Descending sixes pattern

[BillHoudini]

Continuing the discussion about opinions, facts and “facts”, I think that it’s the nature of the instrument that creates all that controversy.

Troy explains what worked for him when there was zero info online or on tape. He obviously tried his methods with other people and he has seen some results.

Pro players like Graham, Stump, Teemu, and others have reached their level of skill with different methods, so when they get asked about it they give different answers. That doesn’t mean that Troy is wrong and these guys right, or the other way around.

There are many many ways of practicing, holding a pick, hand anchoring, etc. Troy has shown on his material here that many things can work in the right context. There are players like Marty Friedman playing so advanced stuff with so awkward motions, angles, etc, that means that it’s possible.

There is not a universal truth about practicing, about holding a pick, or about anchoring your hand. That’s why guitar is so unique, everyone has an almost different way of doing things. The hard part is to find your way of doing it. For example I haven’t found it yet, many angles or motions feel awkward to me, but I’ll figure it out eventually.

[tommo]

@Troy

He’s not giving me a hard time about it, but he’s hardly bowing to my Vader-like will on this issue either.

You are absolutely right! Oh no wait…

But more seriously, and back on topic, this is an interesting point and it could be helpful both to me and @NickZoSo — I am in fact a bit annoyed at myself for not deriving this from my supposed knowledge of Physics:

@Troy

The more vertical the picking motion, the closer it gets to 90 degrees from the tracking motion. So you don’t get the adding of the velocities when your pickstroke vector lines up with the tracking vector

Indeed your DWPS form shown in the Yngwie/EJ lessons had a decent angle between picking and tracking motion, which might explain why you never experienced the problem, or perhaps it was so tiny that you didn’t notice the difference in force you had to apply for “inside VS outside” string tracking.

Edit: here I was showing the 4 types of tracking with a pentatonic scale (played straight up/down, so 2 notes per string). I can see that my form was quite flat, which may explain how my picking motion would interfere significantly with the tracking motion.

Tommo's ascending troubles, feedback welcome!

Thanks for asking With 2nps I still find “inside picking” harder for tracking purposes. Here’s a quick video where I do Ascending inside - feels hard Descending outside - easy Ascending outside - easy Descending inside - a bit harder

[guitarenthusiast]

There is not a universal truth about practicing, about holding a pick, or about anchoring your hand.

Yeah I have to remind myself of this constantly. For me even though I feel I’ve figured out the speed thing for myself, people have different abilities and perceptions so what makes sense to me might not make sense to the next guy.

That said, I think there are universal principles. But I’m not going to get into that because I’ll derail the thread. At the end of the day, once you hit 200-210 BPM 16th notes or so, it’s safe to say you’ve figured it out for yourself. I’d also say that once you get there, you’re experienced enough to realize the so-called “different methods” used by players to build speed are really just cases of six of one, half a dozen of the other.