Because if that isn’t working then the rest never will either.

#26

Yeah when I work on specific chunks of something like that I usually do even bigger sections, something probably like this:
image

This usually feels fine but at speed I probably still mess it up like 15-20% of the time. Do you think it’d help more to work in even smaller chunks like the one you posted? I remember hearing somewhere that the ideal size of a phrase for chunking is 3-8 notes. Admittedly the section I posted is a good bit longer than that so I probably could stand to reduce that into smaller pieces.

#27

Yes absolutely. It definitely goes back to what I said all the way up top about staying away from huge sequences.

If you’re trying to get into those swept passages, the chunk I posted above is an essential. I do not do much sweeping ever so I’ll bow out w/r/t the technical aspects. There are at least a few really good EJ-style players here so they might be able to chime in.

If it were me, I’d take that sequence with its super simple fingerings and pickstroke pattern and drill it five minutes here and there over the course of a day. Once you get that smooth and have a baseline for what effortless feels like, you might be surprised to go back to the larger sequence and *immediately *discover a bad fingering or something similar that might be tripping you up.

#28

Thanks for the advice, I’ll definitely try that. Another thing I probably need to do is incorporate more diversity into my practice routine, since I’ve been very hyper focused on this style of picking for the months I’ve been working on it. I think I recall Troy or somebody else talking about “white whaling” where if you hyper focus on something you can actually learn slower than if you work on a larger variety of things.

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#29

hey, when I watched it I had a feeling your technique feels very awkward, you also have a very static wrist motions, maybe because your wrist and even palm of your hand is stuck to the guitar so much; yor technique looks “painful”, really, and I think you should try other approaches, for example upper pickslanting - the hand position Yngwie has, his technique allows for a lot of dynamics and freedom of movement, your technique really lacks that dynamics required for fast and precise picking; also try to figure out MAB’s hand position (feels really awkward at first), his technique is the most neutral and most dynamic in my opinion (I’ve learnt it to a degree), and you dont feel that much difference between upward and downward pick slanting with it; so yes, your technique is totally incorrect in my opinion; I dont know whether you have been given similar opinions because I haven’t read them yet; I’ll tell you one thing - once you find the proper technique, you should be able to master this lick, or its basic elements withing minutes actually, this is how I discovered downward pickslanting that opened everything to me, I had been an upward pick slanter all life, and one day I just switch my hand to the downward position, and it took me 30 mins to shred pentatonic stuff (of course not at Zakk Wylde’s speed) without that awkward feeling I had always had with upwardpickslanting; experimentation in many directions is the key, if something doesnt work immediately, work on it, but also search for other techniques that may be better, my experimentation even involved playing left handed, or actually right handed because I am lefthanded :slight_smile: but this allowed me to see things differently, for example I’ve noticed I would have been much better picker with my right hand because it is much stronger

#30

Ive just watched your tremolo, you have a totally locked and restricted picking hand, plus you start it with your fingers almost, then move to kind of wrist, and then you whole arm pushes so much on that guitar; this is all totally incorrect - let this hand totally loose, try forearm rotation to experimet and feel how it feels, dont anchor your wrist on the guitar, only your pinky maybe - it must be loose and dynamic, unrestrained

#31

I think the only time we’d say “totally incorrect” is if the player reports pain or discomfort. Elbow motion can look a bit stiff from the outside, because of the locked wrist, but many players (think Vinnie Moore, @Bill_hall, Jason Richardson) get great results and seem to be comfortable with it.

The elbow motion that @cthom02 finds towards the end of the tremolo example could definitely be workable, provided again that there is no pain associated with it.