Developing fretting hand speed and synchronization question

Playing Technique
#1

This may be addressed in the masters in mechanics materials, but I haven’t made it through all of that.
I understand the start-by-going-fast approach to developing and finding a good picking technique. In terms of developing speed with the fretting hand though, is it generally just recommended to focus on form/accuracy and scale up with a metronome? It feels like that would be the right approach to develop the proper dexterity and accuracy with the muscles in the fingers. However, this approach kind of seems to work against the picking approach of going fast. Right now, my fastest technique is largely elbow based with perhaps a little wrist with a DSX approach (I’ll try to do a video sometime). At “slower” speeds I tend to have a more wrist-based Al Di Meola DSX approach. And throwing in elbow feels strange at those more moderate speeds. How do I get things to meet in the middle and develop good fingers dexterity and accuracy on the one hand (pun intended) and maintain that scalable picking technique on the other hand, even though at the higher speeds it becomes more elbow based vs at low to moderate speeds?

Thanks!

Edit: corrected my first post, original have my slant and escape directions backwards

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#2

I thought Al Di Meola is all DSX. Also, elbow motion is DSX as well, unless you’ve found out how Zakk Wylde is doing it. Good question anyway, after founding speed with my picking hand recently, I feel that my fretting hand can’t keep up with some stuff I’m trying to play fast.

#3

Just to clarify, are these two different questions?

  1. How to improve fret hand dexterity
  2. How to bridge the “dead zone” between slower wrist based motion and faster elbow based motion

Is that right?

#4

Yes, I had everything backwards with my terminology. My motions are mainly DSX with UWPS. Sorry for confusing things! ha

#5

Yes to the first of those, in terms of developing coordination/dexterity on fret hand (and I was backwwards in my post, I should have said UWPS and DSX). And partly yes to the second question. I feel as though from a purely picking standpoint I can accelerate fairly smoothly transitioning from more wrist based to the more “vibrational” elbow stuff; though I wonder if I should be doing that given that the wrist based motion doesn’t seem fully scalable for me in that sense. But also it’s a question of bridging the speed of the fret hand through progressively faster fretting motions while maintaining consistent picking along that continuum. This may be overthinking it though.

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#6

Whenever anyone asks about fretting I always point them to this excellent thread:

It has some really interesting observations about how to get the most out of your fretting hand’s potential. Once you understand what an efficient digital cycle is, you can easily hook this into some elbow driven (or whatever motion mechanic you choose) compatible phrases so you’re going fast with both hands :slight_smile:

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#7

You’re not overthinking it. I had the same thoughts about picking motion and I came to the conclusion to abandon my old slower picking motion completely and learn to use my efficient picking motion for everything. It works!

Now I have one picking motion to work with, that seems to work consistently for any speed. 90bpm. No problem. 120bpm. No problem. 200bpm. No problem.

It just made sense to keep the motion the same and not have to learn two different ways to play, just because the tempo changes.

Next, I am working on building speed and synchronization for my fret hand. I am doing basic skills exercises and keeping it simple. This works perfectly for getting the fingers moving:

The entire section of clips builds on complexity. Highly recommended. I have seen great results so far. I’m no shredder yet, but I wasn’t even able to do the exercise in time at 80bpm when I started and I am up to 130bpm in a couple of weeks.

#8

Thanks I’ll check it out!

#9

Sounds good. And since I tend to do DSX, I suppose I’ll need to get used to starting this phrase on an upstroke to enable string changes.

#10

Not for the first exercises, since they are all on one string. That way you can just focus on getting faster. The upstroke start is something to work on after you have some good speed going. At least that’s how I’m approaching it.

#11

Nice, that’s fast. So that’s like the full six note sequence for each beat at a rate of 130BPM?

#12

Yes, playing 16th notes at 130bpm for the six note sequence. It is still hard for me and I can’t sustain it for more than a couple of measures before I lose it, but it’s speed where I had none before. I am really excited that I have come this far since I joined here and I see the progress every day now.

#13

Is your fingering 134? That’s what I’ve been practicing, but reading some of the thread posted above about ‘efficient digital cycles’ I wonder if I should be trying 123 instead.

#14

Wait I must be confused. That’s 18 notes per second?

#15

It’s just playing 16th notes at 130bpm. It’s maybe 9 notes per second if my math is any good.

Set your metronome to 130 and play 16ths.1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 …

It’s not fast as far as shredders go. They can rip 16ths at 180+ bpm all day long. 130 is definitely at my current fretting limit. And I can only do it for 2 or 3 measures before I wander off tempo (usually slower). My current goal is 180bpm but I have a lot of work ahead of me.

And yes, fingering is 1 3 4. It feels right to me, so I didn’t bother trying to change it. But don’t get the wrong idea. The first week was horrible. I couldn’t even keep time at 60 bpm and it was extremely frustrating. It just seemed like I was an uncoordinated mess. Nothing sounded good, sync was never right and I couldn’t keep time. Until the fourth day and suddenly I locked in at 60 and it seemed easy. Then I bumped to 70. 80. 90…nope 90 was too fast so I finished the practice at 80.

I could bump the tempo up a bit every day until the end of the second week (this week) and today a was able to hit a couple of measures at 135 on tempo and repeat that for about 10 minutes a couple measures at a time.

The progress is steady but is taking work to get there.

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#16

This keeps me wondering. When I made my jump with the picking speed from 130 bpm 16th notes to 180-190bpm 16th notes, I could play almost all the licks I could do on 130 bpm. I’m having trouble only with a few fretting patterns but generally there was no steady progress like increasing the tempo slowly to be able to keep up with my picking hand.

#17

Typically, I’m finding that fretting issues are mainly issues will familiarity with the licks. My picking seems to adapt better than my fretting hand now and can cope with much higher speeds off the bat, but I have to spend quite a bit of time at very slow speeds to burn in the fretting hand. Probably a symptom of a lack of variety over long periods. That being said, like the picking hand, I always try faster speeds than I can do with the fretting hand to get the feeling of speed…

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#18

Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. I’ll try to make a video on this in the next few days. But for now, I’ll leave it at this:

You cannot move quickly unless you have efficient movement patterns. You cannot know if your movement patterns are efficient or not unless you try to execute those movements quickly.

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#19

I’d love to see this. I know there’s been discussions on here before about your reluctance to demonstrate playing certain examples for fear of trolls coming along with “well this surely isn’t as good as Shawn Lane, you really can’t know what you’re talking about”. I’d say for me and I’m sure countless others on here who enjoy your posts and research, it would be invaluable to see what we’ve been reading about. The mods will surely silence any nonsense because your work on left hand principles is the natural compliment to Troy’s work on picking.

Even if not clean and totally at your max speed, demonstrating things like at what point each finger releases/prepares, applying the arch of the hand at rest, which joints drive the motion etc would be great. The anatomy of the motion, if you will. I think I’m doing EDC’s correctly based on what I’ve read in your posts, but seeing it would give me better reference. Truly, no pressure or anything. People around here would love it.

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#20

You could try isolating your fretting hand for a few minutes and see if you can keep up with legato. If you can, it’s a high probability to be a sync issue (not speed) which takes time.