I know this is covered by a lot of the videos, but are there any tips on getting a smooth transition between strings? When I play or practice single string patterns there is always a gap as I move to the next string. When I listen to John Schofield (or every jazz guitarist for that matter) they fluidly pass over the strings creating a flurry of notes.
The trick is obviously moving over the gap in the same time as it takes to play two notes on the one string. Are there any tips or exercises for doing this?
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Wide motions, I guess. So there would be no difference between playing on one string or different. It’s not about moving over the gap faster, it’s about moving over the gap all the time even when you play on one string. The difference is only where you move your pick after that.
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I hadn’t thought of wider motions. That way it evens out the distance to the next note you hit, whether it’s on the same string or a different one.
I’ll give it a go.
I was going to say that you should film a video so we can take a look because there are just too many variables otherwise, but I see you already have this one here:
Tommo’s response there is the answer. Your tremolo motion is great! As soon as you try to play the other stuff, you switch to stringhopping. That’s the problem here.
Lots of players can’t do any form of efficient motion, and are stuck only with stringhopping. You can already do it, and that’s great news. So now you have an important reference for what “correct” feels like. Get your efficient motion happening on two-handed lines that aren’t just tremolo, and do it on a single string at first if you have to. Then try a two string phrase. Don’t switch to the stringhopping motion.
You have to learn to distinguish these two by feel or you will keep using the inefficient motion without meaning to.
The above video isnt actually me, but your advice is still relevant to my situation 
Ha! Duh, sorry about that! I clicked “activity” thinking that was your thread, but it was simply a thread you replied to. I don’t know how to work our own forum!
Do we have any footage of your technique and can we check out what’s going on? Video is always the best place to start, because sometimes the fix is obvious, as it is with the stringhopping issue in the other thread.
To the theme of wide motion.
I’ve tried to return to 351 style picks recently. What I found is that after all that sharpy picks it requires more motion to keep the sound close to that I am used to. So it may be usefull to use different picks from time to time. I do it for fun actually (since I have a bunch of different picks), but it may have some positive effect on developing the technique I guess.
Hi Troy, thanks for the reply and sorry for the delayed response.
This one issue right here is the core problem for me and it’s the one thing i don’t understand. Everyone says to take that tromolo motion and apply it across strings, but the whole point of the tremolo motion (at least for me) is that it’s tiny little strokes where the pick barely ever even leaves the string. So, to me it doesn’t really seem possible to take that tremolo motion and apply it across strings. I would have to lengthen the stroke quite substantially, and when i do that, even on one string, I’m back to 100 BPM 16th notes. I can’t seem to tremolo pick with a wider stroke.
So that really the issue for me, it’s that i don’t see how the tiny tremolo stroke can be applied to string changes when the pick doesn’t travel far enough to change strings, even if it is slanted.
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You’re asking several questions in one here. But the size of the picking motion doesn’t matter. There is always some kind of motion that is necessary to move from one string to another. Sometimes it’s the same motion as the picking motion itself. There’s no difference between “tremolo” and any other kind of picking in this respect — a motion is a motion.
For example Brendon Small uses elbow for tremolo. But he also uses elbow to move to the new string during the tremolo. Here’s what that looks like:
Brendon’s picking motion is elbow, and it’s also pretty small. When Brendon moves to the new string, he does it using elbow, and then he is just moving back and forth around a different bend in the elbow. This is how many wrist players do it too, they just do it with the wrist instead of the elbow.
The size and center point / orientation of the picking motion is not the same as the motion that moves you to the next string. At the moment of the string change you make a bigger motion that moves you there, possibly even with the very same joint. Once you’re on that string, the joint motion now moves back and forth around the new center point — of the same joint, in Brendon’s case.
There are many, many ways to do this and there is no blanket rule. It doesn’t always have to be the same joint, but across small distances, like two strings, when you look at elbow players, it very often is the same joint. When you look at more complicated motions like the ones we teach in the new “forearm-wrist” section, that whole motion moves across all six strings and changes slightly as it does it. We talk about this in the chapter called “The Tracking Mystery”, which is a pretty cool and fun little investigation if you want to check that out:
Tremolo does not automatically mean tiny strokes.
In real-life songs tremolo can be tiny strokes, yes, but that’s not useful for this purpose. This purpose is to learn to use a new motion like wrist or elbow or forearm motion, and to figure it out, we just pick fast.
In this context, “tremolo” picking is supposed to have wide strokes, because wide strokes let you make string changes. Like @Troy said, there isn’t any difference between tremolo and any other kind of picking in this instance. You’re just picking fast, that’s all.
It is alternate picking. But since you’re banging on a single note and you’re not that concerned about note subdivisions or tempo, the technique has a catch-all name “tremolo”.
I think its important to realize that tremolo or fast picking in general does not always equal small picking movements as others above have stated. In fact, something that helped me improve my speed and fluidity was actually to think about making larger movements. Before this, I always tried to make the smallest movement possible, just brushing the string, to be efficient but it never felt super comfortable and felt more like a uncontrollable twitching kind of movement that caused a lot of tension. Now of course, this doesn’t mean large movements that look almost like strumming, that is not the point. But it shouldn’t be so small that it hinders fluidity. If someone gave you pencil and paper and asked you to draw as many back and forth lines on the paper as you could in several seconds, most likely the movement you make wouldn’t be millimeters. Probably the most comfortable and quickest movement would be to make lines that were a bit longer.
I feel like the advice “just make smaller pick movements” is well intentioned and seems plausible but actually makes it more difficult to pick fast due to hand and arm tension trying to make the smallest possible movement. Instead try making larger movements and it might be something that helps. Over time as your picking develops and you feel comfortable, perhaps you can try making smaller more efficient movements as a by product of speed but I think its not helpful to try to start with the smallest movement you can initially
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Same story. Realizing that ‘picking fast’ and ‘picking fast while switching strings’ are two different things was a help. Then I tried simplify things by using one more-or-less-wide motion instead of two different. And that was a breakthrough.
Have to disagree. My fastest and the easiest way to pick without fatigue is still that very small movements based motion, which doesn’t even requires much force. There’s no much tension because tension actually makes you to play slower.
Thanks for the response again. So it sounds like the real hurdle to overcome is learning how to change strings without losing speed, which requires you do do something different than what you do when you’re just tremolo picking.
I guess I just saw a lot of people saying to “find your motion “ on one note and one string and once you do, you can apply it all around , so it’s disappointing that learning to tremolo properly and applying a pick slant doesn’t actually seem to make you able to play, at all.
I remember when I first watched cracking the code, when you finally figured out the pop tart lick, it was like an instant discovery. You slanted the pick and boom, you were instantly able to play the pop tart lick. So I got excited that if I found the right motion that meant I’d be able to quickly learn how to play fast, even if sloppy , and not Even THAT FAST. Like, 140 bpm 16th notes would be fine for me. but It seems to me now that even after you slant your pick and get your tremolo up to 180, that does zilch to get you actually playing anything. Being able to change strings is much more complicated than just “slant your escape /pick “. There’s some complex motor pattern involved where you are slightly changing the motion to change the string, doing something a little different. And that part seems nearly impossibly to learn for me regardless of pick slant. Like, what do I practice to learn how to do that? Can “tracking” at high speeds be taught even? I always though using a slant and figuring out a motion meant I solved the problem. But there’s a different motion involves to change strings. How does one learn that? Can it even be taught to a 30+? What percent of 30+ People are just not physically capable of it ? Seems to me nobody can actually be “taught” how to do that. Your arm either figures it out or it doesn’t.
Man, I do understand your frustration!
When I first came to the site I tried to do a tremolo (for the ‘picking speed’ poll) and it was above 220bpm. So I was like - wow! I mean, I never considered myself neither as a shredder nor even as an intermediate player. It was CtC actually which brought me to the path of fast playig… and the fact that my left hand is injured, so I can’t use legato much. Basically I’m an adept of ‘pick everything you can’ not because I’m hardcore ) but because there’s no other choice )
Okay. So I had that tremolo, and then I tried to play different licks… maaan, it was terrible. 120bpm was my limit regardless of whatever I did.
Now, I’m still very very far from Troy’s or Yngwie’s level ) But there were a lot of improvements. From tone to picking speed. So, if you’re asking ‘Is it possible for people 30+’, well… It worked for me… at some level. Though, one example is not very representative, I guess.
It may be a bit simplified for dramatic purposes (that’s why I rewathced CtC series like 10 times - not as an instructional video, but as a kind of adventure movie). Moreover, it was Troy’s own experience, while for other people it might be the different. I mean, there are people who can draw naturally looking human being just because they can (I can’t understand this, for me drawing is like magic); and there are people who study art in a school, learning anatomy, practicing to draw bodyparts, muscles etc and then they can do this too. But with more mental and practical work.
As for slanting… All this picking mechanics stuff is a new science still (can I call this ‘science’?). AFAIK noone did what Troy and team do, so it’s still evolving and changing. At the current moment conception of ‘pickslanting’ considered not as important as conception of ‘escaping motion’. So to speak, pickslanting is a consequence of escaping (tilted) motion. That’s why now CtC people use USX/DSX instead of DWPS/UWPS most of the time, though these terms have different meaning and they may be used simultaniously.
So, for people who have natural tendency to use USX motion changing the pickslanting angle solves many problems. For those, who is used to DSX or NSX (my term meaning ‘No Escape’ )) it’s not as simple, and there is a lot of work to do.
As for tremolo… I’ve tried to use recently it to check my new motion (USX-like-whatever) and I couldn’t get faster than 150-160 bpm. But when I tried to play 2nps pattern (two minor 3rds on adjacent strings) I got close to 210bpm (for a short time, yes, but still 210). I don’t understand how is it possible but that’s how it is. So, looks like while tremolo speed is more or less correlated with overall picking speed, it’s not as simple.
btw I can’t play EJ 6s fast too ) but in my case limiting factor is my left hand.
This is exactly the opposite of what I’m suggesting! I’m pointing out that everything you play on a guitar, ever, at any speed, with any motion, requires a slightly different motion when you change strings. These differences in motion are so tiny, boredering on theoretical, that everyone learns to do it without really thinking too much about it most of the time until the jumps become really obviously large. So you can too.
I’m looking at your Technique Crtique thread and I can see that you got the correct advice. I’ll put the rest of this reply there so we don’t get too off-track in this thread.