Do we actually even KNOW how to get faster?

Playing Technique
#41

its interesting, and maybe I have made this observation before. My practicing is the OPPOSITE of mundane. It always has been. Here is what I mean:

Dozens or hundreds of times I have told myself “This is it, I am going to make a dedicated practice routine and concentrate on a few licks and take them to pro level.” So then it becomes a question of, well, which licks? So I sit down to decide which licks are the most important. 3 hours later I have enjoyed a fun practice session with every lick under the sun…but im no closer to finding those specific licks to concentrate on! LOL

So I guess on can go either DEEP or WIDE. One can dig a mile deep hole of 1 foot diameter way quicker than a mile deep hole that also a mile WIDE. My practice has always been WIDE. A little of this, a little of that…getting a little better at all of it as I go. Im not going to cry about it because that approach also has its benefits

So for me anyway I think now its a matter of finding some way to limit myself to less than 10, and probably more like 4 or 5 core exercises and really focus on going deep with them. I think Claus Levin would call that “achieving mastery.”

hehe, now, to just pick those 4-6 exercises lol

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#42

I was thinking…When looking at Martin Miller playing those Arpeggio’s so unbeleivable fast and clean, he uses (from what i can tell and Troy already pointed out) a movement comming a lot from the muscles which control the thumb, but at the same time his shoulder is doing the string tracking.
Those fast fine muscle movements of the thumb is something you have to learn to control; the brain has got to learn how to do that.
Like learning how to move the muscles from your eyebrows independently;
but, some people can do it by nature while others have a very hard time learning how to control this.

So maybe that is the key to why for instance Martin can do this so fast and clean like almost no one else.
These fine movements were very natural to him, even at blistering speeds.
For most players (like myself) it is not, and we have to find out and learn how to control those muscles, that is: wiring the brain for this.

And this raises a question: Why can some people do certain muscle movents very natural ( like moving the eyebrow muscles independently) and others have a very hard time with that ( some may even never learn it), although anatomically it is all the same?

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#43

The thumb-finger movement could be a whole separate lesson. There are tons of variables. I’ve been using the two for years, but I’ve had to tweak it quite a bit.

For me, the thumb is where the exertion/speed comes from, but the fingers mostly act as resistance against the thumb. Also, the thumb pushes the fingers in a diagonal direction to help me create a nice curved escape path. So the finger starts somewhat extended, and in an ‘open scissor’ position, an ends in a more flexed, ‘closed scissor’ position.

Also, with my form, the thumb actually gets a bit of help from the forearm rotation. I’ve heard a few other guitarists say this as well.

The end product is very precise movement, and can be used to 200 bpm 16th notes and beyond. The down-side is that at the higher speed, the movements have to be pretty small to keep up… otherwise, the hand will fatigue really quickly.

btw, I am not as accurate as Martin Miller. He’s sorta the gold standard at the moment. I’d love to be at his level… but who am I kidding?

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#44

I can get that thumb movement going now, and also at higher speeds, but those one note per string arpeggio’s, without hitting surrounding strings, at Martin’s speed, is just a no go.
I believe a big part of this all is that stringtracking movement from the shoulder. Because of that you can keep the thumb index movement very small as the shoulder does the work from getting to the next string.

#45

Btw, i ment stringtracking from the shoulder.

#46

Yes, the stringtracking has been the bottleneck for 1NPS since I first started double-escaping. It’s been a slow process. First getting the 3NPS down, then the 2NPS down (ins & outs), then doing lotsa 1,2NPS stuff.

The problem for me is maintaining a precise form while dealing with very quick tracking movements. It requires a lot of refinement, trial and error, loosening up. I am getting close… but its still not there. I will often miss a string here and there at 170+. On occasion, everything will click… but that is still not too often. But there is always tiny incremental improvements.

As far as using the shoulder, I think that can certainly help, and maybe I’ll revisit that more in the future. But it didn’t seem to mix well with my current mechanic.

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#47

Martin does that whole Steve Morse thing more clean then Morse himself, Morse has some swiping going on.
Morse also is doing the stringtracking from the shoulder but does not have that fine thumb/indexfinger motion going on.
I can do it the Steve Morse way at speed (with some swiping), but the super clean Martin Miller way is still far away… I don’t know if i ever will get it because i am already practicing it for quite a while now…Pffff!

#48

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…?

#49

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.

#50

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!

#51

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. :slight_smile:

#52

Can you direct me to the topic where you discussed this index middlefinger gap thing please?

#53

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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#54

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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#55

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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#56

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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#57

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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#58

could you post a vid of your playing?

#59

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.

#60

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.