To me it looks if Martin has or some extra joints or very flexible joints in that thumb/index area.
When i film myself it looks very different even at very low speeds, although i think i am making the same movements.
His thumb and indexfinger seems to be able to move much more independently then mine.
When you look at the gap between his index finger and middle finger that is much larger then mine. My indexfinger is almost completely against the middlefinger.
I can only create this gap and get a more independent motion going on by anchoring my middle and ringfinger very stiff on the pickguard.
So maybe there is an anatomic difference…?
That’s a good way of putting it. Still, if you want to anchor your middle and ring fingers on the pickguard that works. I’ve got to tell you that although it’s possible to get a good thumb/finger mechanic working, it takes forever! I tried it for well over a year and couldn’t do much of anything with it. Dannyjoe Carter uses thumb and finger and gets tremendous speed but he was practicing up to 12 hours a day before he got it working like he has it working now. Here’s what it looks like; I love the way he gets it going so fast that his thumb and finger just turn into a blur! Look at the left hand 5th fret to 12th fret stretch he’s doing. It’s awesome.
Yes, i do also anchor my fingers ( ring and pinky) a bit on the pickguard, but loose, like Martin Miller.
What Dannyjoe is doing is this very fast spasm tremelo picking, which only a few can do. But you can’t realy play in time with that or do one note per string arppegio’s. It is more a gimmick then musicaly usefull, in my opinion.
When you listen at this clip you can hear that when he plays at a slower speed he is not even entirely in sync with the lefthand. When he speds up to the spasm tremelo thing it is just a blur and you never can find any timing in there. Not my thing at all!
But, why some can do this very fast spasm thing and most of us not is a mystery to me.
The stretch 5 to 12 is awesome!
I’ve actually discussed the middle-finger index-finger gap a few times. It’s crucial to my form, and its one of the things I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking. I don’t think it’s anatomically prohibitive, but maybe I’m wrong. I wonder if the moderators here could move this discussion to the M. Miller thread. 
Can you direct me to the topic where you discussed this index middlefinger gap thing please?
I discussed it twice. Once in regards to how using it allows a gliding mechanic that can reach the low E, A strings without having to modify anything (ie, no reaching/stretching)
As you can see, @Bill_hall is a textbook example of this.
I also discussed it as regards to how it can be used as a mechanic… including this thread a few posts up, on how the gap (ie the open scissors) is the default position, and the thumb pushes diagonally against it which does two things. 1) it raises the finger( flexes it) 2) it closes the scissors. This creates the diagonal motion that I use to help escape the strings on the downstroke. It looks like a trivial thing, but if I don’t ‘close the scissors’ my double-escape doesn’t work. I don’t know if M. Miller does this. It’s such a minute movement, that is really hidden, but for whatever reason, my mechanic really relies on this.
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What a great thread this is!
It is funny…I never really thought about how I have a scissor grip with my right hand until Hamsterman pointed that out to me. I just thought my hand sort of did that because it did, lol! But in thinking about it…it makes perfect sense in that it allows my right hand little finger to sort of glide on the guitar even when I play the lower strings. I can see that my hand didn’t just do it by accident…it did it because it allows me to keep everything consistent.
As I think back to how I built up speed in my playing when alternate picking, I never used a metronome. I never did “the play a lick slow and move the click up every time” thing. It never really worked for me when I tried that. What I remember doing was playing a lick (I used things like Yngwie’s six note lick or a lick I learned from Al Di Meola…which was the famous lick that Gilbert would go on to play) and doing it over and over fast until I could feel both hands sync up. When I could FEEL it…it felt right…the picking and the fingers were one and it had the sound I was looking for, like a little space was between each note even at a faster speed…if that makes sense. I even felt more relaxed when I could feel that feeling of having everything in sync.
I would play the lick on every string or in two string groups on every string and in all positions. It was weird in that I can remember trying to play fast cleanly picked lines…while they were clean, they were only at moderate speeds and then one day I changed my hand position after I looked at Yngwie’s right hand in a guitar mag and when I did that ( I decided to try resting my fingers on the body, which I didn’t do at the time) I found I could pick a note really fast. So I tried some of the licks I had been playing and right away it was there…is was so exciting! It was like I just need the initial fast pick speed and then I just did it together with my left hand until it all locked in together.
It happened so quickly I remember telling some friends the day after I changed my picking hand motion how excited I was…that I was onto something. I just kept working on all the things I could do with it and I started progressing really fast. I think after I switched my right hand so I could glide my little finger on the body it put my pick in an upward pickslant which made it easy to switch strings with an upstroke when going from a lower string to higher one. So a big part of the problem was solved right there as well as speeding up my picking motion by a lot.
It was almost like I just tried to fake and pretend I could pick fast by changing how I held the pick and somehow it turned out that I could pick fast, lol! Although I didn’t then…I use a metronome all the time now, just to change up tempos and keep things interesting for me when I practice. I think sometimes we can just fall into the thing where we just play everything to the same tempo or pulse that we just naturally feel and I use it to make sure I am not doing that all the time. I also have always tapped my foot and have always been able to feel and tap to the quarter note for instance no matter what I am playing. I am not sure if that helped my hands sync together quickly like they did, but I think it might have played a part.
My picking mechanics were learned and developed in a pretty short window of time and I have never really changed that much since. Although I do try new things all the time…picking new ways etc., but it never really changed the foundation of what I learned to do all those years ago.
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I’ve switched mechanics so many times I can’t remember. But one thing I’ve changed a lot in recent months was adding more elbow movement. It’s strange that I use so much elbow with my x-picking mechanic, but it works really nice.
My tremolo picking is now really wide, which makes things like 2 string alternating (both inside & outside) really easy. It’s also helped improved my overall sound and consistency.
And oddly enough, I am still almost entirely using elbow for string-tracking. So my elbow is doing pretty much all the heavy lifting, and all the other mechanics just do the finesse movements. I feel like I can play a lot longer now without getting fatigued.
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It sounds like you are doing great Hamsterman! I tend to have a fairly wide tremelo also and I think that really helped me when I was learning string changing. I guess you would think that the elbow mechanic would sort of tire out quickly when playing long lines, but I can play fast lines for really long periods and not really ever get fatigued. It feels so natural to me now…I don’t even really think about it coming from the elbow at all. I am sure picking from the wrist would enable fast lines for long periods of time also…I have seen so many amazing pickers out there and many of them are more from the wrist. I love watching and listening to a great picker and seeing how they do it…it is one of the coolest things for me! All the motion mechanics I find really interesting!
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Well then it becomes a matter of how do we best teach people to learn these different movements so that they learn the hand coordination in an efficient manner so that they can utilize their natural hand speed?
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could you post a vid of your playing?
But Bill doesn’t use any thumb/finger motion, it is quite the opposite of what Martin does. When Bill goes into higher speeds it is closed all the time and he opens it sometimes when going into lower speed. The motion comes mostely from the ellbow.
It is a great technique for those scaler things and one/two string triplets stuff he does, but you can’t control high speed one note per string arpeggio’s this way without swiping.
That precise thumb/indexfinger muscle control to open and close the gap like Martin does is a whole other thing. That is something very special.
Yes, his picking is different from M. Miller, he was just a good example of one of the two reasons for the index/middle gap.
I’ll try to make something later today, but every video I’ve attempted to make so far of my technique is useless, because it appears as though the pick is only moving side to side. It’s because my escape is barely a mm, and my lateral movement is two-strings wide, so all you can see is the side-to-side movement. The only way to see the escape is from the side and at string-level. I’ll try to make something that shows the index/thumb movement. I’ll do some isolated movements so you can kinda see the different components.
That would be very nice!
If you can put it on YT, so can slow it down, that would be great!
An interesting answer from zakk wylde on that topic. Interesting because it goes out of the « common boxes » and joins Troy’s thought on managing patterns at our actual speed.
Zakk said that when he does not succeed to play a solo that he is thinking of, he trains with the metronome till he gets it to the beat. For him, it is a question of repetition (muscle memory).
Note that he was talking about playing at speed and that he already knows how to play. So it is a method if you have already practiced slow and know how to play clean.
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ok, here goes. Here is my attempt to make some awful videos of my form. The camera-phone is just sorta resting on my couch. My amp is broken, but you can hear things. (Sorry the fishtank is a bit loud).
This is me tremoloing and 1NPS picking at a slow tempo. My finger movements are REALLY small, so it’s tough to see what I’m talking about, but you can see the thumb doing the pushing. My index finger is very slightly moving towards the middle finger. It’s just a few millimeters, but it’s become kinda crucial to my form.
There’s forearm rotation, wrist movement, elbow movement. But again, the escape is so small, that its super tough to see the curved path. Everything just looks side-to-side.
Also, someone was asking about using a double-escaped form with 3NPS, so here is an example of that:
Also, someone was asking about 1NPS picking at high speeds. Anything above 170 bpm 16ths is out of my comfort zone, but here is my ‘attempt at it’
I’m hoping to clean this up over the next year. Again, I’m nowhere near M. Miller level.
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Thnx for the vids!
We have to find the way Martin makes those small thumb/index finger movements working together with the stringtracking from the shoulder.
You have, like me, still to much movement from the forearm, which i think is fine fore lots of stuff but not for that one note per string arpeggios Martin can play so fast and clean.
Also the way he holds the pick is very difficult for me, but it plays a part in it to i believe.
Like you, I also have my thumb more over the indexfinger. Martin holds it very loose, his thumb is not over the indexfinger and the pick is on the tip of his indexfinger, which is more straight then curled. I think this plays a part because of the ultra fine control you have this way. But the pick still slips out of my fingers when i try this.
We still have a long way to go…
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Troy also does the thumb over the index. I’m not sure why I liked it, but when I tried it, it just felt better.
There is no question that I still need to loosen up more. That’s been sorta gradual for me.
Yeah, I will try revisiting the shoulder movement. I am always trying new things, and tweaking things.
I just started 1NPS about 18 months ago, and started double-escaping about 6 months before that. So I am certain I’ll gain more accuracy as time goes by. My goal is to sound like M. Miller for 1NPS, and like @tommo for 3NPS.
A year ago, I couldn’t even break 100 bpm 16ths on 2NPS outside switches… but now I’m playing it effortlessly at much higher speeds. Everything is gradual. An hour or so a day is what I am shooting for.
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I think a clue is right here. An hour…but spit up how?
I been trying to work this into my routine lately. for instance say you do a lick at 8pm then u go to bed and get up and go to work and the next night you train that lick again. Well thats 24 hrs between. You are going to lose a lot of the memory and groove of that lick.
One little trick then: When u wake up, do that lick a few times before u get ready for work. That splits that 24 hrs in half so you will get way more retention
Wanna get crazy with it? Do the lick upon waking. Takes you an hour to get ready for work? Do the lick right before u walk out the door. Do the lick when u walk back in the door from work. relax a bit, whatever, then do your 8pm actual practice time. Now you have like 4 different “memory events” or recharges.
Nvmnd of course visualizing the lick and/or tapping it out with your fingers at work
Lots of possibilities there. Good way to learn a new lick quickly
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The thumb over the index will give you more grip, but since our goal is to play those arpeggio’s as clean and fast as Martin i want (for now) to be every aspect the same.
Maybe it turns out later (when i ever even master it…) that it was not that essential at all, but for now i believe that it gives you more control to do, and feel those ultra fine movements. The stringtracking from the shoulder has the advantage that you can keep the angle between the pick and string string exactely the same on every string. I am getting much better at this alread and realy can feel the bennefit of it. Now i need to master this damn fine thumb index motion which i have a looong way to go with.
Martin is our golden standard and thnx to Troy we now can see a great part of the movements he makes, how his arm and hand are placed and how he holds the pick. So for know i want to try and copy it exactely.
If you Would play golf and want to have that great Tiger Woods thing going on you also would study exactly how he does it. What is his grip on the club, how is he positioning his body, what are the exact movements he makes.
In my opinion that’s what is missing in the whole guitarplaying with plectrum thing; to much variables going on because there is no real standard yet to teach.
If you would study for instance classical violin things are much more worked out over the years and teached the same way. How you hold and move the bow is standard.
Martin amazed us all and shows how it’s done to play very fast and ultra clean one note per string arpeggio’s, so for now that’s my standard.
Maybe it turns out that i am all wrong about this though…
An hour practice a day is not enough to get to Martin’s level i’m afraid. You will have to find a way to at least double that.