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?
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.).
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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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:
Does that feel okay in a loop? Because if that isn’t working then the rest never will either.
Yeah when I work on specific chunks of something like that I usually do even bigger sections, something probably like this:
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.
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.
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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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 
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
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
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.
Thanks again for the replies everyone. I just wanted to reply with some updates after a couple weeks of work.
After watching Troy’s video on pick types and hearing what he said about the jazz iii being best used with edge picking, I decided to try and incorporate some of that into my playing since I use jazz iii’s almost exclusively. I definitely noticed that being helpful at first, but I had a new problem which was my pick slipping out of my fingers during tremolos and longer passages. So I decided to switch from the angle pad grip that I usually use and tried a different pick grip similar to what Paul Gilbert uses, which I think is an extended trigger grip. This has definitely helped me to eliminate most of the finger movement which I think was problematic for my speed and consistency, and so far I’ve been able to reach higher tremolo speeds with my wrist much more consistently. I’ve only been working on this for a couple days and it’s definitely gonna take some getting used to but I’ll try to post some videos at some point once I get it down better if it continues to improve things. Thanks again everyone for the help and suggestions!
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Not too sure of the differences in these, would be interesting to see though! I also use jazz IIIs and if I’m not in the right headspace / do very long lines, the pick can start to shift.
This picking motion looks exactly how I tried to play these kind of licks until this February. And I can clearly see you are using your elbow, so I can only repeat what @tommo suggested: try playing DSX licks instead.
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